FOREST AND STREAM. 
i0C£. 28, 185©. 
Mmmt 
Fixtures. 
BENCH SHOWS. 
Nov. 15-18.— Philadelphia, Pa.— The Philadelphia Dog Show As- 
sociation's first annual bench show. Marcel A. Viti, Sec'y. 
Nov, 29-Dec 1. — New York.- American Pet Dog Club s show. 
S. C. Hodge, Supt. 
FIELD TRIALS. 
Oct. 23.— National Beagle Club's tenth annual trials. G. Miffiin 
Wharton, Sec'y. 
Oct. 25,— Hampton, Conn.— Connecticut field trials. John E. 
Bassett, Sec'y, New Haven. 
Oct. 31.— Greene Co., Pa.— The Monongahela Valley Game and 
Fish Protective Association's fifth annual field trial. A. C. Peter- 
son Sec'y. 
Oct. 30.— Oxford, Mass.— New England Beagle Club's trials. A. 
D. Fiske, Sec'y. 
Nov. 7.— Washington C. H., C— Ohio Field Trial Qub's trials. 
C E. Baughn, Sec'y. 
Nov. 8-9.— Lakeview, Mich.— Michigan Field Trial* Association's 
second annual trials. E. Rice, Sec'y. 
Nov. 12.— Bicknell Ind.— Independent Field Trial Club's first 
annual trials. George D. Maxfield, Sec'y. 
Nov. 13.— Egg Harbor, N. J.— New York State Field Ttrial As- 
sociation's inaugural trials. F. F. Rick, Sec'y- 
Nov. 14.— Cbatham, Unt.— International Field ' ?rial Club's tenth 
annual trials. W. B. Wells, Hon. Sec'y. 
Nov. 14-17.— Carmichaels, Pa.— Central Beagle Club's fourth an- 
nual trials. T. W. Simpson, Sec'y-. 
Nov. 17.— Newton, N. C— Eastern Field Tnal Club's twenty- 
first annual trials. Simon C. Bradley, Sec'y. 
Nov. 21.— Lawrenceville, ill.- Illinois Field Trial Association's 
inaugural trials. O. W. Ferguson, Sec'y. 
Nov. 28. — Paris, Mo. — ^Missouri Field Trial Association's third 
annual trials. L. S. Eddms, Sec'y. 
Dec. 8.— Newton, N. C— Continental Field Trial Club's trials. 
Theo. Sturges. Sec'y. 
1900. 
Jan. 22.— West Point, Miss.— United States Field TriasJ Qub's 
annual trials. W. B. Stafford, Sec'jr. 
Feb. 5.— Greenville, Ala.— Alabama Field Trial Club's fourth an- 
nual trials. T. H. Spencer, Sec'y. 
for him and his friends. After the high hopes of success 
which he undoubtedly held, the disappointment of three 
straight races for Columbia must have been most bitter, 
but he has shown no .signs of it in either word or action. 
National Beagle Club's Trials. 
Hempstead, L. T., N, Y., Oct. 23. — The first day's trials 
of the National Beagle Club's field trials were held here 
to-day. The first event run was the Futurity Stake, in 
which two dogs started: Dr. Bohannon's Wise and G. 
D. Tillej''s Ichabod. After half an hour's work the 
judges decided in favor of Ichabod. Charles R. Steven- 
son's Dorey's Woodman and Geo. R. Post Jr.'s Somerset 
were the first pair put down in the open class A, which 
had fourteen entries, Dorey's Woodman was awarded 
the heat. In the second heat Geo. F. Reed's Prompter 
won over Geo. A. Clark's Murray. The next pair were 
to have been Windholm Kennel's Robino II. and J,ohn 
Caswell's Ranter, but no game could be found, and this 
heat, with the four others scheduled for to-day, had to 
be called off. 
Points and Flushes. 
Mr. H. Rieman Duval, of East Islip, L. I., informs us 
that, in the entries of the Eastern Field Trials Club's All- 
Aged Stake, in our columns last week the sire of his dogs 
as given was erroneous. It should have been Rip Rap in- 
stead of Rip Saw. 
Monk of Zion (A. K. C. S. B. 31,110), whose portrait 
we publish this week, is a son of the famous Monk of 
Furness, and is a handsome dog, as also was his sire. 
He is owned by Mr. F. I. Richards, of Providence, R. I., 
who purchased him recently from Dr. W. L. Gardiner, of 
.San Antonio, Tex. Monk has had a thorough field ex- 
perience and is prized highly for his merits. 
