Sailing

FAR back beyond the shadowy years in which the Egyptian traders were wafted across the Mare Internum to the shores of Greece, before the Phœnician galleys carried the crystals and purples of Sidon to the barbarians of Gaul, or took homeward the ivory and gold of Ophir, the incense and spices of Arabia, or the pearls of the Persian Gulf, there blazed in the insatiable heart of man a burning desire to cross great waters, to master the might and mystery of the sea. Byron, wresting truth to poetic ecstasy, sang,

But man has never rested content upon the shore. Somewhere in the dim ages beyond the furthest backward glance of peering History, he embarked in a quavering, infant shallop, and ferried himself over some appalling rivulet. Thirty centuries before Christ there were tolerably fashioned sailing ships, and commerce had taken its place among the activities of the world. Furthermore there were luxurious yachts in the early days of Greek history, for even then man sailed not for gain or necessity alone, but for his lordly pleasure.

The story of the distant times is the story of to-day. For the mastery of the seas man still strives. Though the power of steam has revolutionized commerce, and huge steel leviathans have made the ocean safer than a New England railway, the brave spirit of old yet lives, and it delights men to adventure upon the waters in light sailing craft, not immune from the furies of wind and wave. It is this spirit which preserves the sport of sailing, in all its forms, from the impudent challenge of foamy windrows by the cedar canoe to the triumphant progress over crested hills of the sea-going schooner yacht.

In this favored land of ours the general history of the practice of sailing has been obscured by the brilliant annals of yacht racing. Our long series of triumphs in the defense of the America’s Cup has monopolized our attention, and in looking at ourselves as adepts of the flying start and connoisseurs of balloon canvas, we have forgotten how much of the true sea hawk’s blood flows in our veins. The spirit of the Saxon and Danish and Norman invaders, who harried the hosts of Britain, and of their descendants, Drake and his followers, who swept the coasts of the West Indies and southern America, has never died out in the land which produced Lawrence and Perry, Farragut and Dewey. But in Great Britain a greater proportion of the people is familiar with sailing than in our country. This is not the place nor the occasion for a discussion of political policies which bear upon this matter. We may safely confine ourselves to a brief consideration of the work of natural causes.

In the creation of the differences in the seafaring proclivities of the two nations the vast extent of our interior as compared with our coast line is a primary factor. Our shores measure many more miles than Britain’s, but our territory measures still more, and thus the ratio of sailors to non-sailors becomes smaller in our population. In England, the shore is scalloped by innumerable harbors, and the heart of the land is touched by rivers that have not far to flow to reach the sea. A thousand sails woo the breezes of these streams, while here the river sailing craft is almost a stranger except in tidewaters. In too many of our rivers sailing except for business is neglected, because tides race swiftly, or high shores cut the breezes into alternate streaks of calm and sudden squall. One may watch the paddles of a hundred steamers churn the waters of the Mississippi or the Ohio, but seldom see the tower of a white sail, while the lordly Hudson is ploughed by only a few patient strugglers against pitiless tides and baffling winds. As for the inland lakes, only in recent years has the spirit of sailing adventure reached them, though they have long borne upon their bosoms a race of hardy and skillful seamen of commerce.

Not only have the lakes and the inland rivers lacked the physical advantages of salt water, but they have also wanted the stimulus of yacht racing, and the great cruises of the leading yacht clubs. Sailing as a sport is nurtured by the racing and the cruising spirit. The great regattas and the monster cruises of fleets belong to the eastern coast. And the eastern coast has these things largely because of its eastward outlook. To face the western ocean is to bask in the sunlight of four centuries of maritime glory. It is to sit continually before the glittering page on which Columbus and Raleigh, Hudson and John Smith, wrote their deeds with the stylus of the streaming prow. It is to breathe inspiration from the breezes that brought to our shores the first adventurous caravels of Spain laden with their precious freight of futurity. It is to smell the odor of the distant gales that sent Tyng and Pepperell to take Louisburg, Paul Jones to find the Serapis, and Hull and Decatur to make the American frigate the terror of the seas. It is to look out upon the waters over which, in fair weather or foul, with the winds roaring out of their crescent canvas and acres of smoking foam under their thundering bows, the American clippers and packets scored records of speed only to be obliterated by the black smoke of the Atlantic greyhound. It is to front the ocean over which royal Sammy Samuels drove the clipper Dreadnaught from New York to Liverpool in 13 days and 15 hours, and the schooner yacht Henrietta from Sandy Hook to Daunt’s Rock in 13 days and 21 hours.

