Header Photo: Start of the Paddling Canoe Race, Late Nineteenth Century

The previous header photo was harvested from Facebook with little identification. A paddling canoe start from the late nineteenth century, the location remained a mystery. I emailed several canoe historians and they were somewhat stumped as well. Someone said Lake George N.Y., another said possibly Hay Island right acroos from Gananoque in the Thousand Islands. Dating was also broad, sometime between the late 1880's, 1890's. Even without a precise identification, the bevy of delicate sailing canoes in the foreground still makes this photo a gem.

A sailing canoe from that era up and planing.

The Toronto Dinghy

Several years ago I was working on a sailing history project on the Genesee Dinghy, one of the earliest North American racing dinghies. It never got farther than a couple of chapters. Last week a canoe sailing historian contacted me with a question and I dug out the first chapter, "The Toronto Dinghy", which detailed the precursor to the Genesee Dinghy, the two Toronto dinghies introduced at the end of the 19th century. I reproduce a PDF of the first chapter here for the few Earwigoagin readers who are interested in early North American small boat history.

(As always, use the pop-out icon, top right, to open the PDF in another tab for printing or download.)



The George Aykroyd 14 footer would become the turn-of-the-century L.S.S.A. restricted 14-footer class.

And more L.S.S.A 14 history from the CBIFDA blog.

Header Photo: San Diego Swallow Scow

Paul Naton

The previous header photo was of Rudder's Swallow scow being sailed on San Diego Bay. Paul Naton sent this historical photo along and I present the un-cropped version. It is of his great grandfather Fred O'Farrell, who co-owned this Swallow with Claude Woolpas. Paul details below how he received the photo and his dogged research into the time and place this photo was taken.

Beetle Catboat

A video of the quintessential small American catboat, the Beetle Catboat, a 3.73 meter by 1.82 meter sailing dinghy based on the big Cape Cod working catboats. You can find Beetle Cats here and there up and down the East Coast, though most of the racing is found along the Massachusetts shore line. I very much like the different colored sails. Very classy!



Hog Island start 10-15-17 from Emily L. Ferguson on Vimeo.

Catboats at the 2017 MASCF

In keeping this catboat thread going just a post or two more, here are two photos from the 2017 Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival.

A catboat out romping on Saturday afternoon.

Two catboats amongst the scrum before the start of Saturday's race.

Catboat "Silent Maid" at NSHOF Wooden Sailboat Rendezvous

Peter Kellog, owner of the sandbaggers Bull and Bear, brought his reproduction of the 1924 Sweisguth catboat, Silent Maid, to Annapolis to compete in the 2017 National Sailing Hall of Fame Classic Wooden Sailboat Rendezvous. Unless you see this catboat in person, it is really hard to fathom how big, how massive, the mainsail Silent Maid sets. I took several photos of Silent Maid before and just after the start of this pursuit race. Silent Maid went on to win the race.

Before WWII, Silent Maid was the biggest of the cruising catboats competing in New Jersey waters.

A Cricket Dinghy Uncovered!

I have written about the Cricket dinghy, one of North America's first dinghy classes. I had despaired of ever seeing one in the flesh but, in wandering the docks this weekend at the Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival, my mouth dropped open; there she was, floating peacefully tied up to the dock, an old timey Cricket! Turns out that Richard Scofield, assistant curator at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, had found one "upriver" as he said (I assume he meant the Miles River). It had been in one family for years and was outfitted with an outboard motor with which they puttered about the river. The bow had been bashed in. Richard purchased her because he found her a pretty dinghy and being, at one time, head of the boat shop, did a top-notch restoration. He also did some research which will allow me to update what is known about the Cricket.

The Cricket tied up at the dock. Not much is known about her origin. The name on the transom is Jiminy Cricket.

This Cricket is planked which does indicate a pre WWII build time.

Underway. A sprit rig with a club at the clew. A large, low aspect ratio cat-rig with no battens. This one looks to have a lower freeboard than some of the later Miami Yacht Club Crickets.

A very sharp bow. I can see how the Cricket could have influenced the Classic Moth Cates design which also has a very sharp bow.

The Cricket led the Saturday sailboat race at MASCF for a long time, finally finishing third to a C. Lowndes Johnson 18 footer and a Thistle.

I've had this file photo from the Baltimore Sun sitting on my computer for a while now, classified "mysterious dinghy." After looking at Scofield's Cricket at MASCF I can now positively identify the photo as another Cricket. Most likely the photo was taken in the 1950's.

