A Race for Real Sailors: Bluenose and the International Fisherman's Cup 1920 - 1938

A Race for Real Sailors

The Bluenose and the International Fishermen’s Cup, 1920–1938

Keith McLaren

A Race for Real Sailors

Douglas & McIntyre

To the memory of Richard John LeBlanc

January 21, 1945–April 2, 1993

A fine shipmate and friend.

Copyright © 2006 by Keith McLaren

First paperback printing, 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd.

PO Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: A race for real sailors : the Bluenose and the International Fishermen’s Cup, 1920-1938 / Keith McLaren.

Names: McLaren, Keith, 1950- author.

Description: Originally published: Vancouver : Douglas & McIntyre, ©2006. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200401270 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200401289 | ISBN 9781771622677 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771622684 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Bluenose (Schooner) | LCSH: International Fishermen’s Race—History. | LCSH Sailboat racing—History. | LCSH: Sailboat racing—Nova Scotia—History.

Classification: LCC GV832 .M28 2021 | DDC 797.1/4—dc23

Editing by Jonathan Dore

Cover design by Jessica Sullivan

Text design by Peter Cocking and Jessica Sullivan

Front cover painting: Racing Schooners, circa 1921, by Dusan Kadlec, portrays the Bluenose and the Elsie racing off Halifax. Reproduced by kind permission of the artist.

Back cover photographs (left to right): Leslie Jones, Boston Public Library (p.66); Edwin Levick, Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, Virginia (p.182); Wallace MacAskill, Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management (p.54)

Printed and bound in China

Douglas and McIntyre acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council.

Contents

Preface 1

Introduction 5

The Grand Banks 11

Fishing Under Sail 15

A Skipping Stone 31

A Race For Real Sailors: 1920 45

The Lunenburg Flyer: 1921 67

Turmoil in Gloucester: 1922 89

I Am Not a Sportsman: 1923 119

The Storm Years: 1924–29 143

The Lipton Cup: 1930 163

The Revival: 1931 179

The Last Fishermen’s Race: 1938 189

In the Wake 215

Appendix: Race Rules, 1920–38 222

Courses Off Halifax 230

Schooner Sail Plan And Spars 235

Glossary 236

Acknowledgements 240

Selected Bibliography 242

Index 246

Fleet at anchor, Lunenburg Harbour, 1898. Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management

Preface

On a chilly day in late October 1938, a crowd of thousands gathered on the shores of Nahant Bay, northeast of Boston, arriving from all over the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada. They were about to witness the concluding chapter in a two-decade-old challenge between the fishing-schooner fleets of Canada and the United States.

The schooner fishery was one of the last all-sail commercial fleets left in the Western world. At its zenith, hundreds of large offshore boats filled the ports from Newfoundland south to Massachusetts. This was the culmination of a traditional way of life that had evolved over two and a quarter centuries. When the International Fishermen’s Cup races were first proposed in 1920, the fishing schooner was already on its way out, being rapidly replaced by power-driven trawlers. This transformation occurred much more quickly in the United States than in Canada, which hung on and even actively resisted the introduction of the mechanized trawler to its fishing ports. Americans embraced the new technology, steadily forcing the older, traditional fishermen from the market. Although her time was nearly done, the fishing schooner remained a presence on the banks, an anachronism in the modern era, for far longer than anyone would have predicted. As the number of working sailing vessels decreased, their romantic appeal with the public rose. The fishermen’s races became a fond last hurrah for a fast-disappearing way of life.

The timing of the races fitted neatly into that tumultuous period between the two world wars and became for a time the most popular sailing event in North America. Heralded as a race for real sailors, the series began as a friendly match between the schooner fleets of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and Gloucester, Massachusetts, the two largest fishing communities on the east coast. They were originally proposed in response to the perceived timidity demonstrated in the America’s Cup races, where the elite sailed beautiful but tender vessels barely capable of withstanding a decent breeze. In contrast, the fishermen’s races were to be a working man’s event, a tough, no-holds-barred affair, with few rules and fewer regulations; a showcase for a rugged, rigorous way of life that was on its way out.

