Dec. 28, igot.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
8lS 
are too well known to need fepetitlon, but it was a splen- 
did victory for Barr, and to him alone is due the credit of 
defending the Cup. Shamrock showed wonderful speed, 
and had it not been that Barr was in charge of Columbia 
and for errors made on Shamrock, the English boat would 
have had at least one race to her credit. It was the first 
time that the Cup had really been in danger. 
The races on the Great Lakes for the Canada's cup 
brought out a great deal of interest, and it served to show 
how strong a foothold j^achting now has in thqt part of 
the country. The challenger was designed by Sibbeck, 
of Cowes, but was built in Canada on the shores of Lake 
Ontario. Seven boats were built to enter the races for 
the selection of a defender. Cadillac was selected, a boat 
designed and built by Hanley. of Quincy Point, Mass., 
who also designed and built Genesee, the successful chal- 
lenger of two years before. The " two boats were of 
widely different t3'pes. Invader being a keel boat, while 
Cadillac was a centerboard. The result of the races was 
due in a great measure to the skipper of Invader, Mr. 
^milius Jarvis, who is perhaps the cleverest amateur in 
Canada, and the cup is now back in Toronto. 
The crushing defeat of Grey Friar by Senneville in the 
matches for the Seawanhaka cup showed how far in the 
rear the English are in the designing of the extreme 
scow type of boat in the small classes. Mr. Duggan, the 
designer of Senneville, a designer and boat sailer of wide 
experience in small craft, had the English boat beaten at 
any and every stage of the game. 
For some time past it has been realized that there was 
no possibility for a challenge for the America's Cup for 
1902. Now that the races for the Canada's cup have been 
postponed until 1903, there is only one international race 
in view for next season— the races for the Seawanhaka 
cup. Last summer the trial races for the selection of a 
defender and the final races for the America's Cup 
monopolized the attention of yachtsmen in general, and in 
consequence the sn^aller boats were ignored. There is Uttle 
prospect that any of the 90ft. cutters will Ije put in com- 
mission next season. The racing between Ailsa. Navahoe 
and Vigilant was so satisfactorj' that there is a prospect of 
all these boats being out. Now that Quisetta has been 
sold, it is not definitely known whether she will be with- 
drawn from the ranks of the 75ft. schooner class. Muriel 
and Elmina will perhaps have to fight it out alone. The 
English cutters Isolde, E'elin. Senta and Hester will all be 
in commission, and good racing will be seen in this class, 
as well as in the new 60-rating one-design boats that are 
now being built from designs made by Messrs. Gardner & 
Cox. As yet no new orders have been placed for boats in 
the 51ft. class. Humma and Altair will be alone in this 
class, unless Huguenot finds a new owner. Last year this 
boat was not hung right, and it would be interesting if 
agme keen racing man would buy her, put her overboard 
early in the season and experiment a little, just to see if 
there is anything in the scow tj^pe of boat in the larger 
classes. In the 43ft. class Dorwina and Effort will have 
a new competitor with which to try conclusions. From 
the 36ft. foot class down to the smaller boats few new 
orders have been placed; perhaps the new measurement 
rule has frightened prospective builders. 
The largest steam yachts that Have ever beeti built 
either in England or America have been for Americans. 
When Lysistrata was built for Mr. James Gordon Ben- 
nett it was generally thought that a limit in size had been 
reached, but an order recentlj^ placed with Mr. George 
L. Watson by Mr. John R. Drexel proves that this was 
not the case. Mr. Watson has already designed two steam 
yachts for Mr. Drexel, namely. Margarita II. and Mar- 
garita III. The new yacht will be the largest and most 
sumptuous private vessel afloat. She will be 300ft. long 
on the waterline, 40ft. beam, with a tonnage of 2,500. 
At the Herreshoff shops at Bristol, R. I., four of the 
Bttzzard's Bay one-design 30-footers are finished and 
have been removed, and are now on the beach at Walker's 
Cove. The lead keel has been bolted on to the fifth boat. 
The sixth one is planked, and the seventh is in frame. 
The steam yacht building for Mr. Frederick Grinnell is 
all planked. She has long ends and low freeboard, and 
is expected to develop considerable speed. 
Cape Horn. 
BY PAUL EVE STEVENSON. AUTHOR OF A DEEP-WATER VOYAGE 
AND BY WAY OF CAPE HORN. 
With the exception of a night passed within the Polar 
Circle, hardly any experience is so nerve-harassing as 
the westerly passage of Cape Horn in a sailing ship 
during the winter season. It is difficult to lay this fact 
to any one cause, for it is a combination of many per- 
verse circumstances that actually unnerves the average 
person, be he shipmaster, seaman or mere passenger. 