2016 Downrigging Weekend: Chestertown Maryland

Chestertown Maryland is where our local Classic Moth fleet has home-base. It is also where the assorted tall-ships and traditional schooners of the Mid-Atlantic Region gather on the last weekend in October for a festival called Downrigging Weekend. John Z. was taking his now-surplussed Mistral over to Chestertown that weekend for a demo sail (and possible sale) and I tagged along with my old digital camera to hopefully get some photos of these traditional ships. The Chester River is narrow up near the town so my feeble zoom lens would not be at such a disadvantage in getting reasonable photos.

The Kalmar Nyckel is a reproduction of a 17th-century Dutch pinnace based on a design of 1625. This tall ship, under the command of Peter Minuit and financed by the New Sweden company, brought Swedish immigrants over to settle New Sweden (now the state of Delaware). The Kalmar Nyckel entered Delaware Bay in March of 1638. The modern reproduction was launched on the Christina River in 1998 and is the official tall ship of Delaware.

When I think of pirate ships, I think of a stern like this  (well maybe not the RIB).

The Sultana is an 18th century Royal Navy coastal patrol schooner used to collect duties and pursue smugglers. The original was built in Boston in 1767, made its way to England where she was purchased by the Royal Navy and sent back to patrol the East Coast. The reproduction was built in Chestertown in 2001 and is also based out of there.

The Pride of Baltimore is Maryland's official tall ship. This is a reproduction of a Baltimore clipper, a top-sail schooner best known as a privateer. Long, lean, fast, the most famous Baltimore clipper, Chasseur, gained fame (or infamy) when it raided English merchant fleet off the British Isles coastal waters during the 1812 war.

Lady Maryland is a reproduction of a pungy schooner designed for fast transport of perishable goods from the farms of the Eastern shore and lower Neck to the city of Baltimore. The heyday of this type was short, being built from the 1840's to about the 1880's. Lady Maryland is one of the older reproductions, being built in 1985.

The stern on Lady Maryland is very pretty; upswept lines meeting a transom with curved topside. The boat on the davits looked to be a traditional Chesapeake Bay small working skiff.

The A.J. Meerwald is a New Jersey oystering schooner. She is the original, built in 1928 and has been New Jersey's official tall ship since 1998.

The Chesapeake Bay's own oystering work boat, the skipjack.

Back to the Classic Moths, John Z was able to complete the sale of his Mistral, Y2KBug. Here is the new owner getting sorted out.

From the Earwigoagin archives, the Classic Moth fleet racing with Chestertown in the background.

George Steer's 1856 design "Laura"

In 1856, the last year of his life, George Steers, the designer of America, designed a small 24' racer for Harry Latrobe Roosevelt of Skaneateles N.Y. Named Laura, this Steer's racer would spend her entire career on Skaneateles Lake. On Christmas Day, 1936, after being hauled for the last time, Osgood R. Smith, John Barnes, and Art Emerick would measure Laura on the beach. Eight years later, Osgood R. Smith wrote an article on Laura in the August 1944 issue of Yachting magazine and included the lines they had assembled.

Laura provides a glimpse of how the New York designers were moving the lines of the New York oystering workboat into a recreational racer. (See also Chris Thompson's article on the 1853 Una design by Bob Fish). We see the basis of form that would be tweaked, some fifteen years later, into the all-out Sandbaggers of the 1870's. Compared to Sandbaggers,  the George Steer's Laura is a wholesome hull of moderate proportions though we can see the fine bow and the tucked-up aft rocker of the Sandbaggers. There is no record of Laura needing sandbags to be raced.

Laura's sections show a fair bit of tumblehome.

The beam is not excessive.

This side view has the stern lopped off because the copier distorted the stern as the page made it's way down into the binding of the book.

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My night of Sandbagger sailing.

Wood Engraving: Print of Annapolis Harbor around the Civil War

I saw this wood engraving on my good friend, Tom Price's, work desk and he was kind enough to scan it in. In poring over the wood engraving, the best we can make out, putting our heads together, is this is Annapolis Harbor just after the Civil War. Sketched from the vantage point of the North Severn River, we see several Navy tall ships anchored off the Naval Academy, a steam ship motoring west on the Severn River towards the Bay, and off to the right, presumably anchored, a Monitor iron-clad war-ship. (Plus, a small cat-boat sailing amongst all this big lumber.)

