666 
[April 27, 1907. 
deck aft and flattened space underneath the bows 
developed by this rule, with a sheer almost 
straight that'looks most ungainly when you look 
beyond and compare it to the beautiful sweep 
with quickening up curl aft on the Gardner Q 
boat No. 2787. He certainly gets the prettiest 
sheer line imaginable on his boats. 
The Billings’ launch is getting the finishing 
touches to her wood work, while the Standard 
people are fitting the fine parts of her machinery, 
fitting stern bearings, etc., to the deadwood. 
At Hansen’s yard the finishing touches are being 
put on the Damn 45ft. launch. A large circular 
seat giving ample seating rom around her com¬ 
modious after deck with a double pipe rail form¬ 
ing a back to it. Alongside this boat is Mr. 
Barr’s launch Crusinara that has had extensive 
alterations. Her stern has been lengthened, 
cabin extended aft 8ft., and a built-in piano put 
aboard. She has a 20 horsepower Lozier engine 
in her. The first of the two handsome little 
Mower designed boats for the Bensonhurst and 
Marine and Field clubs, to race on Gravesend Bay 
this summer for the Lipton cup, put up at the 
Crescent Club, is in frame and shows a beauti¬ 
fully clean lined body. They are 27ft. over all, 
18ft. waterline, 6ft. 6in. beam, and 4ft. ioin. diaft 
with 400ft. of sail, and 2,400 pounds of ballast. 
The once famous Gardner designed 40-footer 
Liris, that defeated the imported Minerva after 
several years’ racing, is now being transformed 
by her owner Mr. Hector Gabour, into a house¬ 
boat with a 20 horsepower Lozier engine to push 
her about instead of the yawl rig she recently 
carried. The yawl Sayonara is being burned and 
planed off to make her smooth for a new coat 
of paint. At Boyle’s yard the new boat for Mr. 
Wm. Simonson is being got out as fast as her 
builder can do so. Purdy & Collison have run 
the two double planked launches, one for Mr. 
C. M. Gould, 70ft. long, from Gielow’s design, 
and one for Mr. Louis M. Josephthal, Qtft- 6in. 
long, from Gardner’s board, outside to make room 
for new orders. The Cary Smith & Ferris 60ft. 
Bermuda racer is all planked and decked and 
shows a handsome model, powerful yet speedy. 
There is every prospect of considerable ac¬ 
tivity about this yard in the near future as 
Messrs. Purdy & Collison have formed their 
business into a $40,000 stock company and con¬ 
template a new set of marine railway, a new 
pier and the erection of a new up to date shop. 
With such needed conveniences to help them 
they will certainly make someone hustle as both 
men are experienced builders and joiners. The 
hopper baree, built by Purdy & Collison, is com¬ 
pleted and ere now launched. She was designed 
by Messrs. Cox & Stevens and is a fine look¬ 
ing craft of that type. She will have two en¬ 
gines and be propelled by twin screws. The 
sturdy litle cutter Mignon, laid up in this yard, 
came near being sold and so robbed of her 4 
ton 3 hundredweight of lead ballast, but it is 
to be hoped some one will come forward and 
save so good a craft from such a fate, as she 
can be had for less than a thousand dollars, while 
to build such a boat would require three times 
or more that amount and she is yet fit for a 
Bermuda race. 
At Hawkins’ yard the big schooner Crusader 
is being painted on the railway, while Zinita, a 
British built cutter, now owned by Mr. Hyman 
Cohen, and the schooner Mavis are both fitting 
out for the ocean race along with many others 
who care less for deep water. 
Yacht Sales. 
Senator D. Henry Cochran, of Pennsylvania, 
has purchased the high speed cruising launch 
Aletes III. from Mr. Robert C. Fisher, New 
York Y. C., through the office of Stanley M. 
Seaman, 220 Broadway. New York. She is 65ft. 
long and equipped with a 10 horsepower gaso¬ 
lene engine. She was fitted out at City Island 
and has been delivered to her new owner at 
Chester, Pa. 
The same agency has also sold the cruising 
yawl Sagola for Mr. Andrew O. Bancker to Mr. 
W. H. Lindeman, of this city. She will be used 
for cruising on the sound. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
Boston Letter. 
News —fundamental news—is a rare bird this 
week. Minor news items are not wanting, but 
there is a total absence of any news of sufficient 
importance to justify more attention than a briet 
note. 
The new boats are all seven days nearer com¬ 
pletion than was the case one week ago, two ot 
the Hull one-design class 15-footers are already 
for sale, though not yet launched—this, how¬ 
ever, because of unexpected business arrange¬ 
ments of their owners and not from any ob¬ 
jections to the boats themselves; many yachts 
of divers sizes are in as many stages of the 
fitting out process, though all hands are ob¬ 
jurgating the unseasonable weather, and not 
without cause, for the past fortnight has made 
out-of-doors painting well-nigh impossible; 
sellers are selling, purchasers are purchasing, 
and, therefore, it follows that brokers are 
busily “broking”; but the late spring prevents 
many yachtsmen from yachting, and thus, from 
very lack of material, the gossips refrain from 
gossiping. 
It is as if we were news-becalmed, temporarily 
in the lee of some tall cliff or rocky island where 
little catspaws of news, little puffs for this de¬ 
signer or that broker, darken narrow streaks ot 
water as they dart aimlessly out from under the 
cliffs, chasing one another in every direction all 
about us, while the true breeze leaves us for a 
time erect and almost motionless. 
In such a situation afloat (before the monotony 
of unsought quietude becomes irksome) we are 
apt to sit idly quiescent in the cockpit and allow 
our words to become the vehicles of random 
thoughts—of thoughts utterly disconnected from 
the task in hand and in no way related to the 
topics which we might be expected to discuss. 
