ilPEOIIIOIS 



!, 



o EVERY BOY comcs oncc, at least, the urge to 

 build a boat. Some may be content with the hulk of a flotsam raft. 

 Another's imagination may require more worthy craft. 



The feel of a stanch bottom beneath one's feet — a hand on the 

 rudder bar — and the world looks different somehow. Adventure 

 beckons, as always, just beyond the bow. 



It was the urge to navigate and explore that prompted Captain 

 Hancock in his youth to launch a sturdy flat-bottomed rowboat 

 which he used to paddle about pools of the old rancho. One could 

 have tossed a stone the length of the largest pool, and it would 

 have been easy to walk around it in much less time than it would 

 take to navigate its breadth. 



Yet the boat served well as a medium of exploration which 

 could not have been accomplished in any other way. With it, one 

 could voyage over the depth of the ancient pools where lay the 

 world's finest collection of prehistoric fossil remains, and examine 

 the bubbling, tarry depths which even today provide a phenome- 

 non of interest to all the world. 



By prodigious effort, the young explorer could maneuver his 

 vessel over the tricky ooze. Mastery of the humble craft and intent 

 study of the pools stirred in this young man's blood the ambition 

 to visit unknown shores and pursue fleeting horizons Ln search of 

 knowledge — factors which always have lured those of pioneer- 

 ing spirit. 



The cruiser Velero III had its beginning in that broad-beamed 

 square-ended boat which still rests intact beside the weathered 

 old ranch house in Hancock Park where Captain Hancock spent 

 his youth. Its planking soaked in crude oil and smeared with tarry 

 brea through long years of usage on the pools, the craft may last 

 another half century or more, for it seems immune to weathering. 

 It remains a symbol of youthful ambition. 



In those early days when Los Angeles Harbor was mostly mud 

 flats and Santa Catalina was an aloof, barren island, the young 

 pioneer was able to expand his horizons and learned to navigate 

 his own craft beyond the sight of land. 



Not content to do things half way, the young man went to sea 



and worked on ships, studying navigation in the most intensive 



35 and practical way until he had earned and received his master's 