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James W. Cheevers, Senior Curator at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, sent along this detailed email on the history represented by this engraving, from which I quote below.

"This line engraving is definitely post Civil War. It is a view of Annapolis from across the Severn River with the Naval Academy main pier left of center surrounded by ships, a good view of the seaward side of Stirbling Row, the Maryland State House sticking up at center, McDowell Hall at St. John's College, a clear view of the Academy's Steam Engineering Building (1866) and New Quarters or Cadet Quarters (1868) with a copula out of perspective by sticking up too high in proportion to the building.

"I think the three-turreted monitor is a mistake, too. I have record of seven different monitors visiting and/or serving the Naval Academy between 1866 and 1910, but none of them had three turrets. Those with double-turrets included USS Amphitrite, formerly Tonawanda; USS Nevada (BM 8), and USS Terror. I think the monitor is probably meant to be USS Amphitrite which had a funnel between its two turrets that when retracted could have been mistaken from a distance as a turret. It was used at the Academy for training between 1866 and 1872.

"I note that there is an inscription lower left. It looks like the words Fleet and Puck. Puck was a magazine from 1871 to 1918, but its illustrations were primarily cartoons. There appears to be another inscription on the right where the dark water meets the land. It seems to end in "weed" so it could be an artist's name. If are able to better decipher either of these inscriptions examining the original up close, let me know what they are because we do have reference books on artists to perhaps help you further.

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(Click on image for larger view.)

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Erratum: Peter Belenky, who it turns out has done marine etchings, points out that I originally erroneously categorized this print as an etching when it is actually a wood engraving. I've pulled his detailed comment over to the main post and made the appropriate corrections to the main post. Thanks Peter for the education.

"Not an etching, but apparently a wood engraving. In both processes, ink is rubbed into grooves on the plate and wiped off the surface. Then paper pressed down picks up the ink. In an etching, the principal means of creating grooves is scratching the design through a varnish coat on a metal plate and bathing the plate in acid. In an engraving (metal or wood), the grooves are gouged with tools. These are "intaglio" processes, meaning that the lines are printed where the surface is cut away. In the alternative "relief" process, like book printing, the blank spaces are below the surface and ink is rolled onto the raised surface to be printed.

"The wood engraving process was the chief means of publishing images in magazines of the Civil War period, and many of Winslow Homer's drawings and paintings from the front were reproduced and circulated in this way.

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More from James Cheevers: In response to a further inquiry of mine about the dock with the paddlewheeler at the top right of the engraving, Mr Cheevers sent along some further fascinating details.

"Yes, there was a wharf at the end of Maryland Avenue on the Severn River. It was not a public wharf after 1847 because the Federal government had purchased the property as part of the first expansion of the new Naval School at Annapolis. In the post Civil War period the wharf was called Phlox Wharf after the screw steamer USS Phlox, built in Boston in 1864 as F. W. Lincoln and purchased by the U.S. Navy. Phlox had seen active service during the battles of Fort Fisher and then was reassigned to the U.S. Naval Academy when it returned from Newport, RI, to Annapolis. Phlox served as the academy's ferry or water taxi from 1865 to 1873.

"There had earlier been an additional pier at the end of Tabernacle Street, later College Avenue, but I think by the Civil War period it was gone.

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Bogie Sails, Bacall Bails

Found this photo on page 72 of the February 1948 issue of Motor Boating. The caption says:

"Bogart sails, Bacall bails: one of the film colony who really sails becasue he loves it. Humphrey Bogart both headed the rules protest board and tillered Slugger to finish somewhere in the Balboa dinghy fleet. Here Bogey's wife, Betty (Laureen Bacall)(sp?), performs as a good crew should, bailing Slugger out.

I'll always appreciate the artwork you'll find on the covers of these old magazines.

TOH to Google for their continuing effort at digitizing these old magazines.

Header Photo: The Flight of the Snowbirds

Hugh R. McMillan Photographs - UCI Libraries

The previous header photo was of the fleet of 12' Snowbird dinghies making their way upwind in the "Flight of the Snowbirds", a one-race tour around Newport, California harbor. Held in August, the race usually attracted over 100 Snowbirds with the record topping out at 167 Snowbirds in 1957. Over the Snowbird history, the class issued more than 500 numbers but, being primarily a junior boat, died out in the late 1960's as yacht clubs turned to smaller, lighter boats for their junior programs.