Perhaps the principal reasons for this can be assigned to 
the absence of sunlight and to the intolerable humidity. 
At the s6th parallel of south latitude, the sun on June 
21 has not a greater altitude than about iS degrees; so 
that, even with the skies clear, the percentage of suu 
light during the twenty-four hours is exceedingly small. 
But the heavens in the vicinity of the Horn in winter are 
practically always obscured by thick clouds, which, 
durii K the advance of the snow squalls which roar up 
from the Antarctic, assume such a degree of obscurity 
as to turn midday to twilight. For weeks at a time the 
mariner must work his ship through these turbulent 
S'^ns without aid from the celestial bodies, estimating 
I'fe set of the powerful currents, which vary greatly with 
the violence and duration of the storms, and on a con- 
tmual nervous tension lest during the night of nineteen 
hours he fall foul of the Diego Rameirez, a collection 
of crags which rises out of deep water fifty-six miles 
south-southwest of Horn Island. The excess of mois- 
ture in the atmosphere throughout the southern re- 
gions is the other great factor in the case, proving a 
powerful ally to the darkness in producing a peculiar 
debilitj'^ which attacks the strongest constitutions. In- 
deed, so depressing is the result of the humidity and 
gloom south of the Antarctic Circle, that the effect upon 
the heart's action is most sinister, and death sometimes 
ensues from cardiac affection alone, vide "The Voyage of 
the Belgica." This depression attacks every one on board 
a Cape Horner; and while of course not so severe as is 
experienced on a South Polar voyage, is such as to de- 
plete the most able-bodied men, and continues until the 
shin reaches sunshine far to the northward of the cele- 
brated cape. 
Despite all of its vicissitudes, however, a Cape Horn 
voyage to the westward is pregnant with every factor 
that attracts the true lover of deeo water, of which this 
world, though, contains but few examples. The very 
name of the promontory fills the heart with awe, and 
the memory unwittingly turns back to the ancient voy- 
agers and to their extraordinary courage and endurance; 
to Magellan quelling the mutiny at Port St. Julian; to 
Anson's terrible voyage of storm and pestilence, and the 
struggles and privations of the immortal Cook. These 
are the men 
"Who never see the ocean 
But tliat they feel its hand 
Clutch like a siren at the heart, 
To drag it from the land." 
There are yet some of the old breed left, a handful of 
men, so to speak, who still work their sturdy vessels 
around the stormy Cape, battered by , the Southern 
Ocean's tetnpests; and there are also yet some in whom 
lies so ardent a fondness for blue water that they will- 
ingly abandon the continents for months at a time in 
order, as passengers, to witness nature's workings from 
the deck of a sailing ship. To such, no moment of a 
long passage is wearisome; every day contains some new 
joy or experience. First the northeast trades fair and 
fresh; then the majesty of the equatorial calms; the 
entrance into the Southern Hemisphere; the introduc- 
tion to the Southern Cross; the fascination of the low 
latitudes. The sea lover all this time, though, has had 
before his mind the conquest of the Horn, with all its 
lore and tradition; and when the Magellan clouds be- 
gin to rise high in the sky, and the end of the southeast 
trades comes in a tempest blast from the River Plate, 
he experiences a sorf of fierce satisfaction at the ap- 
proach to the direful Horn. Down the bleak Pata- 
gonian coast the ship flies before the northerly winds 
that follow the southeast trades. The ship changes her 
garments from the dull gray clothes of the ancient fine- 
weather suit, to the glistening white of strong, brand- 
new canvas, to resist the icy gusts of the south; and by 
the time the grim Falklands are abeam, the skysail yards 
have been sent down and secured on top of the fore- 
castle house, relieving the ship of a ton's weight 160 feet 
from the fulcrum. 
All unexpectedly one day the sweet northerly wind 
lets go, and for forty-eight hours the ship frequently 
lies quietly upon the surface of the ocean, the sails 
flap against the spars, and the skipper longs for his 
skysails. This is the moment, too, when the passenger 
asks the captain if this is what he calls Cape Horn 
weather, at which the crusty old fellow growJs in his 
chest and mutters, and points to the long tube of mer- 
cury which has settled half an inch in half an hour. 