The series, scheduled for the fall of each year, became instantly popular and initially ran like clockwork. The spectacle greatly appealed to the public and soon eclipsed even the venerable America’s Cup as the race of choice to a generation. Unfortunately, the growing attention from the public and media provoked the well-meaning committee members to expand and elaborate the rules, ostensibly to ensure the competition remained true to its mandate. In so doing, a rather simple and straightforward affair became a complicated and confusing business, fraught with interpretations of legalities, much to the dismay and consternation of the competitors. Even though the series continued to draw a huge following, the tone often became rancorous and bitter, with competitors accusing the various committees of everything from favouritism to corruption. The fact that it carried on as long as it did is a testament to the single-mindedness of the competitors and to the passion for sail in the quest for the title Queen of the North Atlantic Fishery.

While researching this book, I was immediately struck by the tremendous popu-larity of these races. Reading accounts published in contemporary magazines and newspapers, I was overwhelmed by the incredible amount of coverage given over to them. Although the series was ostensibly a sporting event, the reportage was almost never in the sporting pages. Front-page exposure and banner headlines heralded each new series, with top reporters and photographers from major newspapers in Canada and the United States dispatched to cover every angle, no matter how insignificant. Even in 1938, with the world poised on the brink of war, the races dominated the front page alongside the ominous news from Nazi Germany.

My own interest began in my grandfather’s house, where a model of the Bluenose, given to him by Captain Angus Walters upon his retirement in 1934, held a place of honour on the mantel above the fireplace. The stories of the schooner from Lunenburg highlighted my youth. Years later, I secured a berth on the replica schooner Bluenose II and spent two seasons sailing on her, expanding my knowledge of her predecessor’s skipper, Angus Walters, and her illustrious past. There has been much written about the races over the years, especially in Canada, but many writers have tended to oversimplify and exaggerate, too often ignoring the controversies and rancour that frequently plagued the event. I wanted to explore the story as fairly as I could, which meant from both sides of the border, so, to that end, I visited Massachusetts and Nova Scotia to gain insight into their respective points of view. What I found, after much reading and talking, was that the debate and passion about one of the great maritime tales of North America, with a cast of characters whose egos and eccentricities were second to none, is still very much alive. Far from diminishing the power of the story by examining its flesh-and-blood details, I hope this book will help bring to life an amazing chapter in maritime history. Readers unfamiliar with nautical or fishing terms will find a glossary of these on page 236.

My sources in Gloucester and Boston provided me with mountains of material—rivalling anything I found in Canada—and it took months to organize and compile it into a usable form. During my visits to Massachusetts and Nova Scotia, I was given extraordinary help and assistance by many; everyone, it seemed, had a unique story to tell. The debate about which was the fastest schooner lives on in Gloucester and Lunenburg, as if the races had been held only yesterday. National pride and passion, when it comes to the working schooner, run deep.

The Bluenose and the Columbia run with the wind at the start of the first race in 1923. The grey-hulled American boat was probably the most closely matched schooner to compete against the Bluenose . Her ability to sail closer to the wind than her rival made her a serious contender. Wallace MacAskill Collection, Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management

Introduction

The real question is, why would anyone still care?

A century ago, schooners were the workhorses of the east coast. A Cape Breton neighbour once told me that when he was a boy, a constant stream of schooners sailed past his boyhood home on the Great Bras d’Or, carrying gypsum and shingles, coal and potatoes.

It must have been a beautiful sight to see, I said.

He shrugged.

Never thought about it, he said. Do you go ooh and aah over every eighteen-wheeler that goes down the road?

If you think of the International Fishermen’s Cup races as contests among eighteen-wheelers, why would we still care about them? What would prompt a successful twenty-first-century mariner like Keith McLaren to write yet another book about them? And if such a man did write such a book, would he find anything new to say about the ships and the races and the people involved?

Amazingly enough, he would. Captain McLaren is interested in the overall story of the races as seen from both sides. As a result, this is perhaps the most fair and even-handed account of them yet written—fair not only to the competitors and their boats, but to the story itself, in all its mythological splendour, intrigue, glory and outright venality.

