A Paper
Shell Of The Same Dimensions, And Of The Same
Weight, Will Last As Long, And Do As Much Work,
As A Wooden One Whose Hull Turns The Beam At
Thirty Pounds.
"An instance of their remarkable strength is
shown in the following case.
In the summer of
1870, a single shell, while being rowed at full
speed, with the current, on one of our
principal rivers, was run into to the stone abutment of a
bridge. The bow struck squarely on to
obstacle, and such was the momentum of the mass that
the oarsman was thrown directly through the
flaring bow of the cockpit into the river.
Witnesses of the accident who were familiar with
wooden shells declared that the boat was ruined;
but, after a careful examination, only the bow-tip
was found to be twisted in a spiral form, and the
washboard broken at the point by the oarsman
as he passed between the sides. Two dollars
covered the cost of repair. Had it been a
wooden shell the shock would have crushed its
stem and splintered the skin from the bow to the
waist."
Old and cautious seamen tried to dissuade me
from contracting with the Messrs. Waters for the
building of a stout paper canoe for my journey.
Harvard College had not adopted this "
newfangled notion" at that time, and Cornell had
only begun to think of attempting to out-row
other colleges at Saratoga by using paper boats.
The Centennial year of the independence of the
United States, 1876, settled all doubts as to the
value of the result of the years of toil of the
inventors of the paper boat.
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