Then the nor'westers raise their song of wrath, and be- 
fore long the dim coast of Tierra del Fuego heaves in 
sight, and for a couple of days the ship lies off and on 
under the lee of the land, for it is blowing a heavy sou' 
wester outside, the skipper says, and there would be no 
use in going out there to sag to leeward like a can 
buoy. So the big vessel head-reaches slowly along under 
the lower topsails in smooth water, though the puffs 
scream off the hills of Staten Sand, and the windward 
view is a square mile of lashing, snarling water. No 
one ever forgets the time he passes in the shadow of the 
mountains which constitute this iron-bound shore. How 
the gorges yawn inland, where the sea fumes against 
the ledges! How awful are the precipices which lean 
far out over the black boulders and fangs of rock, 
where the tide rips and whirlpools rage! And man 
holds his breath as the thick snow squalls, black and ap- 
palling, whelped far up in the mountains, come whoop- 
ing down the slopes and burst over the ship in a suffo- 
cating Storm. Pleasant it is to jump below out of one 
of these devil's gusts into the cheery glow of the cabin 
stove, where the skipper sits braced in a chair, looming 
dim in pipe smoke, absorbed in a newspaper, >aged two 
months. The old man is taking it quietly now in the 
comparatively smooth water; only too well he knows 
what stretches before him. 
Slowly the gale eases up, and the ship reaches across 
past the Le Maire Strait, that short but violent pass into 
the open Avater to the southw^ard; and at length comes 
abreast of Cape St. John, and hauls up sharp on the 
wind, her bow pointing straight to the Antarctic. In 
another two hours the wild peaks of Staten Land sink 
into the mist; darkness seems to crawl up the heavens, 
and the voyagers float in solitude upon the ocean. Out- 
side of the archipelago, exposed to the full strength 
of the swell, they first recognize the might of the Ant- 
arctic Drift. It is not always blowing hard in this re- 
gion, but that wonderful procession of huge rollers 
never ceases its majestic march toward the east, for no 
obstacle presents itself to retard the eternal phalanx. 
All .around the- world swing these surges; now for a few 
hours in a glassy calm, now heaped up in those furious 
peaks, impelled by the power of a week-long westerly 
After lying to behind the land until one of these "bus- 
ters" exhausts itself, a ship on the open southern seas 
often encounters light winds for a couple of days or 
more, while just as the swell exhibits signs of weakness, 
the glass falls again with the alarming swiftness of the 
Southern Ocean regions, while lightning trembles on 
the crest of a storm cloud in the south. Woe to the 
skipper who, heedless of the electric warning, fails to 
shorten sail! It is an uncanny visitation, this shimmer 
of fire that borders the snow squall, and with the old 
Cape Horner it is a case of all hands aloft to get the 
canvas off her. Some gifted greenhorns scorn the 
weird caution and turn up in Port Stanley in a fortnight 
with a few tattered rags flapping from the stumps of their 
lower masts. But the prudent ship master has his 
vessel all snugged down ready to grapple the sou'- 
wester. 
Higher, toward the zenith, sweeps the squall cloud, the 
boom of the wind fills the air, and the ocean whitens to 
froth. Deep ;do\yn to leeward she heels, in spite of the 
bare yards, till the water flows over the lee rail dark 
and smooth. Further yet, in defiance of the four thou- 
sand tons of cargo battened below, down lower and 
U,wer she cowers, while the sea rises to the hatch 
coamings, the lower yard arms seem to plunge vertically 
into the froth, and the weather side looms high over- 
head, an actual shelter for the moment fi-orn the clots 
of spume plucked from the ocean and dashed along with 
terrible energy. "Hard up your wheel! Weather croj- 
jick brace!" yells the skipper in the mate's ear, knowing 
that he'll lose what little sail he has on her if he doesn't 
get her before it. Grandly she pays off and heads away 
to the northward with wind and sea astern, till the first 
squall has whirled away, mocking, to leeward; then 
slowly she wears round, and finally comes up head to on 
the starboard tack with the wind at west-southwest, 
while the captain strips the canvas down to a lower main- 
topsail to steady her a little, with the peak of the 
spanker to hold her head up. Nothing is left im- 
guardcd that wisdom and caution can discern. Ahead of 
them are the heavy winter gales and darkness and 
stinging cold, and many a tight ship has passed over the 
Divide in the death strife. Inflexibly, though, these 
stern men turn their faces to the south, and with the re- 
lieving tackle on the tiller, stand by for the month of 
the tempests that will be theirs. All hands note the dark 
haze in the southwest, and then the first real breath of 
the storm booms steadilj- tip, following the lull in the 
wake of the squall. 
