Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1899-07-15
A~BSURDITIES OF SAILORS.

New York Mail and Express: When the
Columbia stuck her nose into the Shiny
mud of Bristol harbor last Saturday and
refused to be budged the news was
spread broadcast, yacht racing sailors
shook their heads and whispered that the
craft was sure to be unlucky. One of the
men in the vicinity of Tebo's basin went
so far as to say that such an exploit so
soon after launching was a sure lndica-
ton that the Shamrock would win. No
body threw this human collection of SUI
perstitions overheard because his hear
ers also lived in glass houses.
When the Shamrock was launched she,
too, went on a nautical spree and tried
to sink a passing barge. South Brooklyn
heard this and also said: "Sha, too, is
sure to be u%nlucky,' but none would
commit himself as to which would win.
This superstition of sailor folk has eX-
listed so long that not only landsmen, but
bandsmen on warships believe in the
signs and tokens. Some of the yacht rae
ing sailors are as foolish in this belief in
hoodooed vessels as We're the Polynesian
fishermen who made sacrifices to Veran-
omautom and Torila for a good breeze.
The modern fishermen still make sacri-
fees Of a horse to their gods.
Among the things still considered un-
lucky are women, cats and sky pilots, or
ministers on board ship, recently a
crew mutinied OH being asked to go to sea
with a bride.
Hundreds of miles of articles have been
printed to show that a vessel unlucky at
birth remained SO through her career,
when in reality it is the other way. There
are numbers of instances cited to prove
the truth of the statement.
The present Defender was a double-
action, finely riveted, eighteen-carat sue
cess at getting into a most horrible mess
from the time the Herreshoff workmen
began to wedge her up for launching un-
til she defeated the Gould's Nigilant and
finally won from Valkyrie III. She did
more than any cup defender from the
days of the Magic, the first boat to de-
fend the trophy that the schooner yacht
America won in England; for the De
fender went so fast that Lord Dunraven
was willing to accept any excuse to leave
the country. 1t may be recalled that the
Defender, while being launched. stuck on
the ways at Bristol, and it became neCes-
Sary to block her up again before she
could be lowered to her normal element.
All the old %crOnies, some Of whom would
not walk under a ladder or step out of
bed left foot first in the morning, held
up their hands in horror and shouted,
'She's hoodooed." Even tars who believe
that wine always comes when one whis-
ties predicted all the disasters along the
beach to the poor, misguided racer, and
took aboard fresh cargoes of waterfront
rum as a sort of I-told-you-so habit
when the Defender met accidents, until
on August % of the year in which she
was launched, she met with her eleventh
and ran aground near the southwest end
of Hog Island at the entrance to Bristol
bay. AS a lucky craft since that time,
nearly four years ago, the Defender has
been remarkable. She grounded at New
Rochelle a few times since then, but won
from the Nalkyrie III. as she liked, and
If there be anything in sailor superstition
no unlucky BOAT could have lone that,
no matter how great her speed.
Another boat put down in the book of
superstitions as an unlucky racer was the
schooner Columbia the first of that name
to make a bid for Americas cup honors.
All the predictions OF the list of untimely
endings were put down for her in 1871,
when she belonged to Mr.. Franklin Os-
good. She and the Sappho were known
to be the two fastest %schooners in the
world, but ]. Livonia didn't think so and