Page:Yachting wrinkles; a practical and historical handbook of valuable information for the racing and cruising yachtsman (IA yachtingwrinkles00keneiala).pdf/24

 *ble if a finer class of amateurs ever existed than those men who sailed the yachts of the club during the first twenty years of its history.

If some of those sturdy salts who flourished in the good old days of our famous schooner America could rise from their snuggeries in the cemeteries and sail on the squadron cruise of the New York Yacht Club next August, I would promise them a spectacle which would astonish them. I would first point out to them in Glen Cove a fleet of more than one hundred yachts, comprising some of the finest steam and sailing craft in the world. I would next call attention to the fairy-like electric, steam, and naphtha launches darting between the ships and the shore, some of them laden with ladies of bewitching loveliness, dressed so saucily and coquettishly in nautical raiment as to make a bachelor's mouth water.

I would next take my resurrected friends in a naphtha launch on board one of the big steam yachts, and while on their way thither they would marvel at the handiness and speed of the little boat which carried them. If it was the flagship Corsair they visited, her owner would be sure to have the side piped in true man-o'-war fashion in honor of the old-time salts. Climbing up the gangway ladder, walking aft on the snowy deck, they would be invited below, to the hospitality of the Corsair, which they would indeed be loath to leave.