The race between the “Vigilant” and the “Valkyrie.”
(The “Vigilant,” Herreshoff boat, the winner.)
And in 1881 their proposal to the British government to build two vedette boats was accepted on condition they should outmatch the work of White, the naval launch builder at Cowes. No firm had ever been able to compete with White. But in the following July the two Herreshoff boats were in the Portsmouth dockyard, England, ready for trial. They were each forty-eight feet long, nine feet in beam, and five feet deep, exactly the same size as White’s. They made fifteen and one-half knots an hour, while White’s only recorded twelve and two-fifths knots. “With all their machinery coal and water in place, the Herreshoff boats were filled with water, and then twenty men were put aboard each, that human load being just so much in excess the admiralty test, and even then each had a floating capacity of three tons. The examiners pronounced enthusiastically in favor of the Herreshoff safety coil boilers as unexplodable, less liable to injury from shock, capable of raising steam more quickly, far lighter, and in all respects superior to those that had been formerly used for the purpose.” The boats were accepted, and orders given at once for two pinnaces, each thirty-three feet long. Again John Samuel White competed, but his new boats could only make seven and one-eighth knots, while the Herreshoff’s easily scored nine and one-quarter.
RACING JAY GOULD
In July, 1883, Jay Gould was highly elated over the speed of his beautiful steam yacht “Atalanta,” which had several times met and distanced Edward S. Jaffray’s wonderful “Stranger;” but, on the twentieth of that month, his happiness, as the story is told, was very suddenly dashed.
After a hard day’s work, the jaded Jay boarded the “Atalanta” and began to shake out his pin-feathers a little, figuratively speaking. But before his boat had gone far on her run to Irvington, the bold manipulator of Wall Street made out a craft on his weather-quarter that seemed to be gliding after the “Atalanta” with intent to overhaul her. He had a good start, however, and sang out to the captain to keep a sharp eye on the persistent little stranger, so unlike the “Stranger” he had vanquished.
“I wonder what it is!” he exclaimed to a friend beside him.
The friend looked long and carefully at the oncoming boat, then turned a quizzical eye on Jay, remarking:—
“In a little while we can tell.”
“Will she get that close?”