Mr. C, T. Brownell, of New Bedford, Mass., re- 
ports that he has sold twenty-one of his Gordon setters 
through recent advertisements in Forest and Stream. He 
has been an advertiser in this journal for many years, 
and his success is evidence of what good stock and good 
advertising will accomplish. 
Eastern Field Trials Entries. 
East Islip, Oct. 20. — Editor Forest and Stream: Mr. 
Bradley's letter in your issue of the 21st inst. gives Rip 
Saw as the sire of my entries for the All-Age. Is not 
this your error? 
I very distinctly gave Rip Rap as the sire of my dogs. 
I have never bred to Rip Saw, which perhaps is my mis- 
fortune, but it is my desire to have the entry correct. 
H. Rieman Duval. 
[Secretary Bradley gave Rip Rap as the sire. We re- 
gret the error.] 
Immebiately after the last race the daily papers made 
arrangements for a new challenge on the part of a wealthy 
soap boiler, the head of a large English company, but 
the gentleman thus selected in spite of himself for yacht- 
ing honors promptly declined. It seems now that Sir 
'I'homas Lipton has no intention of challenging before 
. looi ; it is, however, very probable that Columbia, if not 
Defender as well, will visit the Mediterranean next spring 
and British waters later in the season. 
I n spite of his very costly .experience in yachting, it can 
hardly be claimed that Sir Thomas Lipton is as .yet a 
yachtsman, his connection with the sport as a club mem- 
ber and yacht owner dating back hardly a year. At the. 
sanie time he has shown himself far superior to many 
ok! racing men in the rare accomplishment of losing 
gracefully. However ignorant he may be of the technical 
side and the usages of yacht racing, it is evident that he 
possesses the spirit of a true sportsman in accepting his 
defeat calmly and graciously, with a frank admission of 
the superiority of his adversaries and therr vessel. He 
has ffot, when beaten, quarreled with the weather or the 
course, trumped up imaginary protests, or endeavored 
ra any way to excuse his defeat. The fact that he has had 
no good cause for complaint is of no consequence, as a bad 
loser cm always find causes which are sufficient, at leas! 
With some few individual exceptions, the daily press 
has, as a whole, made but a sorry .showing in the late 
races. The races themselves have largely been treated as 
secondary, the one great point of each journal being to 
score a "scoop" of some kind over its rivals, to get out 
niorc extras in a given time or to collect a larger crowd 
in front of its bulletin board. In the disreputable strife of 
big type and "scare heads" the yellow, pink, green and 
characteristically colored journals have scolded, slan- 
dered and abused those connected with the two yachts, 
especially the owner and the skipper of the American 
representative. With some skillful and honest work in 
the reporting of the races and the interviewing of the 
principals, there has been much that was incorrect or un- 
true, and more that was unreliable; so the result is only 
bewildering to one who reads more than one paper. The 
pictorial reporting of the races has been marked by some 
very good work in the quick reproduction of photographs 
of important incidents on the day after they occurred; 
and by some very bad work in the w^ay of fake drawing.s, 
showing the yachts in positions which never existed. 
The "expert" business, both in technical description 
and criticism, has been done to death by writers who have 
generalized on the slender basis of a few alleged facts, 
these being in themselves insufiicient, if not purely imag- 
inary. The hysterical hue and cry over the poor handling 
of Columbia an,d the certainty of the loss of the Cup shows 
the true value of this expert criticism. 
Now that Shamrock has been defeated and it is neces- 
sary to "make the punishment fit the crime" in showing 
how it all happened, the blame is laid to what is called 
her "bulldog" model. We are familiar with various 
feline varieties of yachts, but the canine term is unknown 
to us ; we can only conjecture that it is used in some con- 
nection with the alleged heavy and blunt lines of Sham- 
rock. Without attempting with the very limited data at 
hand to assign the reason of Shamrock's defeat, it seems 
to us that the tnodel or the form of the hull had very little 
to do with it. So far as the mere speed through the water 
is concerned, the "bulldog" model in both light and heavy 
w eather moved at so nearly the speed of Columbia as to 
indicate that there is much less difference than commonly 
imagined in the relative fineness of form and easy lines. 
Down the Avind there was little difference, and on the 
wind, in smooth or rough water, Shamrock footed faster 
than Columbia. The one fatal defect of the challenger 
was in pointing; she could never be made to look where 
Columbia was going. 
