Wonderful Boy Swimmers of New York
r
QANO OF SWIMMERS
AT AN
(Copyright, 1904, by T. C. McClure.)
0 EV, JIMMY! Betcher you can't
I jrHl I swim out to de ppar buoy!" ,
I iiMiul ne epar buoy, re(l and "ashing.
I'JTi ia straining In the glare of ' the
lltliiii W sun on the East river, half a mile
off shore In the wickedest tide that ever
raced from a fitly named Hell Gate to the
sea.
With that ebb tide, eager to profit by Its
rush, the dally wonder of fleet conies driv
ing down broad railroad floats loaded with
whole traJns, with a bow wave cascading
ahead of them whose roar can be heard
clear fn shore; tugs, single a ,.d tandem,
tearing down with wallowing lighters and
schooners, sometimes fastened five und six
abreast, sometimes strung out In single file
for a quarter of a mile: steamships, barges.
sail and steam and gasoline and oar all
pouring through the water gate of New
York to the sea.
And out Into this plunging, clustered
argosy, into tho heavy waves that always
toss in the strait and are made ten times
more violent by the rending and beating of
paddle wheels and screws, darts a tiny,
brown thing, four feet long, lean shanked,
ribs showing under a brown skin Jimmy,
heading through a world's hurrying com
merce to swim to the spur buoy on a darn.
And Jimmy does It. A few Jimmies get
drowned evry year, but the drowners are
only a tiny percentage of the 10,000 swim
mers whose round heads bob all around
New York from dawn to night and even
at night from the first warm sun of May
to the last days of September.
"I have seen the negro boys diving for
coins In the clear, blue waters off Key
West and In the lapus lazuli sea off St.
Thomas. I've seen the famous Port Said
swimming boys around the ships and I've
Been the Hawaiian surf swimmers, and I
think that the New York dock rat is the
best swimmer of them all." said a ship's
captain to me one day In the West Indies,
while we watched the handsome black
Fortune island men swimming around a
raft that they were building. "The Ha
waiian Is the only one who equals him,
and even he swims in seas that are high,
but regular and slow, whereas the New
York boy swims in a regular boll of waters,
cut criss-cross by tides and eddies and
whirls."
Jimmy of the river front deserves the
compliment,
His swimming hole Is from thirty to '
fifty feet deep and from three-quarters to
a mile wide, without a shoal spot In It.
That mad etraJt known as Kast river la
a pot that Is a-boil all the time.
Its waves do not roll. They tumble. Its
currents carry steam craft along like toys,
unless they head straight into the pull of
the tidal flow.
There Isn't a shelving beach or a foot
of natural shore of any kind left along the
Sides of this East river. It runs between
banks fifteen and more feet high made of
wooden spiles, iron and concrete, and t
standing straight In water thirty feet deep.
The tenement" house boy can learn to
srwim la two ways. He can go into the
floating baths moored at various piers,
which la a refuge of paltry souls, or he
tan walk boldly out to the end of a pier
where, within a few moments, somebody
will come to the rescue of his possible
hesitation by heaving him far out into the
racing river.
Around him will be three or four lean
boys, irtut they will not heed his despairing
goggle eyes or his bluhbery gasps for he p.
They are firmly convinced that nobody
can drown unless he comes up twice and
goes down for the third time. So they
wait for that third time religiously.
x4
EAST RIVER PIER.
. . . M . A.
If he hasn't learned to keep nimsell anoas
then thoy will snatch at him and haul him
to the surface and there, in the deep, open
liver. In the grip of a current that carries
them all along like chips, the novice gela
his swimming lesson.
It being mostly a case of "swim or
drown," the novice usually learns to swim
before he gets arhore. And the next day
he will burn with noble Impatience to lure
some other friend who cannot swim to
undeigo'the same glo;lous experience.
Owing to, the heights of the piers above
the surface of the rivers, the tenement
house boys become fine divers. The boy
who cannot take a clean-cut header is
viewed with open scorn, and kind hands
are ever ready to seize him, hold him out
over the brink by his feet and drop him in
head first, thus teaching him In boisterous,
but explicit, fashion how to dive.
