REAL SAILORS
America’s Cup yachts had become so extreme by 1920 that they didn’t race in anything more serious than a moderate breeze, but the racing designs of the day were not the only high-performance craft around. The big fishing schooners of the Grand Banks sailing from Gloucester, Massachusetts, and Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, were certainly fast and not bothered in the slightest by wind, so a movement arose to put on schooner races between the US and Canada, ‘to show what real sailors can do’. A newspaper in Nova Scotia donated a trophy that started a series of races between the wars that became legendary for hard driving in sometimes desperate conditions.
The story is told with real pizzazz by Keith McLaren in A Race for Real Sailors. I couldn’t put it down, not only for the tales of sailing but also for the thrilling contemporary images. In this extract, the Lunenburg schooner Bluenose, honoured to this day on the Canadian dime, takes on Elsie, a flier from Gloucester designed by the great Thomas McManus. Hang onto your hat!
As the and her crew made their way up the coast to Halifax, grumbling began to surface from the New York papers about the differences was much larger than the Gloucester boat, with a longer waterline, much more sail, and an 11-year age advantage.
