Dinner Race

Except in the harbors of Finland and the Australian grain ports, nowhere else in the world was a sight to be seen like the spectacle last week on the blue water off Newport, R. I. Two oldtime, square-rigged windjammers sailed off together on a voyage. They were bound southeast few Bermuda, 660 miles away. So far as anyone knew this was the first formal match race in U. S. sailing history between two square-riggers, privately owned and under yacht pennants. Prizes were a special trophy offered by Commodore Van Santvoord Merle-Smith of the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club (Oyster Bay, L. I.) and a dinner for all hands, to be consumed in Bermuda and paid for by the losing owner.

With a spanking breeze on the quarter the two ships might have expected to scud down to their destination in three or four days. The bigger of the two, the 168-ft. Seven Seas, once had a speed of 18 knots entered in her log (five knots better than the best time of the sloop-rigged America's Cup-winning Ranger). But the breeze last week was light and from the south, too close for the three-masters to lay a straight course. It seemed likely that the race might last a fortnight.

The two old hookers had met several times before--on the Baltic. Seven Seas was a Swedish training ship launched in 1912. U. S. Yachtsman Inglis Uppercu bought her in 1929. sold her last year to 74-year-old William S. Gubelmann (National Cash Register Co.). Joseph Conrad, older (1882), smaller (116 ft.), chunkier, was also a training ship--used by the Danish Government for 52 years. Three years ago Author-Adventurer Alan Villiers saw her in Copenhagen, heard she was for sale, snapped her up. took a crew of eight nationalities on a picaresque world cruise, wrote a book about it (Cruise of the Conrad), then sold the ship to 24-year-old George Huntington Hartford II. A. & P. (chain stores) scion. Both ships still carried age-browned canvas last week but their quarters have been luxuriously remodeled. Joseph Conrad boasts electric lights, shower baths, a ventilating system, an electric call board for the captain.

Captain of the Conrad is Alexis Troonin, an oldtimer who learned his seamanship in Russian waters. Captain of Seven Seas is Hans Milton, who served as a cadet on the ship when she was known as Abraham Rydberg. Both crews include seamy professionals as well as enthusiastic amateurs. Owner Gubelmann was not aboard Seven Seas last week but his son Walter was. So was 18-year-old George Emlen Roosevelt Jr., cousin of the President, who has crossed the Atlantic 14 times under sail. On the Conrad were George M. Pynchon Jr., crack blue-water yachtsman, and Vadim Makaroff, son of a Russian admiral and second husband of young Owner Hartford's thrice-married sister, Marie Josephine Hartford O'Donnell Makaroff Douglas.

Because of her disadvantage in size, Joseph Conrad was granted a time allowance, but the race committee had not figured out last week what the allowance should be. Also undisclosed was the menu of the prize dinner.

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