The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1906-09-30


That is one of the shrewdest maxims
in horseracing. Long experience has
confirmed the maxim. Followers of the
thoroughbreds can easily recall any
number of embittering occasions when,
after carefully going over the field to
pick the winner of a stake, race and
lighting on one they've gone to with
confidence and the greater part of their
bankrolI, some wholly unconsidered
added starter, tackled on to the race at
the last minute before post time, has
nudged out of the bunch in the stretch
run and smothered all of the carefully
considered ones in dog trot,
There are other games in which the
added starter is dangerous. l thought
of one of them while reading recently
of a longboat race between a couple
of American battIeship crews. mas
much as there will probably be num-
Der of these longboat races between
men-o'-war crews during the maneu-
vers attending the big fleet review at
Oyster Bay, this narrative of one of
the most famous dumps" in the his
tory of longboat racing in the Amer
lean navy should possess a certain re-
newed interest. To my knowledge the,
story of that curious incident has never
been described in print by anybody who
actually saw the race. 1 was in Homo
lulu at the time it happened, in 1895,
and followed the entertaining affair
from it's beginning to its hilarious if
startling wind-up.
The United States gunboat Benning-
\, s<.l, HI
and wrecked the cruiser killing a large
number of bluejackets off the coast of
Southern California last year was lying
in the harbor of Honolulu during most
of the year 1895.
The Bennington has a pretty clever
longboat crew and a racy sort of
longboat The Benningtons longboat
crew had cleaned up right handsomely
on a cruise in the Mediterranean before
she worked her way around to the Pa
cific side, and most of the bluejackets
comprising the crew as it framed up
in Mediterranean waters were still at
tached to the ship as she lay in the
harbor of Honolulu. The Bennington's
longboat crew was by no means the
crack outfit of the navy, but it was
shifty eight and had won good many
more races up and down the world
waters than it had lost.
As the Fourth of July approached
the Bennington longboat crew began to
become nervous for a race on the big
day. The prowess of the man-o'-war
crew was pretty well known to the
various boat clubs of Honolulu, how
ever and as the boat club oarsmen
weren't much used to longboats any
how, combining their racing and p"ac-
ticing to shells exclusively. the Ben
nington's longboat crew had some
bother in getting racing opponents.
Presently, however, an eight made up
of Kanaka policeman on the Honolulu
force offered to row the Bennington
crew a longboat race over the four
mile course. The Kanaka cops were
huge men. of magnificent physical de-
velopment and all of them born water
men who had been used to pulling oars
almost since their babyhood. They got
hold of a. longboat of the man-o'-war
and began practice. The Bennington
longboat crew watched them practice
out of the corners of their eyes, pre-
tending to gaze elsewhere. and grin
ned in each others faces. 1t looked
pretty good TO them, that race. In
spite of the Kanaka cops strength and
experience as individual oarsmen they
seemed to make a bad, hash of eight
Dared work. and the Bennington crew
felt as though they already had the
purse as good as slowed in their ditty
boxes.
4 couple of days after the two-slded
race was arranged an eight, made up
of Kanaka fishermen, boarded the Ben !
nington and asked to be counted in as
in the race. The Bennins-
ton people were more than willing TO
have it a three-cornered affair. for the
sake of the betting. With three crews
in the affair they knew that they
would get a better price on their own
chances in the hand book that was
about to open on the event in Homo
lulu. So they consented to the eight /
composed of the Kanaka fishermen
coming in. When the Kanaka cops
We're consulted they, too. were willing
to have their countrymen compete for
the purse, and thus it was erected into
a three-cornered affair.
The Bennington ships company
watched the Kanaka fishermen practice
in the longboat they had dug up some
where for the race. and they weren
quite so gay over the situation when
they saw the way the spIendidly devel-i
oped fshermen's eight handled them
selves There was a steadiness and
power about their way of bending to-
the oars that was impressive. The