The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-08-11
THE QUESTION OF STEEL sPARs.
Yachtsmen Not Surprised at the Col
lapse of the COIumbia's Mast.
From the New York Tribune.

From the New York Tribune
1t certainly was the sensation of the day,
but when New York yachtsmen caught a
second breath many of them remembered
their private doubts abou, Herreshoff's
new invention. They then remembered
that the accident was moi properly to be
regarded as a surprise, no matter how
startling the news might be. Grave doubts
have been privately held at Heres
hohs new-fangIed mast, but in the face
of the fact that such experienced people as
the Bristol builders had adopted the new
invent lon, most amateurs held their peace
and waited.
The new invention in the way of a mast
may now he sad with confidence to have
been stake from the first. That a hol-
low cylinder of steel, almost entirely un-
braced in its interior, should be expected
successfully 10 sustain the enormous
strains which are necessarily borne by a
single-masted racer such as the Columbia
Is with difficulty understood as emanaung
from such experienced people as the Brls-
toll builders.
The idea in The making of this spar was
to econom.ze weight and wiudage aloft as
much as possible 1t was intended that the
lower mast should remain sufficiently hol-
low to allow The topmast 10 be housed
bONH liilO IL AS every DOlY KNOWS Inc
heel of an ordinary topmast is almost, II
not quite, as large as the masthead of the
lower mast, end, as wooden topmast was
being used at The time OF The accident, it
may he presumed that it was of about The
ordinary SIZE of its heel. This meant that
a large part Of the new lower mast had 10
remain entirely hollow and Embraced in
It's interior. Ii has been said in public
prints, and Ii seems probably correct, that
in the wider parts Of The lower mast there
were some interior braces and strengthen
eGs, such as steel angles and nanges and
disks, and that the topmast as il was
housed Sid down between guiding uprights
which lay inside the disks.
No doubt the attempt was made to
utilize every available inch inside the mast
for the purpose of gaining strength for the
spar. but so much of The valuable space in
side the spar was necessarily left unused
and vacant that the whole structure was
unsafe for It's intended purposes.
No matter what may have happened in
the dim past 1t is certainly not within the
memory of the present most active and
younger genera ton Of yachtsmen that a
topmast has been housed in an internal
tional race. With their enormous ballast
ing, the present racers can carry their
full canvas through hard winds When
Valkyrie II led to the fifteen-mile wind
ward mark in 1893 she carried her top
sail all the way and she united her top
mast on end, even though it was blowing
hard enough to split her balloons to rags
on her return. In almost anything short
of a high gale, these boats will carry a
topsail when running, and it is difficult
to see that the regular method of housing
topmasts is so detrimental as to call for
the acceptance of great risks in order to
provide a change.
The proposal to telescope the topmast Is
old b11f ba clever who have uyprfq1
on the idea have always been headed off
by the structural difficulties There can
be no doubt that among seafaring men
this accident will cause a still more deep
ly rooted prejudice against steel masts and
spars. When the steel mast was being
built a few months ago for the Defender
II was said in these columns that sailors
did not fancy a spar that would either
snap off and try to sink the ship or else lie
down from half way up and be thus unre-
movable by axes or any other process ex-
cept that supplied by a steam derrick.
The latter Is what happened yesterday,
and odds can be bet that Jack is not go
ing to like the steel mast. Give him a
good stick of Oregon pine, and he knows
where he is. He wants something that
will not crumple up and lie down and try
to sink him.
One fact about the mast that is now no
more should be mentioned, and with re-
gret that the lnVenuon missed f1re. IL
was evidently of great assistance to the
speed of the Columbia. Whether this was
chiefly in the saving Of windage aloft,
or in the extreme lightness Of the spar,
or both, will perhaps not now be known,
but 1t is certainly, as shown by the Off
cial timing, that the Columbia was go
ing ahead of the Defender a a rate she
had never shown before. If the Here
shon mast proved to be so valuable In
the short half-hour Of its trial. it's
thousand pities that it could not be re-
tanned as a permanency.