4B6 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
tt>EC, 2, 1^90. 
protest left them no option but to render tlie decision as 
above, they very carefully considered further how far 
the fact of touching her centerboard could be held to have 
militated against Constance ha.d she started. Constance 
did not go fast aground; she merely touched her center- 
board, as shown in evidence, about two minutes before the 
iinal gun; the incident was absolutely trivial; notwith- 
standing unnecessary delay in getting Constance under 
way again, she was sailing when fully a minute and a 
half had still to run; and the incident would not, in the 
committee's opinion, have affected her chances had slie 
chosen to start. 
This latter report was accompanied hy a diagram of the " 
various courses laid out on the last day. 
The letter of the SeaM'anhaka race committee was read 
to the meeting.! Concerning the material points of the 
dispute, Mr. Duggan made the following statement : 
There are a number of our members here who were 
not present at the last race, and-who would perhaps be in- 
terested in a fuller account of the events of the day. 
When we left the club house at Dorv^al there was a 
good working breeze, in which the Constance and Glen- 
cairn Avould have been very evenly matched, and the 
same condition prevailed at the time Dama started to 
lay the buoys, biit as she was returning the wind hauled 
to the south and noticeably died away to a breeze of about 
the same strength as that in which Glencairn had won 
the previous Tuesday and Wednesday, and which was 
undeniably in her favor. The wind had shifted about two 
'points off the course, so that the buoy, instead of being 
dead to windward, could be made in a long and a short 
leg, one leg, perhaps, twice as long as the other, and the 
run home would have been with the spinaker guyed well ^ 
forward, or, perhaps, with a balloon jib. 
The practical effect of leaving the course as it was would 
have been equivalent to laying out a course dead to wind- 
ward, but slightly shorter, the run home being a very 
broad reach instead of dead before it, conditions distinctly 
favoraljle to Constance, as her previous performance had 
not shown her better to windward in light weather, and 
in Tuesday's she was not greatly inferior to Glencairn 
when on a broad reach, but much slower when dead be- 
fore the wind. Mr. Crane, however, made protest, claim- 
ing that windward work was Constance's best point, a 
plea undoubtedly correct for fresh breezes, but having 
no weight in the weather then prevailing. 
It may be noted that later in the day the wind liauled 
again, s'o that on the third leg it was exactly in its 
old position, making the first course dead to windward. 
On the course as finally laid, Glencairn sailed the last 
three legs with tacking to windward. 
The second attempt to lay the course shifted It about a 
point, making it for all practical purposes dead to wind- 
ward, although not actually so. The cause for protest 
was thus even weaker than the first. 
The committee then for the third time laid a new 
course, but unfortunately the weather buoy was close to 
the sand shoal at the south end. The Seawanhaka repre- 
sentative protested the course on the ground that there 
was not sufficient water to maneuver round the buoy, 
which in itself was reasonable, but he then refused to 
have the buoy set a few hundred yards to the north, or 
to shorten the course to two miles, six times around, 
although after the race had started they did offer, if Glen- 
cairn were recalled to sail it over a mile course, making 
it apparent that the Objection to the shortened course 
was to gain time. 
It may be noted that the third attempt to set the buoy 
was made hy the Constance's tender, Sirius, and that as 
she returned to the committee boat, having failed to place 
it, she stopped almost entirely in the center of the lake, 
finally reaching the committee boat very close to 3 o'clock. 
After putting the member of the committee on board the 
boat, she at once steamed off with the committee's log, so 
that they were for a time powerless to relay the course. 
When the Monaco was dispatched to lay the course for 
the fourth time, Sirius raced her out, having by that time 
apparently fully recovered her steam, which she had lost 
shortly before on the run in. The delays had been so 
considerable that it was apparently only by the utmost 
exertion that the committee succeeded in making the first 
signal at five minutes to three, and the Monaco had barely 
started when the preparatory signal was given. 
