PROLOGUE.
The anchor heaves, the ship
swings free,
The sails swell full. To sea, to sea!
--Thos. Lovell Beddoes.
OUR Summer vacations "home," to the west coast of
Scotland, where the ancestral families had summer
cottages at Rothsay, on Bute, and at Millport, on the
Cumbrae, gave us our first taste of sailing.
Recollections of boating there and of the little stone
cottage at Millport where the millstream empties into the
bay; of my grandfather, enthusiastic fisherman, sitting
by the fire in his highbacked settee-like chair after the
happy parties came home from "the" fishing in the long
summer twilights; of a beat up the Kyles of Bute and an
enormous lunch of ham and eggs at Tinabruach; of a
morning's fishing off the Little Cumbrae with scones and
milk afterwards at the farm near the lighthouse; are
treasures of memory.
There are few places in the world where sailing is
more enjoyable and varied than on the Firth of Clyde.
Over there were sown the seeds of the vice of sailing
that blossomed forth later in our summers in the village
of Stony Creek, near New Haven, Connecticut, where we
spent six long summer vacations sailing and fishing to
our hearts' content. Here we owned our first boats: the
Jumping Jennie, apple of our eyes, but leaky and
crank, yet I did not then hesitate, as I would now, to go
out seven miles in her to the reefs off Faulkner's Island
to catch seabass and flounders. My Uncle Alec, of blessed
memory, taught me to use an eight-foot boat rod, light
line, and wooden Nottingham reel, and the sport was
increased one hundred per cent over that of the natives'
heavy hand line method.
This uncle, who had been a dandy in his youth, but on
account of his lungs had had to go to sea; first, as
supercargo and then as third officer, had seen a great
deal of India and the East; so, when I knew him, the
dandy blood was gone and only the vagabond wanderer sort
flowed instead. He was an insatiable fisherman, and when
he visited us we were out every day, often from before
daybreak until late at night; sometimes we would come
back from Faulkner's with as many as sixty good seabass
for two rods. Can that be done today? When not fishing we
sailed, and then he would play his violin or gossip by
the hour about the sea, and ships, and the East, and
Africa, for he had gone in one of the ships of the
British Abyssinian expedition of 1867 to Annesley Bay,
where they cooled their wine in icy slush made with a
canister, chemicals, and a roll of canvas. His soul was
steeped in the indescribable charm of the sea and in the
mystery of the East: I better appreciated it all when I
went there in 1887.
The passion for sailing increased. Irex, an
eighteen-foot clinker-built boat of beautiful model and a
witch in light airs, followed Jumping Jennie; but, alas,
she could not be kept afloat after the second year I had
her. So, in 1884, I got Iona, built by Niles
Tooker, of Essex, on the Connecticut River. She was a
big, ablebodied carvel-built boat, less than a year old,
eighteen feet waterline and six feet beam. A boilerplate
centerboard and a suit of sails with sprit topsail,
shipped from Philadelphia, made Baldwin, the boat builder
at Branford, open his eyes.
I almost lost myself; and grew quite conceited
the day Genesta, going westward in the Sound in
the race around Long Island, lost a man. There was a
dirty southwester blowing when I came, singlehanded, out
of Branford Creek, six miles to the westward, the Iona
having been left there over night. After getting outside
I would have put back if possible, but I had gone too far
to leeward before discretion came to me, so there was
nothing for it but to run. It was so thick that, without
a compass, I made an error and almost ran into the Nigger
Heads, a series of boulder-like rocks just awash, on
which the sea was heavily breaking. I luffed and got
knocked down and half swamped, but the little boat
managed to claw clear, and I made the western entrance to
the Thimbles standing in water almost to my knees. No
other craft was under sail that day, and, as I ran in,
one hand on tiller and other bailing, I passed close to
the Viola, sloop, NYYC, at her mooring pitching
bowsprit under, her owner, John Wayland, Esq., and his
crew cheered me. The conceit became stronger the next
day, when I heard from our neighbor General Frank
Pargoud, that Wayland had said, "that young Barrie is a
devil for sailing."
Stony Creek is the shore village at the Thimble
Islands, the prettiest group of islands, outside of
Maine, on the Atlantic Coast. In those days, when yachts
ran in smaller sizes, plenty used to come in there, and
the old Palinurus, coast survey service, laid
there all one summer. Among the yachts, the largest was
the old cup defender Madeline, whose owner, Mr.
Dickerson, used to stop there Spring and Fall. The
General spent many evenings on her; once he took me along
with him. This gave me my first hours on a big yacht, and
it may well be imagined that I enjoyed myself. It was a
cool night, but there was a canvas windscreen across the
deck at the mainmast, and as we sat in the moonlight, the
family and I listened while Mr. Dickerson sang,
alternately, comic yachting songs and tales of the
Madeline. One detail I remember: on the famous race she
put her jib-boom end, nineteen feet above the water, so
far under as to almost wash away a couple of hands who
were furling her jib topsail. As we came away the General
hung alongside and lauded her, and claimed they could
never build her like again, and exclaimed: "le moule est
cassé! le moule est cassé!" and almost
wept.
The Madeline was very fine, but she did not thrill me
as did a little double-ended Block Island boat,
Periwinkle, that a couple of New Yorkers brought
in one Fall. As usual, when a stranger came into the
islands, I rowed out and about, and, to my boyish joy,
was invited on board by one of the happy owners. The
little cabin was enchanting; there were shelves along the
sides filled with books, pipes, fishing gear, mysterious
jam jars, etc., etc., and a shippy yet homelike aroma
filled the place. I gloated over it all as long as
politeness would permit, and finally tore myself away
resolved to have something like it.
Iona had a little cuddy forward that I tried to make
look like the cabin of the Periwinkle, and my ambition
was to go a cruise and sleep over night in her, but this
was forbidden; so, as I grew more expert, I increased my
day cruising radius by starting at early hours and coming
home late. By this means we were able to make some pretty
good runs; once going across the Sound to Horton's Point
and back in twelve hours; a look at the chart will show
that this is sixty land miles. We were not always so
lucky as to speed, but we never had an accident. Later we
were allowed to stay away over night, but we soon tired
of it, as the cuddy was too small to stretch out in, and
even summer nights are cold just before daybreak, and
anchor chain and sails make a miserable bed. We managed
to get into nooks in the Sound from New Haven to
Saybrook, and in those days, when the shore was not so
built up, found lots of out-of-the-way places. We kept
the Iona for several years, constantly making changes in
her, until finally, after bringing her on a car to
Claymont on the Delaware, and pottering for several
seasons about the river and creeks from the Lazaretto to
New Castle, she ended as a bulb-fin-keel with rounded
torpedo deck and a big balance lug. We had lots of fun in
the old boat, but finally, when the Corinthian Yacht Club
was formed in 1892, she became too small for us, and I
looked about for something bigger.
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