And to face that eastern outlook is to fix the eyes upon a sea whose power is still subject to the mastery of seamanship. Though the record-breaking tonnage giant, hurling herself over vainly opposing combers, never pausing for gale or lying helpless in calm, has superseded the clipper and the packet as a carrier of both freight and humanity, the Atlantic is not bare of canvas. Even yet the

for the splendid four-masters of Liverpool and Glasgow stem the tides of the Gedney and Hypocrite channels, and the barkentines come swimming up from the south with the odor of the northeast trades yet in their sails. And it’s

for the schooners of Chatham and Gloucester still scatter their dories above the mighty submarine pasturage that spreads from the southernmost limit of the ice northward to where the swells quiver around the Virgin. Rock.

Where man goes for his necessities, he goes for his pleasure. Sordid and filled with the thirst of gain as we all are, we have dared more from curiosity than from hope of wealth. Men have faced the deadly cold and eternal snows of Nome for gold, but there are no diamonds away yonder in the north where lie the bones of Franklin, and where Peary yet struggles to wrest the secret of the Pole. Men have, toiled over the Rockies in search of the yellow dust, but there are no diadems of precious stones upon the brows of Mont Blanc and Everest. If only the insatiable curiosity of the human intellect has sent men to their fates on the sands of Sahara, in the jungles of India, and in the hills of South Africa, a lordly scorn of danger in the pursuit of pleasure has been the first page of many a story of missing craft, and in the wake of the streaming hull of commerce always floats the gilded pinnace of pastime. The yacht ensign has circled the world ; it has flown to the gales of the North Atlantic and the monsoons of the Indian Ocean. And the great majority of sea-going yachts which make long voyages lift their anchors in the harbors of our eastern seaboard, for the storied waters of the western ocean invite with the irresistible witchery of recorded daring.

But prosaic and practical considerations play no less important a part in making the eastern seaboard the sailing front of our country. The geographical features of the coast offer advantages or impose limitations which guide the operations of the human will and fancy. The essentials of a sailing country are an extensive coast line with numerous bays of considerable extent and depth. These bays should be well sheltered by land from the swifter winds and rougher seas to be found on the open waters outside. Within the bays small craft, unsuited to the outer waters, could find abundant room to spread their little wings, and in days of light winds and smooth waters could venture outside and rock themselves upon the deepchested breathing of summer swells. The generous depth of water in these bays would afford riding ground for large sea-going yachts, thus bringing together all types of pleasure craft.

If now we add to these large, deep, landlocked bays some shallows, of mingled fresh and salt water, with openings into the bays or the sea, such shining veneers of water as the Shrewsbury River and Barnegat Bay, we have a sailing country which offers every conceivable advantage. Perhaps the man who loves to solve small problems with tiller and sheet may ask for one thing more, — a narrow tidewater creek, winding its devious path among salt grass and wiry reeds, far up into the bosom of some marshy flat where ages ago a broad river flowed, and where now the bittern broods and the kingfisher chatters in the idle sun of the summer afternoon. A most enticing ribbon of water is the tidewater creek, and its elusive waters woo the brown and ragged urchin of the countryside to launch his rickety bateau, flat-bottomed and sprit-sailed, upon voyages of conquest or adventure, not infrequently ended by ignominious stranding upon the unsuspected mud-bank.