Our culture cherishes a sentimental notion that sporting events encourage sportsmanship and fair play. Perhaps they do—but they equally encourage greed, pride, envy, anger and various other sins both deadly and venial. The international schooner races were no exception. They were loaded with meaning: working fishermen versus the plutocrats’ fragile America’s Cup racers; Lunenburg versus Gloucester; Canada versus the United States. Because they meant so much, people cared passionately about the races—and when people care that much, they compete right out to the uttermost limits of fair play. And even a bit beyond.

The races were also the defiant valedictory flourish of a fading culture of canvas, wood and handlining against a corporate culture of steel motor vessels that would ultimately destroy the fishery altogether.

In 1920, when the races began, fishing schooners were already obsolescent; in 1938, when they ended, the vessels were completely obsolete. As McLaren notes, even by 1930, when Bluenose’s last challenger was launched, the notion that the races were competitions between working fishermen was being tacitly ignored. Gertrude L. Thebaud went fishing to qualify, but she was never going to pay for herself as a fishing vessel. She was built to beat the Bluenose.

Bluenose herself, of course, had also been built to race. But that was ten years earlier, when a Grand Banks schooner could still pay her own way in the fishery. After 1930, even Bluenose had difficulty justifying herself economically. Still, the appeal of the schooners—though they had represented innovative fishing technology in an earlier day—was never entirely economic, and even as they died out, they recalled a more human way of relating to the world.

View of Gloucester Harbour, c . 1900. Cape Ann Historical Association

There is nothing beautiful about a trawler. It is hard to imagine anyone loving one. A trawler is an expensive corporate-owned fish-killing machine and nothing more. But a schooner could be built in any little notch of the coast by a gang of skilled men with access to wood, a building site and sharp hand tools. And the same men could sail their schooner, fish it, trade with it and prosper. The schooners represented beauty versus force, honed skills versus raw power, human strength versus mechanical energy, art versus engineering.

The Lunenburg shipwright David Stevens, the great heir of that great tradition, liked to say that a ship was more like a living thing than anything else a man could build with his hands. The truth of the observation can be seen throughout Captain McLaren’s book. There is something alive and individual, something like a personality, in each of the racing schooners—the quick and sturdy little Esperanto, the unlucky and out-of-sync Haligonian, the aristocratic and isolated Mayflower, the swift and ethereal Columbia and the fleet-winged Puritan, running through the fog so fast that she killed herself on Sable Island.

And, of course, the powerful, indomitable Bluenose.

Was there some extra quality, something akin to a greatness of heart, in the champion schooner from Lunenburg? Angus Walters, her captain, certainly acted as though there were. In moments of stress he would coax her, cajole her, shout at her. And she would always respond.

But maybe the unconquerable greatness of heart was in Angus himself, who knew and loved his vessel as few vessels have ever been known and loved. He was not an amiable or easygoing character, nor was he a particularly gracious winner. As Captain McLaren reminds us, he needled his opponents mercilessly, and, like them, he was not above a little discreet chicanery. But even the marine historian Howard Chapelle, who detested him, admitted that Angus Walters was a prime sailor.

The races took place at a unique moment in history, a period that produced a great many legends in sports, exploration, the arts and entertainment—Joe Louis and Babe Ruth, Greta Garbo and Clark Gable, Amelia Earhart and Seabiscuit and Duke Ellington. The reasons are complex—the interwar period was a transitional time in many respects—but the 1920s were a period of dizzying change, and the 1930s were a decade of economic catastrophe.

So the public was in need of distraction, and at that very moment, the new technology of mass communication meant spectacular events could be reported to millions of people simultaneously, as they occurred. As McLaren notes, the schooner races were given astonishing play in the newspapers, and they were among the first sporting contests to be broadcast live. In today’s multi-channel world, the mass audience has fragmented; only colossal events are reported to everyone. In the 1930s, however, the same newscast reached the whole audience and fame meant something it never meant before or since.