Tliis is less a matter of model or form than of balance ; 
of the proper disposition of the fin, the centers of effort, 
lateral resistance and buoyancy, and the placing of the 
mast and mechanical details of the rig. So far as good 
windward work is dependent on the actual form of the 
lines, all of the older Fife yachts are remarkable for the 
Avay in which this form helps out a very moderate amount 
of lateral plane; when Minerva defeated the American 
40-footers, she did it with less draft and far less fiat keel 
and deadwoods through the perfect form of her bow. 
If the form of .Shamrock were so radically wrong as 
some consider it to be, it is hardly likelj' that she would 
show the speed on end and through the water which she 
has under different conditions. It is idle to attempt to 
discuss the merits and defects of a vessel of which so 
little is really known; but it seems probable from the 
failure of Shamrock to windward that her most serious 
fault is in the balancing. It is also possible that much of 
this may be due to mechanical defects in her rig through 
which her beautiful sails were hindered from doing good 
work. In the last race both boom and gaff buckled so as 
to spoil the mainsail, seriously handicapping the vessel as 
a whole. There is no question that the engineering 
problem, the great one in these huge boats, has been bet- 
ter worked out in Columbia than in Shamrock; and that 
the greatest difference in the two lies in the spars and the 
gear that holds them. 
As it happened, the special agreement as to breakdowns 
was called into service in the second race, and it possibly 
did some good in a way in stopping a lot of outside dis- 
cussion. At the same time we have been unable to see the 
necessity for any such agreement. Yacht racing is gov- 
erned almost as much by its unwritten as by its written 
laws, and one of the first of the former, based on an ac- 
cepted principle in all sport, is that, each competitor shall 
zhid& by his own accidents and that no competitor is under 
obligations to withdraw because of an accident to an- 
other. This has been the everyday practice in yacht rac- 
ing from the birth of the sport, and to yachtsmen it is as 
binding as any rule printed in the book. There are oc- 
casional cases where a man rightly withdraws because of a 
mishap to his opponent ; but in general, the rule that each 
stands by his own accidents is accepted without question. 
Had the principals in the present case been desirous of 
acting in the opposite way. either withdrawing in the 
event of an accident to the other, it would have been 
necessary to make a special agreement to that effect; but 
as the case stood, it was unnecessary and undesirable. 
Where precedent and usage are so plain as in the case in 
point, it weakens rather than strengthens them to make 
a special agreement. If the rules of yacht racing are to 
be extended to cover specifically every point on which a 
popular delusion exists, they will be complicated to such 
a degree that even experienced yachtsmen will be at a 
loss to interpret them. 
Being in no way informed at the outset as to the dimen- 
sions and the materials and methods of construction of 
Columbia and Shamrock, and mistrusting much that was 
published about the former and all the exclusive informa- 
tion about the latter, we have not ventured to predict in 
advance the winner. Even, as a matter of naval architec- 
ture alone, it might have been difficult to do so with the 
complete design of each yacht before one for inspection, 
and comparison; and it u^ould be absurd vvithout such de- 
signs or at the least an exact knowledge of dimensions 
and weights. As we have often pointed out, yacht de- 
signing is so much a mixture of naval architecture, practi- ; 
cal experience and horse sense, with subsequent good; 
handling and some chance thrown in to influence the re-'' 
suit, that predictions made on insufiicient data and a long'' 
time ahead are most likely to prove false. 'j 
Falling back on the inalienable right of hindsight, there'i 
are certain considerations which have led us to look, not ■ 
for three straight races in a series of five, but for the final 
victory of the American representative. Going back to the 
season of 1893, the two rival designers, Herreshoff andi 
Fife, were about on aA equality in practical experience in 
the go-foot class. Each had turned out many fast yachts - 
of all sizes below 50 feet; and Mr. Fife had gone higher; 
but neither had yet attempted a modern racmg go-footer. 
In that year Mr. Herreshoff turned out Navahoe and' 
Colonia, "both failures in a way, and A*igilant, a very suc- 
cessful yacht, the defender of the Cup against Valkyrie II. 