A country combining all these features will produce pleasure sailors as surely as salt meadows produce mosquitoes. The number of the sailors, however, will be greatly increased if large cities and rich yacht clubs are in this country and operating to stimulate in the surrounding population the sailing spirit. The country boy who goes out in his dirty skiff to get clams enjoys no longer his pristine peace of mind when once he has seen the thirty-footer of some “ city chap,” with her white sides gleaming with new paint, her brass flashing back the refulgence of the sun, her rigging all a-taut, and her ensign snapping in the breeze. For him the line between the working and the pleasure craft is now drawn, and he rests no more till the ancient bateau gets a coat of green paint and the old sprit is scraped, if not varnished.

Such a land as this lies along the eastern seaboard of the United States. The deep, landlocked bays, the shallow broads, the tidewater rivers and creeks stretch along almost the entire length of our Atlantic coast, and even follow the line around into the Gulf, where Tampa Bay, at least, invites the sailor with no little charm. But the Gulf has no yachting waters to compare with the Atlantic shore, while the Great Lakes require of the sailor a large amount of hardihood and ready skill. Though landlocked, these bodies of water are too large to resemble bays, and they are subject to sudden and fierce squalls. The west coast of our country is almost destitute of waters favorable to yachting. San Francisco Bay stands almost alone as a sailing centre. Once outside the Golden Gate, the sailor must face the iron coast of the Pacific, which is not at all what its name implies.

Let us look at these matters more closely. Boats are sailed on the coast of Maine. The natives of the region sail strictly for business, for they are not gifted with large quantities of this world’s goods, and they cannot afford to loiter on the waters for their amusement. If they venture, as they often must, into open water, they meet with stiff breezes and lumpy seas. Wherefore one finds along this coast a race of rawboned, slab-sided fishermen, who squint to windward with an especial solemnity, and go down to the sea in craft of sturdy patterns and sound timbers. Up in the northern islands sailing is more comfortable, but even here the native is a professional. A professional he is with a world-wide reputation, for who has not heard of the Deer Island sailors of Defender and Columbia ? Nowhere on the American coast are there better seamen than these sons of Maine, and out of their rock-bound harbors come the great five and six masted schooners, leviathans of pure American breed, not born in other lands. Up among these same Maine islands are thousands of summer homes, owned by people from Boston and New York; even from as far west as Cleveland. These people have their pleasure craft almost literally tied up to their front gate-posts. Small sloops and catboats are the favorite types, but all are broad of beam, fairly deep, and high-sided; for the sea will get up occasionally and the boat must be able. These are not the only pleasure craft, for the cruising yachts sail up from the south, and the magnificent floating palaces of Boston and New York magnates often lave their shining sides in the cold waters of Bar Harbor.

But sailing on the Maine coast as a sport is purely exotic. The people there sail, as has been said, too much for business to care about doing it for pleasure. To them the sea is a hunting ground and a burial place, a vast, mysterious expanse from which a precarious livelihood is wrung by daring, in the face of cruel danger, and where the bones of many a sound vessel and good man lie fathoms deep among swaying grasses and indescribable crawling things.

As one slips slowly down the eastern coast, however, he comes upon a land of boats and boatmen, a land where every boy has some sort of craft to sail, and where the waters whiten on Saturday and Sunday with the foam of a thousand driven keels. Spreading away to the northward in the swelling neck of Marblehead, the kind lagoons of Salem and Lynn, and the broad bight of Nahant Bay, to the southward in the streaming stretches of Nantasket Roads, the sheltering circle of Hingham Bay, the tortuous channels of Cohasset Harbor, and the pygmy cranny of Scituate, it is the lovely land that lies round about the hub of the world. It is a land of channels and reefs, tideways and tiderips, rocks and islands, with its Graves and its Roaring Bulls, its Devil’s Back and its Shag Rocks, its Thieves’ Ledge and its Centurions, its score of scattered islands, and in the centre of all the wise old eye of Boston Light gazing in benignant refulgence over all.

