FAIR SKIPPERS.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9305, 4 January 1896, Page 9

FAIR SKIPPERS.

Detroit Free Press. exglisu womex who alte successful Sailors. Tiieir Influence urox Yachtixg ix Great Britaix. An American woman did a very plucky thing last Christmas. She challenged one of tho most skilful of English yachtswomen —Miss Constance E. Bennett, of London— to sail her a match race this summer in small boats of that class that in England they call half-raters. The American woman is Mrs Howard, wife of William Willard Howard an American journalist and canoeist, at one time president of the New York Canoe Club, who took a canoe to England last year which he patriotically named the Yankee, and invited English canoeists, one and all, to try conclusions against him and his boat.

His wife has the same spirit. Her challenge sprang from a defeat. At the meet of the British Canoe club last summer at Salcombe, in the ladies' race she was beaten by Miss Bennett. She came in second and considering the fact that she sailed over an untried course in an untried boat, loaned her by a friend and admittedly inferior in point of speed to that which Miss Bennett sailed—J. Arthur Brand's crack half-rater Spruce lll.—the performance was a highly creditable one. But it didn't satisfy Mrs. Howard's ambition. Hence her challenge. This time it was intended to be a case of Yankee woman in a Yankee boat against a British woman in a British boat. Thus it would have possessed all the elements of an international contest. And her boat was to be one of the out and out Yankee type—a true centre-board skimmer dish and not one of the bulb fin-keel monstrosities. But, alas, Avoman proposes and man disposes. In this case the man was L. E. Fry, of Clayton. N. V., who had been commissioned to build the boat. Last April Mr Fry fell sick and as there were several special features to be introduced into her the arrangement, which he alone could attend to, the boat couldn't be gotten ready in time and the match won't be sailed this year at least.

But Mrs Howard has established a precedent that ought to be kept up. If she doesn't sail the raco next year some other American woman should step in and fill the breach. It would be an excellent thing to establish some sort ot international trophy to be sailed for by women. It would exercise a great stimulus on this side of the Atlantic at least in inducing women to go in for yacht sailing. There is no American woman that I have ever heard of, who owns and sails a racing yacht, meeting men on equal terms and beating them frequently. There are several women who do it in England, taking the weather as it comes, blow high or blow low, sailing dozens of races in the course of a season, and not infrequently winning more races than any man who was opposed to them. And nobody goes into raptures over it on their account either.

Women in England have exercised an influence over yacht racing that has been decidedly stimulating, especially in the smaller classes. It may stimulate some American women to go and do likewise to learn something about some of these English women who thus show the world what healthy, fresh air and salt-water loving girls aro capable of.

One might begin with the Sutton sisters, Miss Maud and Miss Winifred. Their father t the late Sir Richard Sutton, was a famous yachtsman in his day, and their brother, who inherited his father's title and was a true chip of the old block, brought the Genesta over hero to try conclusions with the Puritan for tho America's cup. It was natural, therefore, that the two girls should take to yachting. They began racing in IS9I with the half-rater Eileen. A half, rater, I should explain, is a little bit of a craft, averaging between fifteen and sixteen feet on the waterlin*. But there is no better sort of boat in which to learn all the niceties of yacht sailing. The two sisters sailed the Eileen between them, but next year they disolved partnership and each went in for yacht racing on her own hook. Miss Winifred gave Herreshoff his first introduction to tho British public by ordering from him a half-rater which was felicitously named the Wee Win. Win she did from everything in her class, including the half-rater Pique which Payne had designed for MiS3 Maud, and at her end of the season it was admitted that she was the fastest boat of her size in British waters. And Miss winifred fairly won her share of the glory, for she always steered the boat herself with one man on board to attend to the sheets.

Miss Maud took her inning next year. Being ambitious to hold fir3t place for a a season at least, and being convinced that the surest way to reach that proud eminence was to patronise the Yankee builder, she gave Herreshoff an order for a onerater, which she named the Morwena. A one-rater, be it understood, is between eighteen and twenty feet on the waterline and in the up-to-date style has very long overhangs. The Morwena answered all expectations. She was by long odds the crack boat of her class at the end of her first season. Miss Maud sailed her in ail sorts of weather, and incidentally demonstrated that oilskins and sou-westers can be made to look very fetching. Mrs A. Hardie Jackson next persuaded her husband to get a Yankee boat and didn't have to do much talking either to bring him around to her way of thinKing, because the first experience with a small

British cutter in 1391 !..vl <Vee<l him to the conclusion that no ma;i should tempt Providence in such a craft unless he wants his family to realise or. a handsome life insurance policy. So he got Herreshoff to build a two and a one-halt rater, and as a compliment to his wife called her the Meneei:, which is Irish for '* my darling." Mrs Jackson is a very pretty woman, r.nd she looks her prettiest in her jaunty yachting rig. She sailed with her husband in the Meneen in all her races and fairly won her shave ot the credit which the boat acquired, qs the fastest in her class. Mrs Jackson goes in for other sports besides yachting. She rides to hound, in fearless fashion.

