fields rich in promise, have often proved barren and unproductive.
It would require too large an amount of space even to mention the names of all the persons to whom I feel indebted during the long period that this work has been in progress. I can only say here that I am extremely grateful for their valuable assistance and kind encouragement.
This book is largely a narrative of facts, which, I venture to believe, are not generally known to yachtsmen. At all events, no author, so far as I am aware, has ever recorded them. It has been my desire, then, to state each fact in a clear and closely related manner, and, so far as practicable, to give the original authorities from which these facts are derived, without notes or appendix. This I conceive to be the most acceptable form in which to present the book.
Whatever merit the result of my labors may possess will probably be found in the desire of the reader to know something more of the origin and development of a noble sport, and not so much perhaps in what I have succeeded in doing, as in what I have tried to do.
Cutter Yacht Minerva,
New York Harbor, July 12th, 1904.