Boston Harbor is confessedly a “mean” place for sailing, but Boston Bay, out to the northward and eastward of Deer Island, down to the southward and eastward of Boston Light, is a paradise, while in Marblehead Harbor there is the sweetest anchorage imaginable for craft of high and low degree. With such waters, it is not at all astonishing that Boston is the most enthusiastic yachting port in the United States, and that in every nook and corner of the surrounding waters are to be found boat sailors of all kinds. Racing runs rampant. Even the fishermen have schooners built by yacht designers, and meet in stirring competition for substantial prizes. The Eastern Yacht Club leads in the luxury of the sport, while the Corinthian and the HullMassachusetts, and a score of others, supply the demands of sailors of small boats.

The small boats used around Boston Bay are a demonstration in themselves of the hold the sport of sailing has on all classes. Even young men of small means associate and raise money enough to purchase some old-fashioned sloop of small tonnage, discarded by her owner for a newer type. Such out - of - date craft one may see any summer Saturday fighting for supremacy off Marblehead Rock with the newest designs in “ knockabouts ” and “ raceabouts,” and not infrequently, through superior skill and the inventiveness which comes of necessity, winning the prizes. But this is not all. The numerous contests among small boat sailors in and around Boston have developed the fastest, stanchest, and soundest types of small craft known to the eastern seaboard. There is plenty of water all around Boston Bay, and the typical small yacht of that country has what the seamen call a “ long leg.” This means that she is built with a healthy body going well down into the water, giving her a deep draught, placing her ballast and her centre of gravity low, and making her uncapsizable. These characteristics have been found in a dozen types of Boston small craft, which have set the pattern for the rest of America.

Deep keel sloops of the old type were more popular around Boston than elsewhere. Who forgets the famous Burgess thirties of a dozen or fifteen years ago, Saracen, Rosalind, and their companions ? I never sailed a sweeter ship than one of these, twenty-nine feet seven inches on the water line, thirty-five feet over all, with six feet of head room in the cabin, and berthing space for six persons forward and aft. And she had a sound lead keel going six feet toward the bottom. Fin keels abounded in Boston waters in the days when these sword-fish of the sailing world were the fashion, and the sneak-box bow and elongated overhang were familiar around Marblehead before they were at Newport. In short, there is no kind of sailing craft that is used for pleasure and sailed by an amateur that is not to be found in the waters around Boston.

Who sails boats in that part of the world ? Why, every one ! From the “Adams Boys,” the smartest yacht racers of the East, down to the Marblehead street boy, every one takes pride in his skill in getting the best work out of some sort of sailing boat. Those who do not sail talk about it, and on a summer day in the drowsy atmosphere of a Boston club, or in the shadow of some tall pile in Washington Street, you shall hear more racing seaman’s lore than anywhere else in this country except on the cruising ground of the Rocking-Chair fleet at the Larchmont Yacht Club. Boston’s claim to be the hub of the universe may be disputed perhaps when you consider the steel industry or the unimportant matter of freight tonnage ; but when you come to talk about sailing, you must admit that Boston is the greatest yachting port in this country. Even the little children there know the history of the America’s Cup, and the public school boy can sail a dory with a leg-of-mutton sail for driving power and an oar for steering gear.

The New England coast from Provincetown down to the entrance to the Vineyard Sound is not favorable to the sport of sailing, and little is done except for the business of fishing. Nantucket is no place for small craft, though a few hardy catboats do take out fishing parties. The same is true of Cottage City. The tides race swiftly east and west through the Sound, and fresh breezes kick up a choppy sea. It is a wet and uncertain sailing ground. But it has a sound type of catboat, broad of beam, deep of draught, high-sided, strongly sheered, and not over-sparred. All sorts of craft are seen in Vineyard Haven and even at Edgartown, for here is the eastern limit of the cruising grounds for the great fleets of small sailing craft from Newport, New London, New Haven, and New York. But on the other side of the northern shore of the Vineyard Sound, and connected with it by those captivating little passages, Wood’s Hole, Quick’s Hole, and Robinson’s Hole, lies the broad, inviting bosom of Buzzard’s Bay, landlocked on all sides, filled with a thousand nooks and corners of placid shoal water, a very paradise for small boat sailing, and the sailing grounds of a truly amphibious race. If the boys of Boston are nautical, those of the heel of the Cape are pure salt, and when the summer heat sends the Boston boy down to join the Cape boy for the months of July and August, all that man knows of the art of sailing small craft is explored and revised.

