Fishermen's Finale

Races between fishing schooners are an old Gloucester specialty. They flourished 100 years ago when rival skippers tried to beat one another to port to get a better price for their cargoes of fresh fish. Last week Gloucester's crinkled old salts gloomily watched a race between the only two full-rigged schooners left in the North Atlantic fishing fleet: Lunenberg's Bluenose and Gloucester's Gertrude L. Thebaud. It was the finale of a three-out-of-five series born in 1920 out of rivalry between Nova Scotian and Gloucester fishing vessels.

Bluenose (slang term for a Nova Scotian) was defending the International Fishermen's Trophy for the fourth time under her skipper, Captain Angus Walters, a peppery old salt. The challenger, Gertrude L. Thebaud (named after the wife of a Gloucester summer resident who put up most of the $78,000 necessary to build her eight years ago), was making her second attempt to regain the trophy--with Captain Ben Pine at the wheel.

After a fortnight of squabbles and calms, Captain Walters finally won the series, three races to two. When he went to a luncheon given in his honor by the Boston Chamber of Commerce he discovered that the big silver trophy he had defended off & on for 17 years had mysteriously disappeared in transit from a Boston department store (where it had been on exhibition). Then, just as he was blasting the stiff-collared Bostonians with an explosion of Grand Banks invective, he was told that the race committee was unable (because of feeble public response) to raise the rest of the $10,000 expense money promised him. Hopping mad, Captain Walters, who had already received $4,000 from the committee, demanded that they produce the rest "immediately or else--." So saying, he stalked out of the room, vowing never to bring his Bluenose down to the U. S. again.

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