464 
[March 23, 1907. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
the stretching of the headstay. It is a very 
easy matter to throw the whole center of bal¬ 
ance of the sails out sufficient to make a former¬ 
ly easy steering craft pull hard on her helm by 
letting this stay stretch and the masthead sag 
aft. By heaving the mast forward again, many 
a hard steering craft has become docile and 
much faster. 
One of the best marine inventions gotten up 
of recent years is the trim gauge. Two spirit 
levels set so the bubble reads true when the 
yacht is floating on her designed lines. With 
that to show when the hull is trimmed level, the 
mast can be kept in perfect alignment by drop¬ 
ping a plumb bob from the masthead occasion¬ 
ally and marking where it points to. You will 
be surprised to see how it will shift when every¬ 
thing is apparently all right. 
A New 45ft. Launch. 
Mr. A. Hanson, of City Island, has turned 
out a wholesome kind of a craft for Messrs. Wm. 
Hudson and Fred Daum, of the Bronx, in the 
shape of a 45ft. double ended launch, 12ft. wide 
and of 3ft. draft. 
Her deck line is very full aft and the hull 
shows a long steady floor that should make her 
an excellent sea boat combined with the easy 
ends. 
The motive power is a 20 horsepower Lathrop 
engine concealed under her aft deck. The fly¬ 
wheel being under the companion stairs. 
A room on the right has an immense ice box 
opening into it from under the deck, while op¬ 
posite it. to port is a full length clothes locker 
and two large drawers. 
Save for this one little room the boat is all 
open with transoms either side, their two closets 
standing out about eighteen inches, and forward 
of that two more -transoms. 
Built in the form of panels over each of these 
four transoms are Pullman car bunks that swing 
down on to the transoms, making four large wide 
beds. 
A bulkhead forward has a door opening into 
a toilet room across the extreme forward end 
of the cabin. 
There is full headroom under a low cabin 
trunk house. The after deck is inclosed with a 
metal railing and has seats along the sides and 
across the stern. 
For a big wholesome, seaworthy type of yacht 
she should be a good one and the coming sea¬ 
son will be the proof of it. 
Peculiar Wrecks. 
The importance of the bobstay in relation to 
the rest of a vessel’s rigging is well illustrated 
by the two accompanying pictures of wreckage 
which have been kindly furnished us by Mr. Geo. 
H. Stetson, 68 Broad street, whose business is 
marine insurance, and in the pursuance of which 
he learns of many curious tales of the sea. 
These pictures refer to a particular instance 
where a three-masted schooner was sailing along 
as nicely as you please, when the bobstay sud¬ 
denly parted and the three masts, bowsprit and 
all, broke short off at the deck and fell aft, 
CITY ISLAND TRANSPORTATION. 
(Past, Present and Future.) 
smashing themselves and deck fittings as they 
struck. 
One odd thing about the accident was the fact 
that the mizzen, in falling, came down squarely 
on top of the rudder head and put the steering 
gear completely out of business. She was towed 
into New York just as our illustrations show 
her. 
Numbering Yachts. 
Some startling figures will be posted up over 
the boats building in the yard of Frank Wood 
if that party should follow the custom of nail¬ 
ing up a small ^ sign with the number of the 
hull upon it. These numbers show how many 
hulls the firms have turned out and is quite the 
custom now in many yards. No. 84, for in¬ 
stance, shows that that is the eighty-fourth boat 
that firm has put up. 
If he does so the last sign will read 2788. 
Think of it, 2,788 boats built by one family. 
But then, you must remember, the business 
was started way back in i860 by A. B. Wood 
who was Frank Wood’s father, who, in his day, 
built as many of those famous Hel,l Gate pilot 
yawls, as rowboats of that kind are called, as 
any one in the business. 
Such boats had to be built light and strong. 
A City Island pilot would put off in one of 
those 14 or 16ft. rowboats and catch a tow on 
a schooner bound east and would tow behind her 
half way out Tong Island Sound. There meet¬ 
ing an inbound vessel he would cast off and 
board her in all kinds of weather—calm or 
storm, smooth water or rough—it was all the 
same. 
You can see them yourself to this day towing 
behind or triced up against the schooner’s side 
clear of the water. 