Westward from where the barrens of Cuttyhunk front the Joseph’s Coat of Gay Head the gliding keel moves through enchanted waters of translucent blue, till the rising of the lighthouse at West Island warns of the approach to Newport. Here is the summer haven of all that is opulent and luxurious in the world of the sailor. It is the riding ground, too, of the humblest; for as a cat may look at a king, so may the homely single-handed cruiser of some New York boy lie within the shadow of the boom of the railroad magnate’s palatial schooner. For west of Newport lies the most inviting stretch of yachting water in all America, water ploughed by every type of sailing craft known to the United States, from the Herreshoff cup defender to the crusier that “ looks as if some fellow had built her himself.” Deep keels, skimming dishes, centreboards, fins, schooners, sloops, yawls, knockabouts, half-raters, auxiliaries, and a thousand weird patterns of small craft improvised out of old ships’ boats or cut down fishing smacks, — all these may be seen of a summer’s day on the welcoming bosom of old Long Island Sound.

A wondrous and beneficent gift of nature to New York is that Sound. The Hudson River is not favorable to sailing ; the bay is rough and torn to shreds by the iron prow of restless Commerce ; the East River is a roaring tideway beset with ferry-boats and tows. But once past the treacherous swirls of Hell Gate, the world is open to the New York sailor, and as he sets his face eastward, he knows that as far as Nantucket he may thrash the foamy windrows with his little vessel almost certain of a comfortable harbor every night. True, the tide does set east and west through the Sound with perceptible force, but the prevailing winds are such that almost any sailing craft can beat the tides. Seriously rough weather is not often encountered in the summer season, though a smoky southwester does sometimes make a bad lee shore of Connecticut. But the weatherwise sailor is seldom on the lee shore, and if he is, there are plenty of harbors. The most frequent winds have some southing in them, and the north shore is dotted with islands and scalloped with bays. The south shore has fewer, but deeper harbors, and in such shelters as Glen Cove a mighty fleet could lie at anchor.

At the eastern extremity of Long Island Sound one passes out into a stretch of open water, but here he may pick his weather for the run around to Newport, and while waiting may lie peacefully in the placid waters of New London Harbor, or in the still more sequestered anchorage of Stonington. Or he may slip across to the south shore, and threading the narrows of Plum Gut, swim into the broad lagoon of Gardiner’s Bay, or hurry on to the slimmer avenues opposite Greenport and the enticing hotels at Shelter Island. Biting deep into the heart of Long Island at this end lies Peconic Bay, but although I have gone over its shores and its shallows with compass and sounding line making a naval militia reconnaissance, I have seen little use of its waters by pleasure craft. It lacks objective, —there is no place to go. That is the secret of the idleness of many an otherwise attractive piece of water.

Who sails the alluring waters to the eastward of New York ? For pure sport one may take it for granted that the dwellers along their shores do not. These sail for business. There is a fine fishing fleet at Larchmont, and the Larchmont Yacht Club gets one race a year out of it by offering good prizes ; but this race is a gentle bribe to prevent the fishermen from removing course marks and buoys planted out in the Sound by the club. From every bay and harbor of these waters oystermen or fishermen go out to seek for food products beneath the surface, but the pleasure sailing is done almost wholly by summer visitors or city people who have made country homes along the shores. As a cruising ground for the New York youths of moderate means the Sound is most popular, and many a badly built, badly manned, and badly sailed craft, with a crew and a cook of the lowest amateur standing, staggers out past Execution Light, finding her nightly anchorage by good luck rather than good navigation. Yet it is the nautical spirit that sends her out, and an added store of nautical experience that brings her back. From such beginnings grow up the crack yachtsmen of New York, men who almost hold their own with the professional skippers, who fill pages of the racing annals of great years, and who sometimes become even managers of cup defenders.

