It is a live and growing saga. Like all great creatures she was touched with mystery. In , W. According to the rules, contenders had to be rugged enough for the salt-fish trade and to have spent a season on the Banks. This would never do. Bluenose was conceived and built at once to retrieve the lost honor. Her design was entrusted to W. Roue of Halifax, who was just emerging from the amateur phase of a career that has gone on until he must be listed next to Donald MacKay as the greatest marine designing genius Canada has ever produced.
He gave her a sheer that left low head room in the forward end of her forecastle. The building yard of Smith and Rhuland at Lunenburg, where she was hull No. The low-ceilinged forecastle revealed itself when she was in full frame and the deck stringers were going into her. It would never do. A man could hit his noggin in that low place jumping out of bunk in a hurry. Who ever heard of a forecastle that did not have plenty of room to jig in?
Starting from just aft the forecastle hatchway, the deck was given a new sheer that measured a full foot increase at the stemhead. What a nose that gave Old Stormalong! With her big bowsprit jutting out of it she seemed to glower like an angry she-elephant, trunk extended, ready to charge. Roue had given her great power forward, a virtue the change in sheer should not have affected one way or the other, but when she demonstrated she could sail dry decked and easily triumphant up a wind and sea that drowned her rivals, men looked at each other in wonder.
It must be her bow! Not science and human genius had made her great, but a last-minute happenstance. There was her wraithlike bow wave to further the superstition. It was no ordinary boil of spume hurtling off a rushing cutwater. It was light and airy. Sometimes if a man stared into it long enough it showed him a hollow within; a beautiful watery crypt shot with rainbow.
See dere! Roue smiled and let the pretty fancy live on. There was in truth a hollow inside her wave. He had called for her planking to be rabbeted into the sides of her stem, yacht fashion.
Traditional fisherman construction insisted that it be rabbeted into the back of it. Into the back of her big oak stem it went. The planking instead of fairing smooth was drawn in to make a slight ridge in her at the exact place where she turned her wave and her quick water was spinning as it fell away.
There were several attempts to copy her. None of them was any good. Man, her myth insists, could not copy as spooky a ship as she. Angus Walters chuckled when we asked him about it. Those fellas who tried to copy her squinted and whittled models. At night, when she was on the ways, they tried to measure her lines with calipers of long sticks. How could they copy Bluenose that way?
She would be a hard vessel to copy. Her true mystery is there: the mys! They have, each one an individual being, a soul if you are a sailor and a realist. No two ship personalities are ever exactly alike. Even one-design dinghies fashioned of mahogany cut off the same log, with fastening identical to the ounce, can be as unI like as littermate puppies or your own children.
Bluenose was given the gift of greatness; great luck and great personality as well as great speed and power. There will never be her like. If there is such a watery annex to Paradise, the International Cup could enjoy a ghostly revival there. The whole fleet can muster now. The Ford broke up on the Newfoundland coast. The Elsie was lost off St. Columbia floundered off Sable Island in the hurricane of August, Thebaud was rammed and lost in the harbor of LaGuaira, Venezuela, in a February, , gale.
The yarns about the racing are distilling down now with the years, shedding the dull figures and dates and leaving those facets of the saga that are going on into folklore. The gargantuan arguments are now shorn of all bitterness. The colossal rum-drinking no longer has a headache.
Even that Fairway Buoy in Halifax Harbor that Bluenose, racing Columbia, passed on the wrong side to her undoing during the race bobs happily, shed of all rancor, in the happy stream of reminis-. For our money Long Albert Himmelman emerges as her never-to-be forgotten character. He was a very tall, thin powerful Lunenburger. As if that microscopic change in trim had started an engine within her, Bluenose perked up and sped away. His uncanny ability to feel trim'and rate of speed by some strange inward sense helped him discover where Bluenose liked her ballast.
Unlike other schooners who relish it midships and aft or midships and forward, Bluenose insisted that her pig iron be stowed in her two ends. Too much forward however would kill her as dead as a scow.
Angus Walters used that knowledge on the rare instances when he wanted her to look slower than she was. He could kill her in light air by simply ordering men forward. They liked the look of the sky that day. It held promise of wind. It was a short four-mile reach with sheets well off and the two vessels were within easy conversational distance all the way.
First one would take the lead and then the other. Ford had won the first race, a drifting match that barely finished within the time limit, and the Yankees were cocky. Boasts and invective and taunts and dire threats filled the air back and forth. Knot by knot the wind picked up. With her wind clear she would have her weather and her kind of sailing in 10 seconds. He was lost a few years later in his own vessel with all hands somewhere between St.
Check out the pictures of the Bluenose and count the masts. There are two! Like most schooners, the Bluenose was built to be a fishing ship this ship even held the record for the largest catch of fish brought into Lunenburg at the time but it was so fast that the Captain, Angus Walters, knew it was perfect for racing.
Schooners rely on wind power to blow the sails and during a race, the captain instructs their crew on where to place the sails to make the ship go faster. The ships sail over long-distance courses between 35 and 40 nautical miles. The ships must finish their race within 9 hours and the first one to cross the finish line wins! In its year racing career, the Bluenose was only ever defeated once. Bluenose sail No. After such a long winning streak, the Bluenose was famous and travelled the world!
Bluenose struck a reef off Isle aux Vache, Haiti on 28 January Despite the loss, the legacy and admiration for the once mighty schooner lived on in the hearts and minds of Canadians — especially Nova Scotians. In , Bluenose II was launched. It was built by many of the same people who had worked on the original vessel at the same shipyard in Lunenburg. The project was financed by Oland Brewery to advertise their products, while also promoting Nova Scotia's maritime heritage and tourism.
Captain Walters sailed on the maiden voyage. It continues to serve as Nova Scotia's sailing ambassador — an enduring symbol of the province — living history under sail. It is regularly open to the public, offering cruises and onboard access to its many admirers. In its role as an ambassador, Bluenose II has been a frequent presence for trade visits and international promotions for Nova Scotia and Canada.
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