A Wild Night off the Maine Coast. 
Prize Story. 
In the words of the poet, “it was the good 
ship” Cossack, 35 feet waterline, 53 feet on 
deck, Crane-designed, Lawly-built and cutter- 
rigged homeward bound from Nova Scotia. 
In charge of the mate she had cruised 
leisurely from Marblehead to Halifax, where 
she had been joined by the skipper 111 time for 
him to judge the finish of the Eastern \ . C. s 
ocean race from Marblehead to that port, to 
sail in the race for the Prince of Wales cup 
which those “royal ’ fellows of the Nova Scotia 
squadron had opened to our Eastern yachts, 
and having made the runs back along the coast 
to Shelbourne, she had left that hospitable port 
on Saturday morning, Sept. 2, 1905, with Rock¬ 
land, Maine, U. S. A., the next stopping place 
on the list on her way back to Marblehead. 
In a desperately light head wind we had 
worked our way slowly out of the magnificent 
harbor, past the vertical lights of Cape Rose¬ 
way and down the shore to Negro Island, when, 
to our dismay, the wind suddenly shifted to the 
southwest. We had been in Nova Scotian 
waters too long not to realize the meaning of 
this at once, and we immediately took our cross 
bearings, noted our position on the cli3.it and 
put over the log, and we had but little more 
than gotten well prepared when everything was 
blotted from sight by the anticipated fog. 
So slow had been our progress that it was 
now mid-afternoon, and it became a certainty 
that we were due to round the dreaded Cape 
Sable during the night, and in a fog.* 
We had planned our start so as to make 
this by daylight, and also to make the Maine 
coast by the following afternoon, but our slow 
drifting bade fair to spoil our reckoning; how¬ 
ever, there was no help for it, and thanking our 
lucky stars that the wind was now light and 
the sea smooth, we pegged along on our course 
for the Brazil Rock bell buoy, which we had 
the satisfaction of passing close aboard, which 
was fortunate inasmuch as it wasn’t making a 
sound, and at 100 yards would have been in¬ 
visible as well as silent. 
Not long after this we picked up the blast 
of the big fog signal on Cape Sable, for the 
breeze had freshened quite a bit, and as we got 
it abeam just before dark, the fog thinned just 
enough, so that through the glasses we could 
see that there was low lying land to leeward of 
us with one or two small outstanding houses. 
The fog and darkness now came in together 
as we headed across for Seal Island, twenty 
miles distant, with the worst and most danger¬ 
ous part of the trip before us; for between 
these two points lies Blonde Rock, two feet 
above water, guarded by a whistling buoy, or 
“automatic,” as the Nova Scotians call them, 
one-half mile to the south of it, and on the 
chart stared us in the face the cheerful informa¬ 
tion: “This buoy liable to be washed away,” 
and equally disturbing, embellished by little 
arrows showing that it did not run in opposite 
directions on the ebb and flood, were the dis¬ 
heartening words: “Tide 4 knots per hour.” 
We soon began to hear the lighter double 
blast on Seal Island, keeping an accompaniment 
to the heavier single roar of the Sable signal— 
the one growing louder as the other faded 
away—when we suddenly awoke to the fact 
that we were getting the blast from Sable di¬ 
rectly over the stern, while those from Seal 
Island were coming in over the bowsprit end 
instead of well on the lee bow. 
This could mean but one thing: We were in 
the grip of that four-knot tide and were being 
carried rapidly in shore. We at once tacked 
ship and stood off. straining our ears to the 
uttermost for a grunt ‘or a groan from the 
Blonde Rock automatic, but though there was 
now plenty of sea to make it work, we could 
not hear the slightest sound from it. 
With vivid recollections of the gale of the 
first of the week, during which Cossack’s try^ 
sail emerged from its bag for the first and 
only time in the four years’ history of the 
ship, and the warning of the chart as to the 
buoy’s liability to be washed away, we did feel 
a bit anxious, knowing that even steamboat 
captains making their regular trips through the 
tide frankly confessed themselves unable to 
figurfe on what it might be doing to them with 
any degree of certainty. 
Our anxiety was in no degree lessened by the 
recollection of a remark made by the captain 
of the Dominion cruiser Petrel, that should we 
sight Blonde Rock we would have no difficulty 
COSSACK IN RACE FOR PRINCE OF WALES CUP. 
in recognizing it, even though it might be 
awash, as there were seven vessels piled up on 
top of it; and the further thought that the 
rock lay between us and the whistle, even if the 
latter were in its right position, was decidedly 
disquieting. 