Long Island Sound is the scene of the big annual cruises of the yacht clubs of New York, but the history of these is known of all men. Let me pause here only to say that there never was a more interesting popular error than that which regards the yachtsmen of the New York, Larchmont, Atlantic, and Seawanhaka yacht clubs as so many gilded ornaments on the decks of their own yachts. It is true that these clubs contain a good many dilettante sailors, but the representative men are masters of their art, and command even the patronizing admiration of their own sailing masters.

On the south side of Long Island lies the Great South Bay, and here is the real nursery of New York yacht sailors. In this broad, shallow sheet, where four feet are a deep draught, and where a forty-foot water line is the foundation of a leviathan, has been bred a race of expert small boat sailors, capable of handling the omnipresent catboat or the jiband-mainsail yacht as well as any others in the world. Along the shores dwells a hardy race of seafarers, who venture out through the treacherous waters of Fire Island Inlet into the open sea in search of fish. These sailors never sail for pleasure, but all summer long they carry on the business of taking out visitors for hire in all sorts of craft, from the twenty-foot catboat of Amityville to the high-sided, broad-bodied, forty-foot jiband-mainsail that plies between Sayville and Water Island. These sailor men are the instructors of thousands of youngsters from the cities, and the dean of them all is that splendid old racing master, Captain “ Hank ” Haff of Islip.

Again, to the southward of New York lie the great summer resorts of the New Jersey coast, with the Shrewsbury and Navesink rivers and Barnegat Bay within easy reach. Shallow broads are these where the skimming-dish catboat and the half-rater are sailed daily, but again chiefly by the boys from the cities. The native sails for gain in the summer ; in the winter — on the Shrewsbury at least— he finds his sport in racing the swift ice-boat. But in all these wonderful stretches of water that lie around New York there are sailors of all classes, and he who imagines that yachting is a sport exclusively for the rich has not seen the young adventurers of Gotham. From the poor clerks who band together in groups of four or five and hire a New Haven sharpie, long, squat, and uncomfortable, for a two weeks’ vacation cruise, and the hard-fisted Brooklyn boys who spend Saturday afternoon in thrashing down the Bay against the southerly wind that they may lie over Sunday in the racing tides of the Shrewsbury near the Atlantic Highlands drawbridge and bathe with the excursionists at Highland Beach, to the owner of the big schooner that reels off her ten knots as she flies eastward through the Sound, or of the steamer that drops her anchor off Sea Gate and lolls lazily in the summer sea, all conditions of men are represented in the army of pleasure sailors in and about New York. They form a smaller percentage of the population than the sailing fraternity of Boston and its vicinity, and there is probably no other seaport, except London, where there is such a vast and overpowering ignorance of nautical matters as there is in New York. Yet the love for sailing and the appreciation and understanding of it grow every year, and there is a very considerable influence of that spirit which made the War of 1812, the clipper ship, and the America’s Cup all ours.

