Beat Thro' Hell Gate Into a Frying Pan: Schooner Days MCXLVI (1146)

by C. H. J. Snider

Canadians After America's Cup - 6

FIFTY days after leaving her Cobourg birthplace, and 19 days after sailing from Quebec to make good her audacious challenge for the America's Cup, blue ribbon of the Atlantic, Vice-Commodore Gifford's Canadian schooner-yacht Countess of Dufferin lay at anchor in seven fathoms "off the point shoal" on the last day of her voyage to New York. The well-thumbed logbook of that long ago voyage continues:

"July 17th continued—A calm this morning. We weighed anchor about 5 a.m. Beautiful morning, the fellows jumped off the yacht for a bathe unabashed.

Noon a stiff breeze from S.W. up and we commenced beating up. At 3 p.m. took a reef in Foresail, 2 in Mainsail and took in the jib. Dead beat to windward to Hell Gate where the tide was so strong as to force us to anchor at 6 p.m. at Astoria.

"At 7 weighed anchor, the tide getting slack and beat through Hell Gate and all the way to Governors Island. A strong breeze dead to windward, the tide strong in our favor and we proceeded. The yacht was saluted on every hand as she proceeded and worked admirably with whole fore and after canvas, we brought up to an anchor at 8.50 p.m., amongst some other schooners abreast of Governors Island.

"In passing Hell Gate, one of our fellows was nearly hung by the neck by a painter of a small boat which a fellow threw aboard. He ran to catch it contrary to orders and it coiled around his neck and dragged him along the quarter deck."

Thats all there is; there isn't any more. Except a sort of footnote, a memorandum made afterwards, of the official measurements of the Countess and of the Madeline, the schooner yacht selected to meet her. It reads: "'Measurements of the Countess of Dufferin and Madeline taken by the New York Club:

This petering out of the original document is disappointing to us, but logbooks are not compiled to entertain readers but to keep track of the ship's progress and fortunes. This voyage was over. Commodore Gifford may have begun a fresh book for the Countess' experiences in New York, and maybe another for the voyage home. We have not been able to trace them. But if interested in the "future" of the Countess, from July 18, 1876, we will tell what we know in another number of Schooner Days.

The New York Yacht Club was courteous to its country cousin, the Countess from Canada, but the American press went mad over her. The tough time she had beating through Hell's Gate and escaping a hanging was paradise compared to her reception by the seagoing bow-wows of the sporting pages. They balled her "a clumsy coaster rather than a racer," "a bad imitation of a Yankee yacht built in Canada," "a clapboard top and roughcast bottom, with sails fitting like a purser's shirt on a handspike." The worst of it was that there was some truth in what they said. Nevertheless the gallant Gifford put her into the Brenton Reef trophy race, from Sandy Hook to Newport and back, something like the Rochester race around Lake Ontario in our day. This was just a preliminary canter to the America's Cup in the following month. She beat the famous America herself to the Reef. But there is a lot more to tell in the next number.

COUNTESS OF DUFFERIN (left) leading defender MADELINE in a close start. The COUNTESS is carrying her jibtopsail because her mainsail was so big it threw her out of balance without the smaller sail being set.