The echoes still linger. During his research, McLaren reports, he learned that the debate and passion about the races is still very much alive. Indeed it is; people still do care. When Canadians compete with their larger, more powerful neighbour, they normally lose—but this time they didn’t, and since the races can never be held again, that victory is permanent. It has become one of the legends of our national life, and Canadians remember it every time they look at a Canadian dime. No wonder we care about it.

Americans naturally care much less about the story, but those who remember it care for the exact opposite reason. The Marines are supposed to land, the cavalry is supposed to arrive, the Revolution is supposed to succeed, everything is supposed to come out right in the final reel, and this story is a galling exception. It jest ain’t fittin’. Americans feel, with some justification, that they could have won, perhaps should have won, but the prize is now forever out of reach.

Nova Scotians care particularly strongly because the races symbolize both our capacity and our decline. At one point in the nineteenth century, Nova Scotia was the fourth-largest trading nation in the world—or would have been, had it actually been a nation—and it entered Canada as the most prosperous of the founding provinces. That prosperity was based on wooden shipbuilding and resolute seafaring, and by the 1930s it was only a mirage in the communal memory. But Bluenose emerged from that history, and her triumphs forever remind Nova Scotians of what they once were, and what they could be again.

And sailors everywhere care because the races were a supreme moment of glory in an art they cherish, hard-fought contests using a style of sailing vessel that was at its peak of development just at the moment it was poised to disappear.

The enduring appeal of the schooners is their beauty and their ordinariness. Fundamentally, these were working boats sailed by working men, not high-tech wonders sailed by scientifically enhanced athletes. There was harmony and balance not only in the way they sailed, but also in the way they lived. They raced for fun and for fame, and then they went fishing.

These sailors were amateurs in the root sense of the word, men who competed for the sheer love of the thing itself, testing their mastery against that of their peers. That’s what echoes down through the years—the beauty and danger of a working life under sail, and the pride of the men who did it.

Silver Donald Cameron

2006, D’Escousse, Nova Scotia · www.silverdonaldcameron.ca

A common method of distributing a crew across a fishing ground was called a flying set. The dories would be lowered over the side and allowed to drift astern, then tied to the after rail. Once all the dories were out, the skipper would head towards the area he wanted to fish and drop his dories off, one at a time at intervals. He would then jog back and forth along his line of men, tending them like a mother hen. F.W. Wallace Collection, Maritime Museum of the Atlantic

1

The Grand Banks

For centuries the Grand Banks, situated off the east coast of Canada, were considered one of Earth’s most important fishing grounds, feeding much of the Western world. The banks are undersea plateaus that rise from the continental shelf, a relatively shallow part of the North Atlantic that extends just under two hundred miles from the shore before the ocean bottom drops 6,000 feet (1,800 metres). There are over twenty individual banks, ranging from the largest, the Grand Bank of Newfoundland, in the northeast, to Georges Bank off Cape Cod in the south, and they are known collectively as the Grand Banks. The water depth on these plateaus descends from 100 to 600 feet (30 to 180 metres). The icy Labrador Current, flowing south over most of the banks, mixes with the warm waters of the Gulf Stream sweeping north along the eastern coast, as well as the freshwater currents flowing down from the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The swirling and mixing of the currents over the banks, along with the shallow water depth, creates a nutrient-rich environment that produces a dense growth of phytoplankton, the first link in the marine food chain.

Map of the Grand Banks

Until recently, this habitat sustained a tremendous population of groundfish (those living near the bottom). The most important species to grow there was the Atlantic cod. This fish alone was primarily responsible for the early settlement and colonization of North America. Cod was easy to catch and, when dried and salted, could be preserved for long periods, allowing for transportation to markets in Europe. Basque fishermen were the first to discover the potential of the fishery, in the fifteenth century, and they kept its location a secret until John Cabot stumbled across it in 1497 on his first voyage of discovery to North America. Cabot reported to his English masters that the waters off Newfoundland were so thick with fish that the progress of his vessel was impeded. Inspired by this vivid description, the powers of Europe rushed to stake their claims on the fertile fishing ground. By the mid-1500s, more than half of the fish eaten in Europe was from that source, and by the time the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620, the banks were providing an income to over a thousand vessels from England, France, Portugal and Spain. The fishery had quickly become an important part of the western European economy, supplying markets with thousands of tons of salted Atlantic cod each year.

