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Bluenose
and schooners in general - we grew up with it, everytime we spend 10 cents we get to see it! In 1920, the Halifax Herald newspaper established a formal racing series. The races would be between bona-fide working ships. That year, elimination races in both contries selected contenders. The schooner Esperanto out of Gloucester, Mass., defeated the Delewana of Lunenburg and took the trophy to New England. Dismayed Nova Scotians hired young Halifax designer William Roue to design a ship to challenge for the trophy. The schooner Bluenose was built and launched in Lunenburg early in 1921. In October 1921, after a season fishing on the Grand Banks, Bluenose defeated Gloucester's Elsie and brought the trophy home. In a 18-year racing career Bluenose did not give up the trophy. The American schooners Henry Ford, Columbia, Gertrude L. Thebaud, as well as a number of Canadian vessels built in an effort to surpass Bluenose's remarkable sailing abilities, could not grasp the trophy from her. The final race series took place in 1938. The Bluenose, by then 17 years of age, defeated the Thebuad one final time. Still handling as smartly as ever, Canada's most famous sailing vessel was a tribute to the Nova Scotia shipwrights and sailors who built it and many other fishing and cargo schooners. In 1942, despite the efforts by her master, Capt. Angus Walters of Lunenburg, and others to keep the ship in Nova Scotia, Bluenose was sold to carry freight in the West Indies. The other schooners were gone. Esperanto and Columbia were smashed on the shores of Sable Island. Henry Ford and Elsie sank in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In 1946, the Queen of the North Atlantic joined the fate of her greatest rival, the Gertrude L. Thebaud and foundered on a reef in the West Indies.
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