They can't dive for coins like the boys of
the sub-tropics, for the water of the North
and East rivers is black-green, and no coin
could be seen a foot below the surface.
Also, the bottom being of the Inkiest of
black mud, the poor coin would be swal
lowed In forty feet of ooze the moment it
reached there. But throw a white oyster
shell or any similar bright object that Is
not heavy enough to sink In the mud, and
the average New York river-front boy will
bring jt up every time from water thirty
feet deep.
He can catch most objects before they
reach bottom. But If he has to get e'ear
down Into the marine night and grope
around in the swirling mud, -he will do It.
And if you hold a stop-watch on him the
second hand will make a good Journey be
fore the water gives him up again.
When the heat blasts the rookeries and
fills the dirty streets of . the poor districts
with sodden vapor and stenches and the
lamentation of wilting babies, the boys
practically live In the river.
It is nothing uncommon for boys to dive
Into the stream at 8 In the morning and
not to climb out again till noon.
Thin, shivering, with teeth shattering,
they still manage to escape cramps and all
the other terrors of the water. And In the
hours that they spend In the river they
get no rest other than that to be obtained
by clinging now and then, snail-like to the
slippery, slimy spiles.
They do everything that a fish does.
They can swim under water as well as on
top. They catch each other by the feet
and pull each other under. They struggle
with arms locked around necks, deep below
the surface till there Isn't a breath left
In their tough little bodies. They play
tag, prisoner's base and even ball In the
river. They will, on proper occasion, en
gage In n regular fight with all the rules,
pummellng one another with as much at
tention to detail as if they were on dry
land.
The plutocrats among them wear those
apologies for fig leaves that are known
as tights. The more rugged citizens wear
their skin alone.
The perfection to which they have
brought the art of dressing and undressing
Is worth a chapter In the history of clothes.
Arrived at the end of the pier, the tene
ment house boy gives himself a shake and
a wriggle. The shake Bhtds the tro liters.
The wrlgg'e sends the shirt Into the air.
The next Instant he Is overboard.
The lot of the . policemen assigned to
duty at the piers Is one of heartrending
humor. If one Is sighted heading down the
pier, and there Is time the spiles are alive
at the warning signal with boys, who flit
up the smooth, wet wood like lizards, fall
wildly on the tangled mess of clothes,
hurl themselves headfirst Into any old gar
ment and snatching wbt is left, race
away.
, '"; x v . . yy
I v,; ; : '3 ' yyy
ijlA:,. y-
READY TO DIVE FROM THE
If there isn't time to do this, the bos
on the pier grab the clothes and rush away
to hiding places or around to the next pie',
while the swimmers, ' resting conttne'.ly
In the water, make shrill remarks to the
policeman that are calculit'-d w I'll deep
cunning to affect his holiext private feel
ings. Aucust 1 Is the fete day of the New York
water boys. On that d.iy whoever ven
tures near the edge of a pier Is more
than -likely to be hurled Into the water.
It Is a sacred rite whose origin Is lost
In the past. "Launching Day" they call
It, and many a nllk-hatted. frock-coated
stranger, visiting a pier In the tenement
districts on business, has learned about
It suddenly by finding himself struggling
in the river, while a crowd of elaborately
Innocent loungers watch the kindly but
strangely clumsy efforts of the swimmers
around trying to save him.
Most tenement house boys whose timid
ity has kept them from learning to swim
until that day, are Impelled to the piers
by the same Irresistible impulse that usd
to lead persons to throw themselves un
der the car of old Juggernaut. Down they
wander, with palpitating hearts, and ovei
they go, to scramble ashore presently as
full-fledged swimmers or else to be grap
pled for and brought up HS corpses, which
Is something that happens en occasions.
"Launching Day" Isn't the ferocious feast
of riot that It used to be on the river front
years ap. when absolutely everybody who
ventured on a pier went overboard as
soon as someone could get behind him to
administer the shove. Nowadays strang
ers generally are left alone. But It Is
just as well to remain away from piers
if one does not wish to be "launched."