Referring to the Constance accident, she was, at the 
time it occurred, under the Glencairn's lee bow, both being 
on the starboard tack, and if no accident had occurred 
Glencairn was practically assured of the advantage of the 
start. This, however, was of small moment, as she_ was 
sailing noticeably faster in the wind then prevailing, 
which was even lighter than it had been when the earlier 
protests were made. Constance was obsei-ved to touch 
her board slightly, keep on sailing without making any 
effort to alter her course for perhaps 2oft., and again strike 
it so that it stopped her altogether. Two of her crew, 
following a natural impulse, at once raised it slightly, but 
dropped it again, and all four stood up protesting that 
they were aground. Glencairn at that time went about, 
exactly two minutes ten seconds before the gun, and about 
3oft. from Constance, Constance's crew afterward raised 
her board, when she sailed away. The time when this 
was done was not actually noted, but it was noted that 
she was sailing one minute forty seconds before the start, 
and she would even then have had time to reach the start- 
ing line but a few seconds, if any, late. It was not 
realized for some time on board the Glencairn that Con- 
stance did not intend to start, or until Glencairn was well 
on her way and Constance sailing up to the committee 
boat. The matter was then fully discussed as to whether 
we should go back and give up the race, but it was 
imanimously felt that nothing would induce Constance's 
crew to race in the light wind_ then prevailing, and that 
they had seizea on a most trivial excuse to postpone the 
race beyond 3 o'clock, after which hour she would have 
had the right to demand a further postponement until 
next day, and that had we returned we would simply have 
consummated a result that they had strenuously worked 
for since the wind began to fall. 
The commentators on the deed of gift have ignored the 
fact that during the first race on the preceding Friday, 
while the boats were in the race, and working to wind- 
Avard, Glencairn's board scraped for some distance' over 
the sand shoal, and that when, it was raised she had so 
far lost way as to refuse to come about, causing her to 
Inse perhaps a minute by the accident. Again, in the pre- 
ceding JNlonday's race,, m working to windward off Pointe 
Claire, Glencairn struck very heavily, driving her center- 
board ahnost home iif (he bt^x, but as ihc breeze was 
strong she did not actually stop. Both of these races were 
idst by Glencairn, but no protest was entered, nor did 
Constance offer to give up the race. 
I might also say that wlien racing at Oyster Bay, in 
1896, Glencairn I. struck her board several times off 
Lloyd's Neck. Indeed, the incident of grounding when 
off the course is one for which the crew must always 
be held responsible. 
The excuse has been made for Constance that she 
was racing in waters strange to hcf crew, and that the 
shoal was unknown to them. As a matter of fact, her 
skipper anS most of her creAV spent several weeks on Lake 
St. Louis prior to the races of 1807 ^rid 1898, and they 
must have known the general character of the water. 
At all events the shoal in question was known to them, as 
they had touched it about half an hour before while the 
third course was being laid. After striking she came in 
the wind, apparently with the object of locating the shoal, 
and ordinary prudence must have prompted them to note 
its bearings. ' 
The subject was discussed at length and it was finally 
decided to ignore the letter of the Seawanhaka race com- 
mittee and to lay before the Seawanhaka Corinthian Y._ C. 
that part of the report of the Royal St. Lawrence sailing 
committee dealing with the final race. The following 
resolution was adopted: 
"Resolved, That the secretary be requested to forvv^ard 
a copy of that part of the report of the sailing committee 
referring to the international races for the Seawanhaka 
cup for 1899 to the, proper officer of the Seawanhaka 
Club, informing him that a general meeting of this club 
has unanimously confirmed and adopted the same." 
The question of the annual .ball was then touched upon, 
and it was decided to leave the matter in the hands of the 
executive committee, to be held some time in January. 
The meeting then adjourned. 
Mahogany. 
There are two woods which above all others are 
especially adapted for a great variety of uses about a 
vessel. For planking, waterways, bulwarks, rails, sky- 
lights and companions, bitts, gangway ladders and other 
deck work, and for interior joiner work and furniture, 
there is nothing the world over that can compare with 
mahogany and teak. While the latter has certain ad- 
vantages of its own and is the more generally used in 
England and many foreign countries, the former is the 
favorite in America, both for ship and yacht work. Teak 
wood, or "Indian oak," is marked by the possession of a 
certain oil, which not only prevents it from_ checking and 
warping when exposed to the weather, as in deck work, 
but is a preservation of iron and steel when the wood is in 
contact with these metals, which makes it admirably 
adapted for the sheathing of the outer plating of steel 
and iron vessels, as well as for the covering of the metal 
deckhouses, bulwarks, etc. It has a rich color of its own 
(brown as compared to the red of mahogany), and it is a 
handsome wood for both deck and interior work. Up to 
1880 it was practically unknown in American yacht build- 
ing, but about that time it was imported from England 
for use in the early cutters. Bedouin, Wenonah and 
Oriva. Some of the teak thus used was procured from 
the yards of ships from the East Indies, Oregon or yel- 
low pine spars being substituted for the teak ones while 
the vessels were in the port of New York, 
There is an African teak, from Sierra Leone, but it is 
very hard and brittle, inferior to the India teak, from 
Burmah (India), and Java. The India teak is very ex- 
tensively used in Europe for ship building and other uses. 
