Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 November 1883 — A Race of Sailors. [ARTICLE]

A Race of Sailors.

Talking of ships, it is wonderful to see how the heredity proclivity to get into a boat and sail somewhere is developed among the Norwegian youth and at what an early age. You see parties of small boys in boats that are miniature reproductions of the old Yiking ship, rowing and sailing about and managing oars and sails like veteran tars. A little fellow, apparently „ 9 or 10 years old, will sit in the stern-sheets and handle his tiller and order about his crew, consisting of three or four urohins of the same age, or a year or two younger than himself, with all the sang-froid and self-possession of an old pilot. Sometimes they come to grief and get drowned, though it is wonderfully seldom, considering the number of almost infantile sailors, that accidents occur. As for attempting to keep them away from the water, I am sure a timid mother would have as hopeless a task in trying to keep her offspring of the male sex on dry land as an old hen to warn her brood of duck chicks from a neighboring pond. Seeing the juvenile population all paddling about, one ceases to wonder that little Norway should boast a commercial navy of sailing-ships second only to that of Great Britain.— Cor . San Francisco Chronicle.