Feb. io, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
181 
Ticks from the Ship’s Clock. 
The annual banquet of Maryland Motor Boat 
Club was held Feb. 7. Many important matters 
were discussed and arranged. The long dis¬ 
tance race became an assured fact under direc¬ 
tion of the following committee: James C. 
Callis (chairman), Commodore J. Cookman 
Boyd, President Lee S. Meyer, Robert Lever¬ 
ing, William F. Turner, Frederick T. Dorton 
and Dr. Robert W. Price. The date set for the 
event is June 29. 
The annual meeting of Hugenot Y. C., of 
New Rochelle, will be held Feb. 12 at Hotel 
Astor. The annual dinner will be held Feb. 17. 
The Nominating Committee submits the fol¬ 
lowing ticket: Commodore, G. W. Kease; Vice- 
Commodore, T. I. Coe; Rear-Commodore, H. 
M. Williams; Secretary, H. M. Myrick; Treas¬ 
urer. G. C. Allen; Trustees—E. A. Sanford and 
E. W. King. 
Lawley has completed ten of one-design, 17- 
foot class boats for members of Eastern Y. C. 
Seven others are well under way. 
Swasey, Raymond & Page have orders for a 
20-foot hydroplane for the same owners as are 
having built the 40-foot hydroplane at Lawley’s. 
The small boat will be of the monoplane type 
and will have 200-horsepower engines of a 
French make. The same firm is designing two 
i2S-foot by 20-foot freighters, which will have a 
power plant of 500-horsepower, and six 50-foot 
boats, which will have 50-horsepower each. 
Mavourneen, the Class P boat famous in 
Massachusetts Bay a couple of years ago, when 
owned by George Lee and the boat that carried 
ort the honors on the Great Lakes last season 
under the command of her new owner, E. M. 
Mills, of the Chicago Y. C., will be used as a 
trial boat in the races to select the defender of 
the new Yacht Racing Union of the Great Lakes 
trophy. 
New Rochelle Y. C. 
They ate, drank and were merry, and to-day 
(the day after) they are alive, although some of 
the salts are in the throes of convalescence, 
while others are in that period of uncertainty 
when the proposition of Patrick Henry, now a 
by-word among suffragettes, means one and the 
same thing—release from a throat like Sahara 
and a head so sensitive that the dropping of a 
pin on a brussels carpet sounds like a crowbar 
falling from the roof of the Hotel Manhattan 
on a cobbled street. It was a merry gathering 
of twenty fathoms of yachtsmen, was the ban¬ 
quet following the annual election of officers of 
the New Rochelle Y. C. on Feb. 3, at the Hotel 
Manhattan. Everybody who was anybody in 
New Rochelle yachtdom, was there, including 
the genial Mayor, F. H. Waldorf, of New 
Rochelle, and Alderman Harry Scott. The 
service was so good as to come under the head 
of civil service, but when it came to the elec¬ 
tion of Commodore, there was no competition, 
as Commodore E. C. Myrick had served so well 
that no one wanted to try to fill his oilers. 
Official yacht club “banquet” measurer was 
strictly in the competitive class, and scores took 
the examination, which was not conducted by 
rule of thumb but rather by rule of about 
“three fingers.” The position was not filled 
permanently—some of the applicants were, how¬ 
ever. 
The financial statement showed the club to be 
in excellent circumstances, showing expenditures 
aggregating $2,000 for betterments to club prop¬ 
erty and the retirement of bonds, after which 
there is a cash balance on hand of $3,195. The 
statement also showed net assets aggregating 
$13,423, and increase of about $1,000 over the 
previous annual statement. 
Officers elected were: Commodore, E. C. 
Myrick; Vice-Commodore, W. S. Creevey; 
Rear-Commodore, J. A. Mahlstedt; Secretary, 
C. A. Marsland; Treasurer, H. M. Lloyd; Meas¬ 
urer, R. M. Haddock; Trustees—H. H. Moul¬ 
ton, W. L. Van de Wide and G. A. Fisher; Re¬ 
gatta Committee—G. P. Granbery, A. E. El- 
dridge and H. L. Stone; Law Committee—J. F. 
Lambden and R. C. Ten Eyck; Art Committee— 
H. Doscher and W. J. H, Ehler; Entertain¬ 
ment Committee—H. A. Bliven and E. R. Leay- 
craft; Nominating Committee—E. B. Wright, 
W. King, Jr., and H. S. Hart. 
Commodore Myrick thanked the Board of 
Trustees and the members generally for their 
loyal support, with particular commendation for 
the fine efforts of the House Committee. Ex- 
Commodore F. H. Waldorf, who is now Mayor 
of the city of New Rochelle, announced that he 
had interviewed Mr. C. Oliver Iselin with the 
result that Mr. Iselin had graciously and gen¬ 
erously agreed to sell to the club Harrison 
Island, which the club now occupies under lease. 
Harrison Island is conservatively valued at from 
$40,000 to $50,000, and Mr. Iselin, who is a mem¬ 
ber of the club, in offering it to the club at 
$20,000, payable on easy terms, is virtually pre¬ 
senting the club with $20,000 cash. There is 
no doubt that Mr. Iselin’s offer will be accepted 
within the next three months, and the New 
Rochelle Y. C. will then own its home and will 
thus be firmly established as one of the most 
active, progressive, popular and successful in 
the Eastern States. John F. Lambden made a 
brief speech urging the purchase and pointing 
out the generosity of Mr. Iselin. Mr. Warren 
Sheppard presented the club with a beautiful 
painting of Echo Bay, which is the club’s 
anchorage. 
