Harold Stirling Vanderbilt funded construction of
Ranger, and she was launched on May 11, 1937. She was designed by
Starling Burgess and
Olin Stephens, and constructed by
Bath Iron Works. Stephens would credit Burgess with actually designing
Ranger, but the radical departure from the heavy displacement sailing yachts was attributal to Stephens himself who had first used the design in
Dorade, winner of the 1931 Trans-Atlantic Race.
Geerd Hendel, Burgess's chief draftsman, also had a hand in drawing many of the plans. The hull was all-steel welded by a shielded arc process with a weight-saving aluminum, arc-welded, mast counterbalanced with a 110-ton lead keel supported by an arc-welded steel keel plate.
Ranger was constructed according to the
Universal Rule that constrained the various dimensions of racing yachts, such as sail area and length. Often referred to as the "super J",
Ranger received a rating of 76, the maximum allowed while still adhering to the Universal Rule. ==Career==