Among the boys it remains the same
wild ceremony that it has been; and he is
a singularly fortunate boy who escapes a
ducking.
The way In which a sputtering, water
blinded, terrified victim Is handled by the
boys who wait for him in the river Is a
liberal education in the art of saving life.
The boy swimmers of New York handle
a drowning lad as easily as the athletes
In a swimming tank handle the ball In
water polo. They dive for the sinking
one, drag him upward by the hair, hold
him up till he has his breath, pill him
under again, pass him from hand to hand.
Join hands and dance In a ring around him
In the water, and altogether do everything
that mischief and recklessness can lead
lmi s to do;
A favorite feat of these wonderful little
swimmers Is to dive from high places; and
there are high places enough and to spare
for the purpose. No boy Is considered as
worth real consideration and applause un
less he can dive straight and true from the
lower spars of a vessel. And during a
day's observation at almost any pier the
student of swimming will be sure to see
boys who can dive clean from the upper
spars of a full-rigged ship.
These daring ones, strange to say, are the
ones who meet with the least amount of
dlmster, atlhough every neason a few kill
themselves either by striking headfirst on
an anchor hanging overside or by diving
so deeply Into the bottom that they
smother In the black mud. But the big
gest proportion of drowning accidents come
to the boys who actually jump Into the
rtytr without being able to swim a stroke.
BOWSPRIT O' A SHIP.
expecting that the rest will hold them up
and te.ich them to swim; and the way
moft of these drown Is that the other boys
don't see them go over and never know
snythlng about it till the cry Is set up on
the pier by small brothers and sisters:
"Hey, ftilers, Jimmy has Just went down,
and he ain't come up again!"
Then all hands dive and grope around,
wim lncredltie . distances under water,
wrigfile into deudly spaces between timbers
deep In the daii: swirls of tide to search
for Jimmy. Generally they get him; but
generally Jimmy Is a dead Jimmy.
Yet day after day In the summer other
boys, totally Innocent of swimming a
stroke, Jump over tiravcly and trust to
lurk.
Almost all the river pirates are graduates
of the free swimming school of the open
river. As a result, they take to the water
as quickly and as freely as a water rat
when they are hard pressed.
Many a time the harbor police, coming
down on a boat full of stolen goods In mid
stream, close In on it only to find it with
out men aboard.
The pirates have sllrped silently Into th
river and are swimming with long, noise
less strokes for shore, three-quarters of a
mile away. They swim almost submerged,
showing barely the tops of their heads
above the surface, and turning at long In
tervals to get a breath.
So swift are the currents that they may
be carried two or three miles up or down
stream before they can reach a pier, and
then they must hang to It with only their
noses above the surface till they are sure
the coast Is clear oefore they dare to
clamber up.
The harbor police report In such case
that the pirates are supposed to have been
drowned. But they know better. They
have too many cases In their records of
river pirates, with a bullet or two In them
for extra cargo, going down In sixty feet
of water before their eyes, only to appear
In some hospital next day to have the bul
let wounds treated. A. L. HAZARD.
Rogue and His Money
A man from Buffalo who had been mud
to bellev that with tS.000 he could will
a large sum of money from certain person! I
in New York went to that city for the pus.
pose of doing so. In the game that eu
sued he lost his $5,000, as was Intended
Thereupon he assaulted the man who hal
Induced him to embark In the enterprise
and who took part in the game and had
him arrested. The magistrate discharged
the prisoner, remarking to the prosecutor
that he had come to New York for tho
purpose of "beating" some one else and!
he must abide by the consequences. Tho
man who parts with his money to tho
"green goods" man does It with the ex
pectatlon of getting counterfeit money to
pass upon other people. The innocent andl
unsophisticated Reuben from the country,
when he gets cheated In town, usually la
cheated in the expectation of cheating;
some one else or of getting something for
nothing. After he has lost his money Id
these enterprises he should at least havo
the decency to accept the Inevitable result
with some degree of composure. BalUmor
