YACHT OR SCHOONER?

The news that a Boston syndicate is building a "fishing schooner" of an especially fast design with the intention of carrying off the International Fishing Boat trophy next summer, when the ships from Lunenburg and Gloucester again compete, has aroused, a storm of quite justified indignation in Canadian ports. The Halifax "Herald" which originally gave the trophy, conveys in an especially caustic editorial, the sentiments held by all lovers of fair play on both sides of the border. The cup was offered for bona-fide fishing vessels only and the races were to be sailed in whatever weather Dame Fortune saw fit to provide at the time scheduled for the race. Special hulls and fair-weather rigging have their place in marine circles, but an offshore run under working conditions, in working hulls, with working rigging, was what the "Herald" wanted and what it got in the races between the Esperanto and the Delawana. The trophy, now at Gloucester, will be sailed for again next summer, and it is quite certain that no yacht masquerading as a fisherman will be allowed to compete. Such is the not uncertain dictum of the "Herald", and all lovers of rough and ready seamanship will heartily endorse this stand on the part of the Canadian journal.