So now! calm-bound by a dearth of momen¬ 
tous news one’s mind abandons the task set by 
the title of this column and strays off to more 
general subjects. Of these one may be worthy 
of exposition even though it may provoke argu¬ 
ment. 
Yacht designers are like actors, or to carry 
the simile further and make it more apt, like 
actresses. Not because of any effeminacy, but 
because of the feminine qualities attributed to 
their creations. 
There are many actresses, but few of them 
are great. So, too, with yacht designers. Yet 
every age has produced its pre-eminent actress 
—there was Mrs. Siddons, to-day we have Ellen 
Terry. And the past gave us Edward Burgess, 
while “Nat” Herreshoff still holds the center 
of the stage. And as with Ellen Terry, so with 
Nat Herreshoff—half a dozen younger fellow- 
craftsmen are now making brave bids for the 
laurels so fittingly bestowed upon the great ac¬ 
tress and great designer. 
In earlier days the parts now played by an 
actress were filled by men fitted by youth or 
disguise to mumble through their lines and 
partially illusionize their audiences, occasion¬ 
ally despite their lack of basic knowledge, 
despite, too, their inability to reason effect from 
cause they achieved successes. Behold the 
parallel when applied to rule-o’-thumb designing 
—builders and the modern yacht . architects. 
Some gifted actresses have achieved true art 
in its highest forms. Every word, every 
posture, the most trivial act was so calculated, 
so enacted as to produce a part of perfect 
balance, of well-rounded beauty, be it one of 
comedy or tragedy. And there have been, there 
are yet. naval architects whose every vessel is 
an artistic interpretation of her purpose. With 
such men the most disproportionate dimensions 
yield lines of grace and produce the shippy little 
craft that, however fashions change, is ever 
pretty. 
On the other hand, we have the hordes of 
modern, machine-made actresses who, parrot- 
like. recite to us an author’s text, just as so 
many designers create boats that show the pos¬ 
sibilities, and impossibilities, of each new racing 
rule as the printer has printed it, but without 
the subtle touches by which a master hand 
would have wrought also the finer forms that 
the rule makers dreamed of but could not set 
down in cold, lifeless ink. 
Acting is an art, and so it is with yacht 
designing. But in both callings niany mistake 
a distaste for real work for the artistic tempeia- 
ment. And in both callings, too, and Heaven 
be praised that it is so, there are many true 
artists whose merits are not yet appreciated by 
the general public. But the parallel between 
the two professions may be carried further—it 
holds not only as to the subject, but throughout 
the personal traits of the members of each 
calling. Thus actresses seek ever to be 111 the 
public eye, and while never purchasers of much 
advertising space, ever insist upon great quan¬ 
tities of reading notices. The writer must not 
mention the name of a play without dwelling 
upon that of the leading lady and to confuse 
one actress with another play demands instant 
editorial apology. Prominent actresses have 
each their own press agent, and while yacht 
designers have not actually come to this, some 
give a very creditable imitation of the actress 
who is her own press agent. 
And yet while actresses delight to be the 
subjects of magazine and newspaper articles, 
they are very chary of critics.. . They will not 
confess to an intolerance of criticism, but their 
definition of that word varies as widely from 
that of Webster and Worcester as does the 
verdict of a packed jury from a just judgment. 
If her work wins scant applause, the actress 
cries “the unappreciative public,” “poor , sup¬ 
port” or “poorly staged,” just as the designer 
is apt to attribute his blunders to “poor hand¬ 
ling,” “the sails” or “the owner did not give 
me a free hand.” Both read criticise- to praise, 
and they would distort an old maxim, so that 
it should run. “Speak no ill of the actress or 
designer.” And yet, with both, the greater the 
artist the less the resentment of harsh, if fair, 
criticism. 
Some actresses never walk, they parade. 
Some designers never go for a good sail, but 
jog their boats up and down the harbor in front 
of the yacht club piazzas. Some actresses lose 
jewels and heirlooms and have other mysterious 
mishaps, while some designers hastily draw a 
cloth over the draughting board when you enter, 
or tuck a model under their coats when met 
with on the street. 
The similarity may be traced still further. Ot 
course it does not hold in every point—as yet 
no bald-headed women pay premiums for front 
row seats from which to eye the physical charms 
of our young designers, nor. do they seek them 
at the stage door. But it is true that many a 
draughtsman still in the chorus, as it were, is 
competent to fill a speaking part and^able to 
star were there in yacht designing such 1 angels 
as back many a pretty actress in her first 
venture. , 
Then, too—but peace! The jib is drawing; 
the good ship starts; soon shall we be on the 
course again and the cliff-created calm far, far 
astern W illiam Lambert Barnard. 
The old time U. S. frigate Constitution, famil- 
iarlv termed Old Ironsides, is being reconstructed 
at the Charlestown, Mass., navy yard to be present 
in all her old time glory at the Jamestown Ex- 
position. 
^ ^ 
The King Edward’s cup, which has been pre¬ 
sented to the Jamestown Exposition anthorities, 
to be awarded in competition between the 22ft. 
* * * 
The Harlem Y. C., of City Island,, having 
closed the title to the underwater land in front 
of the cluh, are about to replace the old wooden 
runway with a steel one, to build a sea wall 12? 
feet long and build new floats. The ground will 
he filled in considerably and interior of club 
house renovated in anticipation of the many 
visitors expected this year at the start of the 
race for the Brooklyn Y. C. challenge cup which 
Mopsa, owned by the Messrs. Sullivan, won last 
year. 
A. C. A. Membership. 
NEW MEMBERS PROPOSED. 
Atlantic Division.—Robert Sealv. Jr., Brook- 
Ivn N Y„ bv L. S. Stockwell: Warren S. Hal- 
lett, N. Y. City, by R. J. Wilkin. 