It is now used in this country on the large steam yachts in 
preference to mahogany, being imported direct from Bur- 
mah, or indirectly from England, but it is still expensive 
and difiicult to obtain, the demand being limited. _ 
Mahogany has been a common wood in America for 
two hundred years, the favorite material for furniture, 
from its appearance and lasting qualities. Being easily 
obtained from Central America and the West Indies, even 
in the days of sailing ships, it has been universally^ used 
in ship and yacht building for the deck and interior joiner 
work ; but it has been little used for planking, the native 
woods, oak, pine and cedar, being so much cheaper. At 
the present time it is. the favorite wood for the outer 
planking of all fine yachts. Though really inferior to teak 
for this purpose) it is much more easily obtained. "We 
are indebted to the Boston Globe for the following in- 
teresting particulars of the mahogany trade of to-day: 
Looking at grandmother's old mahogany bureau, _ that 
weighs 20olbs. and has lumber enough in it to build a 
whole parlor set of to-day, one is apt to think of the days 
when it was manufactured as the mahogany era — a time 
gone beyond recall. 
While this thought is in a way justified, there is some 
fallacy in it, for inquiry into the mahogany trade shows 
that there never was a time in the world's history when 
more mahogany was used than now. It is being used 
differently, that is all, than in the days when grand- 
mother's bureau left the cabinetmaker's .shop. 
Boston can claim, in the firm of George D. Emery, of 
Chelsea, the largest niahogany importing house in the 
world. In this firm's yards, at the end of Chelsea bridge, 
there are millions of feet of the finest mahogany in stock 
at all times. 
Coming from the Nicaragua coast by steamer, in a type 
of craft specially designed and built for the trade,_ the 
lumber reaches Chelsea in the natural log. Here it is 
sawed into timber and hoards, and is transshiped to all 
parts of the country, and to foreign countries as well. 
The firm of George D. Emery— consisting of George D, 
and Herbert C. Emery— holds a concession from the 
Government of Nicaragua entitling it to the exclusive 
right to cut mahogany along the Atlantic coast of that 
country. It has himdreds of workmen in the forest along 
the rivers working on the lumber, and getting it to ^tide- 
water, where it may be taken aboard ship for Bb'ston. 
Most of the logs are floated some 150 miles "down) jyer to 
the coast when the water is high. 
The steamer Manchurian, a mammoth Engl|sh-built 
craft, makes regular round trips for the firm to their base 
of supply in Nicaragua, and brings back fabulous cargoes 
of logs. On her last trip she arrived on May 23, 1899, 
with no less than i,io<j,oooft. of mahogany in her capa- 
cious holds and on deck. 
Representatives of' the firm are constantly in the 
Nicaraguan forests looking after the selection and getting 
out of lumber. The natives in the country, Carib and 
Mosquito Indians and Nicaraguans, look to the great 
American firm as their patron and employer. Hundreds 
of colored laborers from the Bahama Islands are in the 
employ of the firm, both at river driving and cutting and 
handling timber. The Manchurian calls at Inagua nearly 
every trip to taJce out laborers from that and other islands. 
She is under charter for two years to the firm. A small 
steamer sent out from Boston is employed on Great River 
to tow rafts of logs and carry men and supplies up and 
down the stream. The men are boarded by the firm in 
camps. They earn about $30 a. month. 
When the Manchurian discharges cargo at Emery's 
wharf, at the end of Chelsea bridge, travelers across the 
bridge and tlie Chelsea ferry are treated to an interesting 
sight. The great steamer is so broad of beam as to be 
noticeable to the veriest landlubber. Her cargo brings 
her deep in the water, and the piles of great reddish logs 
on her deck indicate that she has a cargo, of outlandish 
character. 
Woods from the tropics have an attraction fbr the aver- 
age mind. There is a suggested story of travel and ad- 
venture under the Southern cross, in the great ship and 
her rich cargo. A dreamer may make a delightful voyage 
to balmy Southern shores, even while leaning on the 
bridge rail and looking at the ship and its deck load. 
