The Britishers to whip her;
Their whole yacht squadron she outsped,
And that on their own water;
Of all the lot she went ahead,
And they came nowhere arter.”
From those early days in the fifties, until the war broke out the New York Yacht Club grew strong in membership and vessels. Its cruises and its regattas became popular, the latter especially, for they served to afford a pleasant day’s amusement to people who enjoyed a holiday on the water. Many of our best known men and grand old merchant princes were devoted yachtsmen. What cruise was complete without rare old Moses Grinnell on board some one of the flyers of days gone by? When the war broke out, did not many of these same yachtsmen lend a hand in the struggle for the Union? If we mistake not, James Gordon Bennett put his vessel, the Rebecca, into commission, and did service himself on board, off the Southern coast. Hundreds of other instances might be cited to prove the patriotism, daring and pluck of “the men who went down to the sea in ships,” even though these ships were pleasure craft, and the men who sailed them simply on pleasure bent.
When “the cruel war” was over there came renewed interest in yachting. Then the challenges from the other side were received. English yachtsmen looked with longing eyes across the ocean and declared their readiness to do battle for the possession of the America’s cup. With the true spirit of sportsmen American yachtsmen met their Island brethren with equal ardor to defend the possession of the prize—the greatest yachting trophy of the world.
The races in which the Cambria, Livonia, Genesta, Galatea, Thistle, Columbia, Sappho, Puritan, Mayflower, Volunteer, etc., took part, are too well known to the readers of OUTING to require more than a mere passing notice. These contests form proud chapters in the history of the club of which Elbridge T. Gerry is commodore.
No less important pages in its history are the great ocean races, in which the Vesta, Fleetwing, Dauntless competed, the Dauntless and Cambria’s ocean race, and again, the race in midwinter between the Coronet and Dauntless, when the Atlantic was in its most angry moods. The famous schooner Sappho, owned by William P. Douglass, ex-vice-commodore of the club, was another fair skimmer of the briny deep that carried the burgee of the club with honor in any and every contest in which she was entered in home or foreign waters. And so the list might be strung out in a magnificent array of the names of those white-winged beauties of the sea that muster in the roll of Commodore Gerry’s fleet.
For the nonce, let us turn from the past and look upon the present. Let us survey the fleet of this season as they came together in the harbor of New London, on the morning of August 9. Never did the famous old rendezvous present so brilliant an aquatic spectacle. The event was ushered in with a clear, bright blue sky. As the day grew older the scene grew in activity. Fifty-three sailing yachts and twenty odd steamers responded to the sunrise gun, and sent aloft the club signal to kiss the breeze that stole out from the southwest almost as gently as summer zephyr laden with the odor of the sea. It was not the piping breeze loved so well by your true yachtsman, when close-reefed sails and housed topmasts are the order of the day. At 10.47 the preparatory gun was given from the flag-ship Electra; ten minutes later the signal gun to start. And what a busy scene presented itself! With anchors weighed and all sails set, the magnificent fleet began to move out of the harbor into the waters of the ocean, with the Puritan, true to her record, showing the way over the line, closely followed by the Grayling, Troubadour and Sea Fox. It was in this way the annual cruise began.