Sport: Fishermen’s Finale

Races between fishing schooners are an old Gloucester specialty. They flourished 100 years ago when rival skippers tried to beat one another to port to get a better price for their cargoes of fresh fish. Last week Gloucester’s crinkled old salts gloomily watched a race between the only two full-rigged schooners left in the North Atlantic fishing fleet: Lunenberg’s Bluenose and Gloucester’s Gertrude L. Thebaud. It was the finale of a three-out-of-five series born in 1920 out of rivalry between Nova Scotian and Gloucester fishing vessels.

Bluenose (slang term for a Nova Scotian) was defending the International Fishermen’s Trophy for the fourth time under her skipper, Captain Angus Walters, a peppery old salt. The challenger, Gertrude L. Thebaud (named after the wife of a Gloucester summer resident who put up most of the $78,000 necessary to build her eight years ago), was making her second attempt to regain the trophy—with Captain Ben Pine at the wheel.

After a fortnight of squabbles and calms, Captain Walters finally won the series, three races to two. When he went to a luncheon given in his honor by the Boston Chamber of Commerce he discovered that the big silver trophy he had defended off & on for 17 years had mysteriously disappeared in transit from a Boston department store (where it had been on exhibition). Then, just as he was blasting the stiff-collared Bostonians with an explosion of Grand Banks invective, he was told that the race committee was unable (because of feeble public response) to raise the rest of the $10,000 expense money promised him. Hopping mad, Captain Walters, who had already received $4,000 from the committee, demanded that they produce the rest “immediately or else—.” So saying, he stalked out of the room, vowing never to bring his Bluenose down to the U. S. again.