THIS is a great day for Lake Champlain,” said a rustic who had been discussing with his fellow the difference between a cat-boat and a sloop. “I may not know the difference, but there’s plenty about here who do—and I say, ‘Hurrah for old Champlain! anyhow.’”
The rustic, like many others who are right, spoke better than he knew. It was a mild morning in September last. Rain had fallen all through the neighborhood, and more was to come according to that never failing test—the low-hung clouds which still covered the eastern slopes of the Adirondacks and refused to lift even when an occasional ray of sunshine gave them every chance. From the opposite shore of New York the early morning hours were watched with intense interest. The alternate layers of mist and mountain showed also stretches of lake, and the larger objects in Burlington appeared through the rifts—the whole making nature’s mise en scène for what was to come.
And, indeed, it was a great day. The Lake Champlain Yacht Club was organized May 16, 1887, with a constitution, by-laws and sailing regulations patterned closely after those of the New York Yacht Club. Its rules for sailing were no stricter than its rules for uniforms. In a word, at the time of the regatta everything that experience and enterprise could suggest had been in preparation for sixteen months under the guidance of such gentlemen as W. Boerum Wetmore, commodore; W. A. Crombie, vice-commodore; J. Gregory Smith, president; W. S. Webb, first vice-president; Henry Ballard, second vice-president; Joseph Auld, secretary, and Horatio Hickok, treasurer. An executive committee of thirty included not only the above but also such names as H. J. Brookes, H. Le Grand Cannon, H. H. Noble, Jacob G. Sanders, J. A. Averill, A. C. Tuttle, W. H. H. Murray and Alvaro Adsit—all of them well-known sailors upon fresh water; while the total membership of two hundred took in navigators as far to the southward as Albany and New York. In fact, it will be noticed that many of the names are those of New Yorkers who spend the summer months along the shores of Champlain, and one enthusiastic member, Robert W. Rogers, comes all the way from New Orleans. Among the members who have not, according to popular belief, made any aquatic record is G. F. Edmunds, the U. S. Senator from the State of Vermont.
Thus all that hard work, good discipline and natty uniforms could do had been done. The day was a great one because it would bring what had been attempted to a practical test. The lake is about one hundred miles long with a breadth varying from half a mile at the southern end to twenty miles (including islands) at the northern end, so that the greatest stretch of clear water from east to west is ten miles, and the longest unobstructed sweep lengthwise is forty miles. There is no perceptible current, although the drainage is northward into the valley of the St. Lawrence. The prevailing winds are from the south, with occasional winds from the north and, near the shores, frequent puffs that come down through the notches in the Green Mountains on one side and the Adirondack Mountains on the other. Given, then, such a lake not so steady for sailing purposes as Long Island Sound, the chain of the Great Lakes, or even the inland lakes of Chautauqua, Seneca and Cayuga with their low-crowned banks, and yet less treacherous than smaller mountain lakes, like George and Memphremagog—to find the craft that will sail it best with speed and safety. This was the problem that had been discussed and solved and solved over again for months, and which had now come to the point where all theories must show their value or cease to be entertained.
Yachting on Lake Champlain was a plant of slow growth. It was hardly an exotic, because some kind of craft had been known there for 250 years. The xebecs of the early French gave way to the sloops and schooners of the English; and the latter, in the decline of commerce, have been followed by the “long-lakers,” and the Canadian square-sail galleys of to-day. Sail boats of uncertain age, and still more uncertain origin, have flitted about the lake for generations; but nothing was ever evolved from them that met the requirements of the modern yacht. It was reserved for the Rev. W. H. H. Murray to bring thither some of the ideas that he had gathered among the oystermen along the coast of Connecticut and to adapt them to a fresh-water lake. Everyone credits Mr. Murray, better known as “Adirondack,” with calling attention to the broad expanse of lake opposite Burlington that had not been used as it might be by sails and hulls of modern cut; and everybody agrees that the present yacht club is the outcome of his earlier efforts, although, in many respects, it has outgrown what he developed and contended for at the first. So Mr. Murray shall have the credit in these pages.
THE “GYPSIE,”
PHELPS & SON, BURLINGTON, VT.
THE “VIRGINIA”—PETER THUST,
ST. JOHNS, CANADA.
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LARGER IMAGE
It had occurred to Mr. Murray that the type of oyster-boat known on Long Island Sound as the “sharpie,” would fill all the conditions on Champlain noted above. The sharpie was the successor of the old V-shaped punts, or “flat-iron” scows, that brought the earlier oysters to market. When the demand for more bivalves led to the transplanting of Southern oysters to Long Island Sound, the larger boat, the sharpie, was produced, as the one which would combine cheapness, light draught, broad bottom, ready handling with the sail or oar, sea-worthiness, and fair sailing qualities.