This required many good points in a boat. 
Lightness, to be able to haul up on the home 
beach at the island, where a line of planks staked 
to the beach served to run the keel on, and to 
enable their being triced *up alongside; easy 
rowing, for sometimes a pilot would have to row 
clear across the _ sound. Fair sailing ability 
under the spritsail they carried, and above all 
strength to prevent the garboard from springing 
off forward. For that, when towing behind a 
steamer and pounding down on a sea, was found 
by experience to be the point where the strain 
all seemed to concentrate. 
A memento of the days when such boats were 
an important part of the business hangs now in 
Mr.. Wood’s office in the shape of a perfect 
miniature rowboat; a testimonial also to his 
handiness and skill as a boat builder when only 
fourteen years of age. 
For eleven years the business was carried on 
at a shop on South street, New York, and also 
Citv Island. 
_ The firm’s busiest years were along in the 
eighties when they turned out over one hundred 
boats in a vear. 
So if vou see a mysterious string of white 
figures on a black board or vice versa, you will 
know what they mean. 
Boston Letter. 
Just as the tide when two-thirds flood pauses, 
recedes slightly, and then resumes its uplift to 
high-water mark, so Class Q in similar fashion 
has lately seemed to lose its swelling popularity, 
to be for the moment set back and now again 
moves forward to greater favor and larger nu¬ 
merical, strength. The latest order is a boat 
for Mr. B. B. Crowninshield, designed, of 
course, by himself. The details of her form and 
construction are not yet for publication, but 
she is quite different from anything that has yet 
been built under the rule, and if she proves suc¬ 
cessful, which there is every reason to believe 
may be the case, she will greatly strengthen the 
claim that the universal rule is the long sought 
millennium. She will be built by a prominent 
builder on Penobscot Bay, Maine, and makes 
the fifth new boat actually ordered. In addition 
to this quintet there are still two other nebulous 
orders which may take form and substance; one 
being in the shape of a tentative design sub¬ 
mitted by Messrs. Small Bros, to a prominent 
Bostonian who is still undecided as to what class 
he refers to join, and the other being in the 
shape of a Crowninshield design for Mr. Francis 
Skinner, not yet returned from Europe and still 
a hoped-for member of the class. There is 
also still another possible entrance—a very cap¬ 
able yachtsman of the younger element who has 
just arranged the sale of his present boat and 
who is favorably disposed toward the 22-raters. 
As the aftermath of the power boat show, 
which closed Saturday night after a very suc¬ 
cessful and interesting exhibition, comes the 
news of several orders. The Bath Marine 
Construction Co., of Bath, Me., which displayed 
two most attractive hulls at the show, has re¬ 
ceived an order for a hydroplane launch which 
will be built under the supervision of the com¬ 
pany s new designing and engineering chief, , 
Mr. Martin C. Erismann, formerly yachting 
editor of Forest and Stream. Messrs. Small 
Bros, have completed the lines of a splendid 
boat for the Bermuda race on the order of a 
Boston yachtsman. This boat is notable in many 
ways. I11 profile she somewhat resembles the 
Davy Jones without the raised poop deck. The 
cockpit, however, is located in the very stern. 
Going below *by the main companionway (on 
the starboard side) one lands in a steerage with 
toilet room to port. Aft is the owner’s state¬ 
room with bed to starboard and extension tran¬ 
som to port and bureau between them against 
the after bulkhead. Forward of the steerage is 
a main cabin with floor space about 8x5 and 
the usual transoms, lockers and buffets. Open¬ 
ing forward from this cabin is a large stateroom 
to starboard and an equally roomy galley to 
port. . Still further forward and extending the 
full width of the boat is the engine room with 
a 40-horsepower Lamb engine and transom 
berths on either side, while back of each is a 
large fuel tank. Still further forward is the 
pilot house, situated under a superimposed 
trunk cabin and having a companionway that 
leads to the^ deck beside the fairweather steer¬ 
ing gear. The chart room contains a transom 
and a chart table of sufficient size to take a 
Government chart without folding. A bulkhead 
PECULIAR WRECKS. 
PECULIAR WRECKS. 
