Sport: Ships at Sea

When the flapping winds that flew ahead of the hurricane (see p. 14) circled into Boston Harbor, an ugly coal boat, the Black Point, broke away from the two tugs that were warping her away from the pier. Plunging across the dark and angry waters, the Black Point rammed her broad bow into a schooner which was straining at her moorings like a slim black horse There occurred then in the darkness a scene as gruesome as a murder: the collier leaning her weight against the trembling sailboat rammed her against the army base pier which slices into the harbor like a knife. By the time the tugs pulled the heavy steamship away, the yacht which she had rammed was a tangle of wreckage which the waves pawed through a night of storm.

Such was the fate of the Pinta, owned by Yachtsman W. J. Curtis, who last summer sailed his ship from New York to Santander, Spain, in a race for the Queen of Spain’s cup.

The Pinta did not win the trans-Atlantic race. It took her 25 days to sweep across the treacherous calms of the ocean; the Nina and the Atlantic had both reached Santander earlier. The Pinta was manned by a crew of eight amateurs and a paid hand. One of the former, Alfred F. Loomis, described the excitements of their cruise in the current issue of the Sportsman.

When the Nina sailed into Santander the people, waiting on their launches to see the end of the race, mistook her for the larger* Atlantic which arrived an hour later. The Atlantic, as well as the Pinta, felt last week the force of stormier winds than those which touched them in July. Gerard Lambert, her owner, received a radio from the captain who was sailing back from Cowes to the U. S.; two days before the hurricane reached Porto Rico, he reported that he had encountered ari 80-mile gale, the worst in his experience. His radio message was brief: “Did not expect ship to live through. Everybody well. . . . Slight damage to starboard launch. . . .”

As a year ago airplanes brushed through the clouds above the wild Atlantic, in this last summer tiny boats, smaller than those which first traversed it, have been the most spectacular traffickers upon its wastes. The smallest of all these is the canoe, equipped with oar-locks, sails and a motor, in which Franz Romer started out last March from Lisbon to “row” across the Atlantic to New York. This canoe, the Deutsche Sport, arrived in Saint Thomas a month ago (TIME, Aug. 13) and left Porto Rico two weeks later, bound for Florida. The southeastern skies grew dark and a huge hungry wind came up behind Franz Romer. He has not reached Florida.

*The boats raced in two classes. The smaller boats under 55 ft., started a week before the larger. The smaller were racing for the Queen’s the larger for the King’s Cup.