What has been said of sailing on the northern part of the Atlantic coast of the United States embodies what might be said in a general way of sailing in the Southern states. The use of the boat among the natives is almost invariably fathered by necessity. To find a coast dweller going out “ for a sail ” is, indeed, a rare thing. If he goes, he uses his boat as a means of conveyance. He goes to fish, or perchance to shoot ducks, or to set lobster pots — but not just to sail. On the other hand there is hardly a bay or a river mouth on the entire coast without its group of summer homes, and the dwellers in these homes use boats for their pleasure. Men do not build cottages beside the water without the desire to float. These summer visitors carry with them the racing spirit, and with it they stimulate the native to look upon his boat as something more than a mere vehicle. Thus sailing as a sport makes its way among the toilers of the sea, and the fishing craft learns to jockey for position at the start and to fly kites. All the way down the Atlantic coast one finds the sport of sailing and flourishing yacht clubs. The cruising yachts of various ports find their way along the coast line, and some of them creep through the sheltered waters of the various sounds. The government a few years ago sent a torpedo boat through the tortuous channels of Albemarle and Pamlico sounds, solely for the purpose of demonstrating their usefulness. While these waters have long been ploughed by light-draught vessels of the types familiar to the eastern coast, they now not infrequently carry on their kindly bosoms the larger and deeper sea-going craft from distant ports. And so you may follow the sportsman of the water all the way round into Tampa Bay, where you will be welcomed by the members of a lively little yacht club, and will find at anchor as pretty a “ mosquito ” fleet as you would in Larchmont Harbor.

On the west coast of the United States sailing as a sport is almost wholly confined to San Francisco, for the simple reason that the requirements of a yachting country are to be found only there. Outside cruising is little practiced for reasons already given. Winds are heavy, seas rough, harbors scarce. Almost singular in western sailing annals stands the cruise of the Casco, schooner yacht, ninety-four feet long, which went down into the South Seas. It was a memorable cruise, a never-to-be-forgotten schooner, for one of the passengers was Robert Louis Stevenson. When the San Francisco yachtsman does venture outside the Golden Gate, it is for a run down to Monterey. Owing to the prevalent winds, it is literally a run down and a beat back. Usually the owner of the yacht leaves the windward “ thrash ” to his sailing master and goes home by train. If he stays on his yacht, he has much patience or no engagements. In the summer the sailor’s worst enemy, fog, is frequently found outside, and consequently most of the sailing is done inside the Bay. Here, indeed, is a magnificent body of water. The Bay proper is 290 square miles in extent, and with all its branches it reaches the size of 480 square miles. Hundreds of miles of river and creek open into this splendid inland sea and offer irresistible allurements to the sailor of the light-draught vessel. Chiefly because the masters of this Bay issue out of these creeks and rivers the deep-keel yacht is scarce in San Francisco waters. The typical craft is a centreboard, fore-andaft rigged yacht, of wide beam and short spars. The yawl rig is very popular, and balloon canvas is rare.

Of course there are reasons for these peculiarities. When it blows, it blows a fresh breeze, and it comes on quickly. It is more comfortable to have a yacht with a small rig than to be continually reefing. Owing to the regularity with which the wind rises in the afternoon, when the sailor men wish to reach their home ports, balloon canvas is seldom carried, because at the time when it would be most desired it would be superfluous. The favor of the yawl rig is due to the ease and celerity with which it admits of the shortening of sail. Yachting in San Francisco Bay is all done in the summer season, for the excellent reason that in the winter there are no winds and a good deal too much rain. In the summer, however, there is enough sailing to delight the eye of the most enthusiastic lover of the sport, and the waters north and south and east and west are ploughed by a great fleet of high-sided, short - bodied, and low-rigged craft which get their stability chiefly from their wide, squat hulls, and which, though not especially fast, are safe, weatherly, and comfortable.

There was a time when the fresh water sailor was not taken into account, but that time has passed. The Great Lakes are, as I have already said, not encouraging to the sport of pleasure sailing, yet it is not absent from them. One of the greatest drawbacks to the pastime is the want of places to visit. When a man goes out sailing he likes to run into some inviting place to dine or eat a light luncheon. Such resorts are rare on the Great Lakes. When you go out to sail, you sail and you go home again. But the racing spirit again comes to the front, and incites the amateur of the helm and sheet to drive his craft over the blue waters of our inland seas. The history of the international races between American and Canadian yachts on the lakes is yet young, but it is inspiring. These races have done much to evolve sound and swift types of sailing craft for lake sailing, and they will do a great deal more in the future. On Ontario, for instance, there has been for years a racing circuit, which embraces Big Sodus Bay, Oswego, Sackett’s Harbor, Kingston, Belleville, Cobourg, Port Hope, and Toronto. The fleet cruises around this circuit, sailing races at each port, and the sailors gain a large amount of valuable experience.