So we stood along on this course with the 
utmost care, shaking her up occasionally to 
listen for the buoy, and. to drop over our lead, 
the men forward making cheerful remarks, 
sotto voce , about, about “hunting for a two-foot 
rock in a fog,” until finally getting a sounding 
that we didn’t like the looks of at all, we went 
back on the other tack, and had the satisfaction 
of hearing the Sable and Seal Island blasts 
again safely to leeward of our course, which we 
now laid straight across the Bay of Fundy for 
Mt. Desert Rock, figuring that this would be a 
very handy point from which to lay our course 
into Rockland—one which we could pick up 
after dark and far enough off the coast so as 
to let us get a correct course for harbor in 
case we might have made any errors on account 
of tide in our dead reckoning—and it must be 
admitted that a point in the fog somewhere off 
Cape Sable was not a really definite location 
from which to take our departure. 
Daylight found us well out into the bay, 
heading northwest, our boom to port and the 
wind almost dead aft and the fog way off on 
the horizon. As the morning wore on, cold, 
gray and threatening, the breeze made up con¬ 
stantly and the sea along with it, while the 
barometer was going fast and steadily down¬ 
ward. 
By early afternoon the gaff topsail was a long 
way from being a real necessity and steering 
had ceased to be any “thumb and little finger” 
j ob. 
However, we were in a hurry, and so we 
drove her to the last minute, which was four 
o’clock, when it was clearly time to snug up 
for the night, and for the blow which was sure 
enough coming. 
We had to let her come up in order to lower 
away the topsail, and if there had been any 
question as to there being already a breeze, all 
doubts were at once forgotten, and three reefs 
was the verdict instantly reached. Dropping the 
mainsail into the lazy jackets we jogged, com¬ 
fortably along under the headsails until the 
reefs were soon tucked in and back we went on 
our course, and just at dusk, or about seven 
o’clock, we got our eyes on Mt. Desert Rock 
just as the light gleamed out, less than a quarter 
of a mile inside our course. We rounded close 
under the island about half an hour later, and 
under our short canvas we dusted for the Maine 
coast at a great old rate. , 
We were figuring to run in to the south of 
Isle Au Haut. as a string of whistling buoys 
and lighthouses made the going a fairly straight 
line up to Owl’s Head and the Rockland Break¬ 
water. By ten o’clock we were making in near 
the land,’ and the southeasterly gale, which 
every man afloat on the New England coast 
that Sunday before Labor.Day of.IQ °5 a .l~ 
ways remember, was hitting us in great big 
chunks. 
Partly to help the steering, and partly be¬ 
cause it was a nasty job to take either of them 
in, we were carrying both headsails, and when 
the following seas would catch us and swing the 
stern around in spite of hard up helm so those 
jibs could get the full force of the wind, it was 
a case of “lee deck under to the house” and 
no mistake. 
To add to the wildness of the night, rain 
commenced to drive down in almost solid 
sheets, and to add to the weirdness of it all, the 
phosphoresence was simply wonderful. At the 
speed at which we were traveling, the effect on 
both sides and astern was as if we were in a 
bath of silver, but beyond the circle of light 
the blackness was absolutely impenetrable, save 
where the crest of the nearest breaker sent out 
its phosphorescent gleam. 
Fortunately there was no fog, but the. ram 
sheets were so solid that only in an occasional 
let-up was it possible to see a boat s length 
ci li 0 3. d 
To come driving in from sea on to the Maine 
coast before a southeast, gale mixed up with 
heavy and constant rain in the middle^ of inky 
darkness was no “dead open and shut propo¬ 
sition, but there was no way to stop or go back, 
nowhere else to go, and nothing else to do but 
to let her have it. . 
The skipper was of course on deck trying to 
watch our course, and both men of the crew 
we carried were at the tiller trying to hold her 
to it. The mate was ordered below to.consult 
the chart, and, sprawled all over the cabin floor, 
mixed up with rulers and dividers, tried to 
answer the rapid fire of questions shot at 
by the skipper through the partly opened slide. 
“How far can we go on this course before we 
hit anything?” “Is there supposed to be a 
light up to windward of us here?” “How does 
that second whistler bear from where we are. 