The First Steam Yacht. 
A FEW days ago, a prominent merchant of 
New Orleans wrote to the Secretary of War, 
asking that he be granted the privilege of tak¬ 
ing the first steam yacht through the Panama 
Canal. 
This request of the merchant yachtsman 
brings to mind the fact that William H. Aspin- 
wall, of New York, who built the Panama Rail¬ 
road in 1850, and after whom the City of Aspin- 
wall (now Colon) at the Atlantic entrance of 
the Panama Canal was named, was the first man 
in America to own and operate a steam yacht, 
and it came about somewhat as follows: 
One day, some sixty years ago, William H. 
Aspinwall, then President of the Pacific Mail 
Steamship Company, was seated in his office, 
when a card was handed to him from a French¬ 
man who wished to see him on “imperative” 
business. The Frenchman was shown into the 
office of the president of the steamship com¬ 
pany, and proved to be an inventor with a new 
kind of propelling-wheel, which the French in¬ 
ventor thought would prove to be the greatest 
thing in the universe, and his “imperative” busi¬ 
ness was to sell it to President Aspinwall at 
once and for cash down. As a rule, Mr. Aspin¬ 
wall didn’t take very much stock in inventors. 
He had met many of them and lost both time 
and money on their inventions, but he rather 
liked the idea of this propelling-wheel and de¬ 
termined to give it a tryout, so he made a bar¬ 
gain with the inventor and forthwith made a 
boat to hold the new fangled wheel, a single 
paddle wheel in the center of the boat, which 
was thus a “center-wheel” boat instead of a 
“centerboard.” When the Frenchman saw this 
boat with his wheel in it launched, and, as he 
thought, ready to steam away, he was for about 
several hours wild with joy, then he was wilder 
yet with chagrin and rage, for the center wheel 
was a failure. Mr. Aspinwall was just a trifle 
angry with himself for having been “made the 
goat,” but he was a philosopher, as well as a 
rich man, and made the most possible use of the 
failure by converting the little center-wheel boat 
into a side-wheeler, which, as she was only sixty 
feet long, was too small tO' be called a steam¬ 
boat, and must, therefore, be considered as a 
steam yacht—the first steam yacht which ever 
graced the waters of New York Bay or any 
other waters of America. 
It vras a steam yacht, properly speaking, not 
only from the point of size, but of use, for 
having no use for it, Mr. Aspinwall employed 
it solely to cruise about on pleasure trips and 
finally got into the habit of sailing in her be¬ 
tween New York city and his country home on 
Staten Island, being thus the first American to 
have his own private yacht, such as it was, on 
the waters of America—a common practice to¬ 
day with the wealthy of America and other 
countries. This first steam yacht was called the 
Fire Fly, though she was not much of a flyer, 
her best pace being less than nine miles an hour. 
When the war of the Rebellion broke out, this 
Fire .Fly was sold by Mr. Aspinwall to Uncle 
Sam, and figured in various engagements in the 
Great Civil War. Mr. Aspinwall, though forced 
to come into possession of the first steam yacht, 
can scarcely be said to have been a steam yachts¬ 
man, _ but to his son, John Aspinwall, steam 
yachting must ever be indebted for his personal 
skill, labor and contribution. John Aspinwall 
was a studious youth, and became a clergyman, 
but he was also a great believer in muscular 
Christianity and outdoor sports and made a 
great study of steam yachting. John Aspinwall 
built his first steam yacht from plans drawn by 
himself, when he was only seventeen years old. 
It was fourteen feet long, and was propelled by 
an engine of ten alcohol lamp power, and as 
the senior Aspinwall was wont to say, “the 
spirits for the lamps and ‘other’ purposes were 
taken from a demijohn in his winecellar,” for 
John’s yacht capsized in the Kill von Kull and 
all hands had to swim ashore. Since that time 
a great many demijohns of alcohol have been 
consumed on board steam yachts and some of it 
for motive power. John built several small 
.yachts, each a slight improvement over its 
predecessor, but it was not until later years that 
he, then the Rev. John, built what might be 
called a flyer. She was the Julia and was 40 feet 
over all, side-wheeler and very round bottomed. 
On her first trip she was struck by a large sail¬ 
ing ship in Idell Gate and went down in short 
order. Nothing daunted, however, the young 
parson built another yacht which he called the 
Julia II. Manlike, the parson liked the second 
Julia better than the first, completely forgetting 
unfortunate namesake and predecessor. Then 
came the steam yacht called Surprise, longer 
than Julia II., which was the first yacht that 
ever had a regular “pilot house” of her own. 
This, at the time, was regarded as quite a novel 
and swell arrangement. Then Runaway, 80 feet 
long, which was the first flush-deck steam yacht 
ever seen in New York Harbor, whose speed 
was 12 miles an hour. He next built Arrow, 
which, at the time, some forty years ago, was 
the fastest steam yacht in the vicinity of New 
York, making nearly 15 miles an hour, and thus 
steam yachting spread on—the Rev. John Aspin¬ 
wall meanwhile spreading his experience with it. 
After the Aspinwalls had started steam yacht¬ 
ing, Jacob Lorillard took it up and materially 
aided the art of yacht construction by having 
several very fine steam yachts built for himself. 
And so it has gone on till the present day, with 
its magnificent floating palaces, and it might be 
a fitting tribute to the man who made Panama 
possible by the railroad and gave so much to 
steam yachting, to allow the merchant of New 
Orleans to take the first steam yacht through 
the Panama Canal. 