The next morning it is blowing what sailors call a 
heavy gale. The waters of the earth afford no other 
such spectacle. Foul weather the North Atlantic cer- 
tainly does breed — hurricanes of shocking fury; but in 
the Southern Ocean the mariner battles with a sea so 
enormous that, like the Himalayas, the mind can scarce 
grasp its magnitude. The Westerlies seem to have no 
beginning, and no end, for no land disputes their un- 
broken sovereignty; nothing impedes them. Splendidly 
the seas soar aloft in white and gleaming ridges, with 
vast deeps between, where all is sheltered for an instant 
from the wrack of the storm. Down into these calm 
hollows drops the ship, her single strip of canvas mo- 
mentarily becalmed; then high the following sea flings 
her, up where the hurricane beats upon her and stuns 
her with the shock of giant waters. Over to leeward 
she falls as she nears the awful crest, presenting for a 
moment to the gale a bold rampart of drenched copper, 
while the crash of breaking water overpowers the rush 
of the wind and hanks of ropy spume whirl through the 
empty shrouds. Follows the terrific weather, heave down 
the windward flank of the great roller, while the gale 
yells aloft, and the watch on deck clutch the shearpoles 
as she fills to the rail and the main deck vanishes under 
three hundred tons of furious brine, while the deck ports 
belch their torrents. Out of the frigid south rush the 
squalls, frightful and dark, blinding the hardiest sea- 
man with javelins of sleet. More frantic than ever, the 
storm roars over the South Atlantic, and more stu- 
pendous rise the seas, till they seem to swing through 
space itself, and the long plumy ridges sweep on, 
august and inscrutable. Nature's most violent energies 
seem to have burst asunder and creation to hover on 
the brink of primal confusion. 
For da.vs the ship lies hove to in this monstrous sea. 
Occasionally for a few hours, the wind lights up a trifle, 
backing into the northward; the ship comes up to a west- 
southwest course, and the skipper sets his three lower 
topsails and lets drop the foresail. Beautifully the ship 
responds to the press of the canvas and fights her way 
through the combers with two men at the wheel and the 
seas making a clean sweep over the forecastle house. 
Heeled at a terrifying slope, her lee scuppers sunk under 
two feet of solid water, the watch on deck hitddled under 
the weather poop rail, for the main deck is a hell of aw- 
ful Avater, the range fire killed by a big sea that crushed 
the weather galley door, the skipper is driving her, till 
she opens in the bends; and the carpenter, having by 
superhuman effort reached the pumps, cries out that 
three feet are slapping around below. Never mind, 
though. The ship is looking up to her course and doing 
fully three knots in the hour. Anyway the donkey en- 
gine can keep her free enough. All hands smile grimly 
when the w'ord is whispered that she is making good 
a west by south course. The skipper leaves the deck 
for a pot of coffee that bubbles on the cabin stove, and 
the lank faces of the seamen relax their hopeless stare 
as a slight thinning out of the muck overhead sheds a 
little true daylight across the barren scene. Visions of 
lower latitudes swim before them, and they growl to 
one another that, come next Sunday, they'll be to the 
northward of Cape Pillar anyway. Poor wretches! Pal- 
lid with anjemia and ill-nourishment, their wrists and 
necks raw with salt-water boils, chattering in soaked 
slop clothes, turning into foul, steeping bunks after 
four or eight hours in a piercing gale, eating grub that 
a gutter-fed dog would reject, these Heroes of the Sail 
find a moment or two in which to swap their homely 
jokes. "Who'd sell a farm and go to sea?" shouts a 
young Nova Scotian, jabbing with a knife an ugly sea 
boil on his arm and paling for a second with the pain. 
"Every damned bloody one of us," yells a pair of legs 
parceled and served with gunnysacks, to keep out the 
frost, hanging over an upper bunk. "Got a fair wind 
anyhow," says a hoary old bear. "Douse that lamp," 
as a faint show of dawn filters into the noisome den, 
"and we'll get a wink in this 'ere spell o' fine weather." 
In another minute the ten men below" have forgotten 
their dreary fate, and have slept perhaps half an hour, 
when the mate thunders at the forecastle door, "All 
hands shorten sail; Git that foresail in afore we lose 
it!" And out into the terrific southerly "buster" the 
men stumble, up to their knees in the icy water, while 
hail beats into their faces as they man the buntlines 
with a feeble and puny show of strength. Thus for 
weeks they wage their pigmy warfare against Nature's 
might, till a favoring gale out of the southeast pushes 
them up into the South Pacific, until the sun rends the 
cloudy pall and beams once more upon the ocean's 
dark blue floor, and a sound of great joy pervades the 
ship, now that the rigors of the southern winter are at 
last astern, and the old windjammer points her jibboom 
for the tropic's balm. 
Mr. Prescott Hall Butler, a member of the New York 
Y, C, died on Dec. 16 at the age of fifty-five years. 