The Snowbird first appeared as plans in the 1921 "The Rudder" magazine and by 1923 they were being built in Newport as a junior boat. Designed by Willis Reid, the Snowbird remains the only American designed sailing dinghy to be used in the Olympics, selected as the Olympic monotype for the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.

Featuring a V-shaped chine hull, from this angle the Snowbird bow and chine looks similar to the latter designed Danish OK Dinghy, though the Snowbird is a much wider, stable boat than the OK Dinghy.

Hugh R. McMillan Photographs - UCI Libraries

Raced single or two-up in the "Flight" we see, in this photo, a wide range of crews, from juniors, to couples, and all-women.

Hugh R. McMillan Photographs - UCI Libraries

For a 12 foot boat, this is a very big mainsail, well-suited to the lighter airs of Newport Harbor.

Hugh R. McMillan Photographs - UCI Libraries

• First person account of the "Flight of the Snowbirds".
• More info from SailboatData.com.
• When the Snowbirds ruled the Harbor.

The Pipsqueak - A 5-Footer from the Douglas Fir Association

When I wrote about my El Toro sailing days I recounted a same-age compatriot from the community accompanying me, as I learned to sail, in his six-foot sailboat. I decided, using my faded memory, to see if the InterWebs would offer up any clues as to the identity of this tiny sailing dinghy and, sure enough, I came up with a good candidate, the Pipsqueak design by John Burroughs. The design was sponsored by the Douglas Fir Association and plans were cheaply obtained. The Pipsqueak was even smaller than I remembered it, a five-footer instead of a six-footer.

I found some photos that were put up by the Tacoma Public Library. It is indeed a very small sailing dinghy, but a very good size to tow behind a bicycle as my friend would do.

Tacoma Public Library

Tacoma Public Library

Tacoma Public Library

The May 1956 issue of Life magazine had a one-page spread on the Pipsqueak.

My recollection is the Pipsqueak was very slow compared to the El Toro (my word! - the sail looks to be made from some sort of colorful domestic fabric; dress? sheets? table-spread?), but my friend had a lot of fun with her, though mostly paddling her. I must say that I have never since seen a sailing dinghy towed behind a bicycle.

Boating Cayuga Lake

A beautiful vintage hand-colored postcard picked up from the Web.

Vintage Photo of a Sneakbox and Catboat

I pulled this vintage photo off the Internet.

The photo is obviously staged but does show a sailing day trip to the New Jersey bays. The growth of the railroads out to the New Jersey shore allowed the Philadelphia and New York crowd to enjoy day trips where local watermen would gladly take them out on "party" catboats, or if you were adventurous, you could rent out the smaller sneakbox for a sail. Date for the photo...my guess is the 1890's. No idea of the actual location.

Old Star Photos

Most likely this is racing at Larchmont Y.C; time frame between 1914 to 1918.

Ev Emerson Photo Collection

Ev Emerson Photo Collection

The origin of the Star boat

Header Photo: SS Sloop

The previous header photo was of two intent sailors on their SS Sloop, one of U.S.A's oldest dinghy classes. Designed by Benjamin Hallock of Moriches Bay, Long Island in 1908, he built 74 of them before he died in 1931. About fifty more SS Sloops were built after Hallock with at least one new build in the new millennium.

Moriches Bay, on the south side of Long Island, normally has a consistent sea breeze in the afternoon and the SS Sloop sports a low slung gaff rig designed to be easily handled in strong breezes. About thirty of the SS Sloop are still seaworthy and the centennial regatta in 2008 had a good turnout.

Hallock was known as a good builder of cat boats before he designed the SS Sloop. However, the flat sections and narrow beam of the SS Sloop show a lineage more towards the Seawanhaka racers rather than the fatter cat boats.

The SS Sloop has a small spinnaker which is set with both sheet and guy on the same side of the mast, not the usual arrangement for flying a spinnaker in modern sailboats.

The 16.5'  hull (5.03 meters) has a long enough cockpit for three. The rudder is set inboard. The gaff rig definitely has a low center of effort.

A SS Sloop out of her natural habitat. This one is moored to a dock at Cayuga Lake, one of the finger lakes of upstate New York.

• Will Haines writes a blog about the SS Sloop and also has a link to some PDF's of SS Sloop plans.
• Another gaff-rigged dinghy from the same time period, the Cotuit Skiff