Shorty Trimingham

The sailor known worldwide simply as "Shorty" reached the farthest horizon when deForest W. Trimingham died of leukemia on March 30 at his home in Paget, Bermuda, at the age of 87. he is survived by his wife, Dorothy, a daughter, Barrie Trimingham, and three grandchildren, Stephen Van Dyck, Peter Van Dyck and Thomas Van Dyck. A memorial service will be held in Bermuda on April 10. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club junior sailing program.

Shorty Trimingham — he was just 5'7" — was a superior racing sailor. Probably the most important of his many successes occurred in 1954 at Weymouth, England, when he became the first non-Englishman to win the Prince of Wales Cup, the top prize of what was then the world's leading dinghy class, the International 14. He represented Bermuda in the Olympics and other small-boat regattas. In ocean racing boats that included one of German Frers' earliest designs, Wizard of Paget, he competed in several Admiral's Cup series and races for the Onion Patch Trophy, which Shorty co-founded in 1964 as the Admiral's Cup of the Western Atlantic.

Among the numerous Bermudian, U.S., and British yacht clubs of which Shorty was a member or past member are the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club (where he was Commodore when he won the Prince of Wales Cup), the New York Yacht Club, the Cruising Club of America, the Royal Yacht Squadron, the Royal Ocean Racing Club, and the Itchenor Sailing Club.

Shorty traced his passion for sailing to Bermuda's 400-year maritime history. "I was very lucky to be born right here in the lap of sailboat racing!" he said with characteristic brio. "Thank God I was born in a yachting family!" His gifts were obvious. "He knows what he's doing," said his dinghy crew, his cousin Eldon Trimingham. "You have a terrific feeling of confidence in sailing with a man as keen and as sensitive to a boat as Shorty is."

Bruce Kirby, the yacht designer, first raced against Shorty in 14s in 1948 and recalled, "He was always fast, especially downwind." Kirby was also impressed by his ebullient personality. "This to me was Shorty's hallmark. When he arrived at the regatta, the tone became less serious, frequently hilarious, and sometimes outlandish. Where Shorty was, the sun always shone." Another friend, Harvey Loomis, has said, "He was always the same — expansive, irreverent, good humored (even a bit raucous), unselfconscious, and deeply engaged in whatever project he had going."

There were plenty of projects. He served in Bermuda's Parliament for 22 years, and in the 1970s was the government's tourism minister. He retired from the famous Front Street store that the Trimingham family had founded in 1844 and became a respected photographer. A collection of his photographs titled Buddha: The Living Way, with a foreword by the Dalai Lama, was published by Random House. When the Bermuda National Gallery presented an exhibition of his photographs in 2004, it produced an informative biography that can be found at http://www.bermudanationalgallery.com/deForest%20Trimingham.pdf.

To end on a personal note, as a member of the next generation I was taught that Shorty was sailing royalty. Over the years I learned that he really belonged there, in no small part because he had high standards and was prepared to defend them. When I last saw him in June 2006, we were members of a committee appointed jointly by the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club and the Cruising Club of America to create a hall of fame for the Newport-Bermuda Race. Shorty opposed the idea altogether. An amateur of the school that values participation over trophies, he believed that sailing is incompatible with the sort of celebrity that adheres only to winners. As he presented his arguments forcefully and persuasively, we other members beat a strategic retreat, yielding one point after another until we agreed to acknowledge all kinds of accomplishment and discard the name "hall of fame." Shorty was instantly converted, and so we have the Bermuda Race Roll of Honour — the "ou" spelling reflecting the internationalism that guided Shorty Trimingham all his years.

That problem solved, we considered candidates for induction into our new institution. It quickly became clear that Shorty had met almost every one of them. Alas, he won't be around the next time we gather.

John Rousmaniere