As settlement became established along the northeast coast of North America, communities such as Gloucester and Lunenburg became homes to large fleets of offshore boats. Until the turn of the twentieth century, fishing methods remained virtually unchanged from the days of the early Basque fishermen. Wind-powered vessels and hook-and-line fishing were the standard methods of the time. Although the banks had been heavily fished for four centuries, the techniques used were relatively sustainable until modern methods were introduced. Over-fishing, combined with the use of the indiscriminate wire mesh trawl, which dragged the bottom and destroyed everything in its path, brought about the demise of the fishery. The seas that had fed the mouths of hungry North Americans and Europeans for hundreds of years are now considered by some to be a marine desert. Unable to support human demands, the Grand Banks fishery is likely to remain in a state of collapse for many years to come.

With his back to the weather, a fisherman on board the schooner Corinthian hunches over his trawl bucket as he finishes baiting his line. A mere snow squall would not slow work on a banker. Life was often cold, wet and miserable, but work would cease only if the sea became too rough to launch the dories—and even that was at the discretion of the master. Edwin Cooper, Thomas Collection, Cape Ann Historical Association

2

Fishing Under Sail

On the waterfront in Gloucester, there is a hauntingly beautiful sculpture of a fisherman grasping the wheel of a banks schooner. Wearing traditional oilskins and sou’wester, he appears to be straining every muscle to hold his schooner on course. His face is etched with tension as he gazes intently at the unseen sails aloft. The rough grey-green patina of the bronze casting has been permanently streaked by rain and sea spray. Below, the inscription reads: They that go down to the sea in ships, 1623–1923. The memorial commemorates the many lives lost at sea in Gloucester’s first three centuries and is now surrounded by ten tablets listing the names of more than five thousand fishermen. In Lunenburg, near the Fisheries Museum, is another monument—not, like its Gloucester cousin, a figurative representation, but equally powerful and poignant. Eight polished black granite slabs rise up from the earth in a Stonehenge-like cairn, each positioned on the directional points of a compass, with a ninth pillar in the centre. Names of the dead, a seemingly endless list of them, are etched into the surfaces. The two communities share a common bond of loss, a bond further strengthened by the fact that twelve hundred of the names on the Gloucester memorial belong to Nova Scotians who crewed Gloucester vessels.

Back in Gloucester and just up the street from the famous Man at the Wheel is perhaps the most moving monument of all. It was commissioned in August 2001 by the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives’ Association to commemorate the families, the women and children, left to mourn those lost at sea. It is a simple statue of a mother and two children facing seaward, searching for a glimpse of the tall masts of the husband’s and father’s schooner. The sculpture strikes an even deeper chord than do the other two, speaking to the awful grief of the survivors who must somehow find a way to cope with the desolation of loss and carry on. The lives of those who depended on fishing for a living were always hard and too often ended in tragedy.

There was no romance in a working life at sea. The dirty and often brutally exhausting labour took place in uncertain and perilous conditions, where survival depended on constant vigilance and good fortune. Simply slipping from a footrope or being struck by a swinging boom could end a life in an instant. Many were swept overboard, lost in heavy fog or swamped in dories holding too many fish. Sometimes entire vessels and crews would go missing, smashed to pieces on a lee shore, run down by an Atlantic steamer in thick fog or torn apart in a hurricane, leaving no clues as to their passing. However, the promise of better pay than for work ashore, the camaraderie and the pride in doing the job well were viewed as compensation for the constant risk. Fishing was always a gamble, dependent on nature and the market for a reasonable return. Companionable shipmates, a competent skipper, a good cook and reasonable fo’c’sle crew made any hardship tolerable.

Life aboard a fishing schooner was more of a co-operative venture than the rigid hierarchy of the merchant marine. Fishermen worked as shareholders, and so their livelihood depended on the fortunes of their vessel and how hard they worked. They were engaged on a share system, their compensation paid out in proportion to the catch, after the vessel’s costs had been deducted: the food, bait, salt, ice and wages for the paid members of