Another woman who goes in for hunting as well as yacht racing is Mrs G. A. Schenley. She is just as clever with a shot gun or rifle a3 she is with a tiller. She hasl owned and sailed several racing yachts, and entered the racing lists in 1839, with the two and one-half rater Thief. Next vcar

she went into the bigger class, racing the five-rater Valentine. A five-niter is about thirty feet on the water line. The Valentine did not prove a puccccS, and the plucky woman tried it again next year with the five-rater Windfall, a fin-keel craft, and reaped the reward she merited, the Windfall heading her class at the close of the season with twenty-two first prizes and twelve others. Thus it will be seen that in three instances, which do not include Mrs Jackson's half-interest in Meneen's victorious career, the crack boats in their respective classes in England have been owned and sailed by women, That is a record that the sex certainly lias a right to feel proud of.

Last year Mrs Schenley raced the fiverater Flatfish built for her by Soper. The Flatfish did not prove the most successful boat in her class, judged by the number of prizes to her credit, but she always sailed away from her competitors in a good blow, and it was in such conditions that Mrs Schenley seemed to enjoy the sport most. To see her at the tiller of the Flatfish in a thrash to windward in half a gale of wind, with Ice rails hidden by a smother of foam and the spray dashing mast high, was a slight much more calculated to impress the observer with proper ideas concerning the equality of the sexes than any number of speeches by the most voluble of women suffrage agitators. To handle a boat in such weather requires nerve and courage no less than ability and skill. Mrs Schenley has a husband who is a member of the Royal Yacht squadron, but he takes a back seat when it comes to racing, preferring to take things easy in a cruising ketch of 120 tons.

No article about women who race yachts in England would be complete without a reference to Miss Lord. With the one-rater Fay last year she sailed no less than sixty races, and all told carried off forty prizes. Her father owns the big schooner Sea Belle, and the little Fay is transported from port to port, wherever there happens to be racing going on, swung from her davits. Miss Lord has a new Fay this year which promises to be equally successful as the old one.

But though in yacht racing English women thus far have only entered the smaller classes, there are several who own large sailing yachts which they use for cruising purposes. One of the biggest belongs to Lady Clifiord, widow of Sir Robert Cavendish Spencer Clifford, long yeoman usher of the black rod. She may be credited with opening up a new profession for women, for she is the first woman in England to obtain a board of trade certificate as captain, which gives her absolute command of her own yacht. She has long been fond of a life on the ocean wave, and, being a woman who enjoys having her own way, she came to tho conclusion, after sundry experiences with skippers who occasionally let the wine run in while their wits ran out, that the only way to get it was to have herself invested with such authority as would make disobedience to her orders while at sea rank mutiny which the laws of the realm might punish severelySo, being already proficient in seamanship' she studied navigation, went before the board of trade, passed a satisfactory examination, and is now captain as well as owner of her own yacht. Of course when she goes on a cruise she has a competent sailing master and crew on board, but there is no longer any question of divided authority. On board of her own yacht Lady Clifiord is at all times " She who must be obeyed."

Another one of the ' • grandos dames " of English society who is fond of going to sea in a big yacht of her own is the Hon. Mrs Meynell-Ingram, eldest daughter of the late Viscount Halifax. She has large estates in Staffordshire and Yorkshire, is a lady bountiful among the poor, and a pillar of the church. She was one of the belles of the season, when in 1865 she married Hugo Meynell, who then put a hyphen after his name, and annexed the Ingram. He was an M.P., and a fox hunter of historical renown, but he never owned a yacht or had any taste for yachting, It was not until after his death in 1871 that Mrs Meynell-Ingram took to salt water. Her present yacht, the schooner Ariadne, she purchased in 1886. The craft is one of the largest two-stickers afloat, being 138 ft. long with a beam of twenty-five feet and a depth of nearly fifteen. Sho is a splendid vessel in a hard blow, and is large enough to go anywhere. Mrs Meynell-Ingram has made frequent trips to the Mediterranean in her, and one to the Baltic. .She is rich enough to own a steam yacht, but she is a true daughter of a nation that owes its ascendency to its mastery of the sea, and prefers the excitement and exhilaration of a wet sheet and a flowing sea to the comfort and luxury of slipping on an even keel in a miniature floating hotel.

By deeds and not by words women are winning their way into the world in these days. Nobody need be surprised if some day a challenge for the America's cup should come from a syndicate of English yachtswomen, every one of whom knows how to sail a boat to perfection. E. L. Ssell.