The lakes are squally waters, and the yachts and sailors are both fashioned to suit their needs. The trading schooners, for example, all have short lower masts and long topmasts, so that by clewing up topsails they are immediately put under snug canvas and made fit for any ordinary squall. So one finds that the pleasure yachts are mostly able-bodied craft, with ample freeboard and low rigs. They are just the sort of sailing boats to contend with fresh winds and choppy seas. Plenty of modern designs are to be found on the Great Lakes now, and the eastern designers send many of the products of their boards to fight for the supremacy of the inland seas. The working seamen of the lakes are splendid sailors, and the amateurs are a handy, hardy lot, who compare very favorably with the best Corinthians of the salt water clubs.

Even the smaller lakes of the Northwest have their sailor men and their racing craft. The twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul can turn you out some of the liveliest handlers of the good old “sand-bagger” to be found anywhere outside of Larchmont. Minneapolis people sail on Minnetonka Lake, while the St. Paul yachtsman finds his sea on White Bear Lake. But the sand-bagger with outriggers is rapidly going out of fashion, if, indeed, it has not already quite gone; and now one finds in these waters half-raters, one-raters, and the omnipresent catboat.

This cursory glance at the sport of sailing as practiced in the United States should suffice to demonstrate at least one thing, namely, that it is chiefly in the hands of amateurs, most of whom are dwellers in cities and towns. The rural population does little sailing for pleasure. From it, however, comes the great body of professional seamen, who teach the amateurs all they know. The nautical spirit of the country is fairly divided between the two classes ; for, if the city yachtsman races from Sandy Hook to Daunt’s Rock or defends the America’s Cup, he has the aid of the best professional talent in the land ; and when the American flag is to be carried to the uttermost ends of the earth, it is the professional seaman who takes the helm, who cons the ship, and who shapes the course. The traditions of the American merchant marine, except in the matter of the treatment of men by officers, are all glorious, and they go far toward inspiring the amateur with courage to adventure upon the sea. If to the professional belongs the desire to master the ocean for utilitarian purposes, the amateur seeks to master it for the sheer joy of the game.

Out of the endeavors of the two classes have grown the American ship and the American yacht. The former now shows a diminished glory, but her past is imperishable. The records of the Dreadnaught, the Flying Cloud, the Comet, and the Sovereign of the Seas are graven in letters of gold on the pages of sea annals. The achievements of American skill in yacht building and handling are known to all the world. For a time the nautical spirit seemed not to penetrate deeper than the skin of the land. It lay along the coasts. But with the advent of the specially designed defenders of the America’s Cup, beginning with the Puritan in 1885, there came a revival of nautical enthusiasm, and a spread of it into the interior. Doubtless this had not a little influence in the passage of certain appropriation bills by Congress looking toward the beginnings of our new navy. In the War of 1812 the American frigate was the terror of the seas, and the American seaman the monarch of the deep. The spirit which made that seaman and that frigate living actualities has returned, and it has given us our new navy, with its unsurpassed ships and its unequaled personnel.

The nurture of that spirit in its broadest relations to the national life begins with the boat sailor, who learns to feel the thrill of conquest of the elements even when steering his little catboat across some landlocked bay. His act, his thought, his emotion are the seedlings from which grow the splendid plant. Yet in nine cases out of ten he but follows in the wake of the large yacht, and strives to imitate the yachtsman of the club. We owe a big debt to our leading yacht clubs. They are the propagators of the true nautical spirit among the lovers of sport. Their membership is a very small percentage of the myriad of sailors they give to the country.

W. J. Henderson.