Mr. Fife made his entry in the big class with Calluna, a 
decided failure. Two years later Mr. Herreshoff, work- 
ing from the known qualities good and bad of his first 
three boats, and influenced in no small degree by his ex- 
perience with Vigilant against Britannia in British waters 
in 1894, produced Defender, for the defense of the Cup 
against Valkyrie III. Judged by her proven superiority , 
to Vigilant, the latter being in better form than in her first i 
two .seasons by virtue of important changes of ballast and | 
sail plan, Defender showed a wonderful advance in speed ; 1 
and she easily defeated Valkyrie III. At the same time 
Mr. Fife produced his second large racing cutter, Ailsa, a 
successful boat as commonly rated. While she has raced 
a great deal in British and Mediterranean waters, her 
class has not been kept up to a standard which would test 
her as Defender has been tested against Vigilant, and it is 
imijossible to say just how she would compare with them 
in her original cutter rig, she being now a yawl. Being 
built for the ordinary home racing, of composite con- 
struction, she was in no way the radical and instructive 
experiment in new metals, bronze and aluminum, that De- 
fender was. , 
When the two designers started m last wmter on the 
great work that has just culminated, Mr. Herreshoff had 
behind him Defender, a known quality, and back of her 
Vigilant. In designing Columbia he has worked directly 
froni Defender, both in model and construction, to pro- 
duce a still more perfect yacht for the .same conditions 
The dimensions were slightly increased, the outline of 
midship section and lateral plane slightly altered, and 
changes tnade in the construction, but there is no indica- 
tion that he has departed widely m any detail from the 
older boat. In desisnine Shamrock, Mr. Fife was dealing 
with an entirely new problem, the rule and the conditions 
being materially different from those under which Ailsa 
wa'^ "designed, while a new and very much lighter con- 
struction was absolutely necessary to success. The ex- 
perience of recent years in the 6s-foot linear rating class 
under the girth rule was of little value in the matter of 
dimensions and construction, however useful as far as 
form went ; and Shamrock is largely a new, original and ol 
course experimental creation. ^ • 1 -r* r , 
By the time that Columbia was ready for trial, Defendei 
was also in commission, having been rebuilt and newly 
ri<reed with a steel mast and enlarged sail plan, and 
manned by a skillful skipper and crew. The two started 
in July and were regularly raced for three months, many 
minor changes being made in each. When Shamrock was 
completed she sailed a farcical trial with Britannia, an old 
and much smaller yacht in unknown racing form, and then 
came to New York, where she has been out less than a 
dozen times under her racing rig for practice trials ot a 
wasiust possible that, with his recognized skill as a 
designer and the aid of Thorneycroft in the mechanica 
detatis of light construction, Mr. Fife had fairly outdom,^ 
Mr Herreshoff in the important matter__of carrymg more; 
ballast on a lighter hull; but taking Columbia and De- 
fender together, the chances were against such a con-: 
elusion. It is not necessary to discuss the relative skil of 
^wo designers who stand at the very head of heir profes- 
sion but the advantages, in a thorough familiarity with 
?he rule and the conditions of Cup racing, and in thei 
prev ous construction of two successful Cup def^n^rs. 
were strongly on the side ot the designer of Columbia. 
The America Cup. 
Colamfaia and Shamrock. 
On- the day when the two yachts were measured, Mon-i 
dav ' Oct. 2. New York had its first taste of winter 
wei'ther a fresh N.W. breeze sweeping over the East 
Ri -er to the discomfort of all comiected with the slow" 
and tedious work of measuring. On SaturdaJ^ Oct 21, 
M^ien Smbia was towed up from Staten Island to Newf 
Rochelle with her flags aloft in token of victory and 
Shinrock was towed from Sandy Hook to the Erie Basir 
to fit out for her homeward voyage, the wind was agai:. 
to the west of north, and with the sharp chill of winter ir 
it Between these two dates New York had been treated^ 
to all varieties of warm and calm weather, some day.- 
being bright and sunny, with a temperature almost ti. 
for July and others dreary, with a warm, dense fog such 
as is sometimes met with in June. Except for moderate 
breezes on some of the off days early in the month tht 
only windy dav was on Oct. 20, when a cool northerly 
wind of about fifteen knots gave one good race. On foui t 
different days the yachts were started over the line bu:,i 
were unable to finish, the wind being at no time strong 
enofo-h to make a satisfactory race, even with a muct 
lonpe^r time limit. On two of the sailing days there wa: 
a light but satisfactory breeze, giving a fair test of th« 
vachts in very light weather. , , , , 
' With all the drawbacks of such weather, the conte$1 
of 1899 has been the most satisfactory and conclusive evei 
sailed for the America Cup. Unlike all the earlier con 
tests prior to 1893. the conditions have been absolutelj 
fair, placing the challenger on a perfect equality with tM 
defender, both sides building under the same rule ant 
with the same Initial advantages at the start, and thi 
courses being in deep water on the open sea, w'here loca 
knowledge was of no special importance. With his yach. 
designed for well known rules and conditions, and on th 
Coi4rse several weeks before the first, race, the challenge 