But such a voyage is more pleasing in a dream than in 
reality. The crew of the Manchurian find her repeated 
trips tq the Mosquito coast on the Caribbean rather 
monotonous. The English officers on the vessel, who de- 
scribe themselves as being "under charter out here for 
two years," would prefer to be where they could see their 
families oftener. They don't see any romance in the 
coast where the green is perpetual, and is, as Daudet de- 
scribes the South Sea Islands in "Port Tarascon," "a 
greasy and rheumatic green." 
But thither the Manchurian goes once in thirty-five 
days, sometimes in ballast, at other times taking out cargo. 
She visits Great River and other points on the coast, en- 
ters and clears at the port of Bluefields, and then starts 
off for Chelsea, making about nine miles an hour. Ar- 
riving here she is tied up alongside a piling dock, that 
incloses a considerable expanse of water, and the work of 
discharging the cargo begins. It is easy, compared with 
what the getting aboard of these great logs, each weigh- 
ing tons, must have been when they were hoisted from 
the rafts in Nicaraguan waters.^ 
The process of discharging is most simple. The logs 
are hoisted to the rail, one end is pointed over the side, 
and a loose strap is placed under the_ other end. A 
donkey engine hoists the end of the log into the air, and 
presently the great trunk of a mountain giant slips "but 
of the strap and goes splashing overboard into the mill 
pond. 
From the pond the logs are hoisted out at the sawmill, 
and here they are cut into lumber of various sizes to suit 
the demands of trade. 
Mahogany is to the American what the teak wood is to 
the Chinese. Everybody wants it. Parlor cars 
are finished in it; private houses are paneled and 
wainscoted with it; hotels, offices, drug stores and bars 
are finished in it. All furniture dealers carry heayy lines 
of goods made from it. Yachts are fitted with it in their 
cabins — it is everywhere, this wood of luxury — until the 
American public has what would seem to be a surfeit of it. 
Where i,oooft. of the woods were imported twenty<-five 
years ago i,ooo,oooft. are imported now. Where it was 
put to one use then it is put to a dozen now; A single 
parlor car requires 3,000ft. of mahogany in its finish, and 
3,oooft. would make a good many bureaus, even as heavy 
as grandmother's. 
In the old days the mahogany trade was not done on the 
regular timetable scale that it is noWi Sailing ships 
brought the precious wood from the tropics, subject to 
wind and wave, and a regular supply could not be de- 
pended on. 
To-day the world's markets are supplied through the 
agency of steam transportation from the bases where the 
concessionaires have the cutting and handling of the 
great trees down to a science. 
So large is the business done in mahogany at the present 
time that more than one family in Boston burns mahogany 
kindling wood. This would seem to be a profligate way 
of keeping up a fire, but it is not. At the Emery m.ill there 
are so many slabs from the logs cut up that they are con- 
verted into kindling wood and the wood is sold to a com- 
pany which vends it. The slab of mahogany, as of almost 
any tree, being largely sap, the lumber in it is not worth 
saving. And so it comes about that Boston is supplied 
Vvith a considerable amount of mahogany kindling wood. 
The wood is a little more expensive than ordinary 
kindling wood, but it is so solid that it burns beautifully 
and makes a great deal of heat for the amount con- 
sumed. 
While there is more mahogany used now than ever 
before, the character of the wood has changed. Formerly 
most of the world's mahogany came from Cuba and San 
Domingo, on the Island of Hayti. Before the ten years' 
war in Cuba, 1868-78, a tremendous export business in 
mahogany was done in the island. All the forests near 
water courses and roads were stripped of the largest 
trees, and the best mahogany the world ever saw was 
given to the market. 
After the beginning of the ten years' war Cuba began 
to fall off in its supply qf mahogany. The trees were no 
longer so easily available as before. The insurgents held 
the interior, the Spanish soldiery stuck to the towns, and 
in a short time a great business was killed. After the ten 
years' war the cutting of mahogany in Cuba was not re- 
sumed to any great extent, and what little was done 
came to end with the last insurrection. 
Cuba still has immense amounts of mahogany in its 
mountain forests, but prospectors who went to the island 
last winter, immediately after Spain's relinquishment of 
sovereignty, fofind that it would cost more to get -the 
timber to the seaboard, in the present condition fi- -the 
island, than the profit on it in open market. Owing to 
the great weight of mahogany logs, they are best handled 
