THE LEDYARD CRUISE
Four Dartmouth canoe fleets have established the annual custom of followingthe Connecticut's Spring freshet down the traditional Ledyard Trail to the Sea.
Under the old covered bridge at Hanover, on a day late in May, 1920, a steady bustle of activity held the attention of a curious" group of onlookers. Seven green canoes of the Ledyard Canoe Club rapidly took aboard duffle and supplies. Fourteen men, attired with all the freedom that outdoor whims develop, filled canteens, stored packs and dunnage bags, and sorted paddles and equipment. There was a bit of bantering, a growl or two, a few pictures, and many curious questions. With canoes loaded and ready the fleet still waited. . . A slogging figure came swinging down Tuck Drive, tall, staunch, dark, slightly bent under a bulging pack. A stubby pipe stood out defiantly under a shapeless old felt hat, and orders began to rasp as soon as the bristling late arrival reached hailing distance.
The first Cruise of the newly-formed canoe club down the 180 miles of the Connecticut River to Long Island Sound was putting off. The late arrival was Richard H. Goddard '20, then President of the Club, lately returned from his second cruise with MacMillan in Arctic waters.
The seven, slim, crested crafts slipped out of the bridge shadow into the basin below crinkling with a freshening breeze. The early afternoon sun sparkled in a sheen of brilliants on the spread expanse of reaching, pulling River. Paddles dipped, strained, and slipped from the current in a spray of shimmering rainbow colors. The paddlers wolfed their work in sheer greed of their freedom, loosed for the first time on a great new Dartmouth Trail that should follow the changing mysteries of the Connecticut for days and nights on end, under the open sky.
That crew paddled day and night with one night out for sleep on shore. The fleet covered the 180 miles, with the six portages (Wilder, Bellows Falls, Vernon Dam, Turner's Falls, Holyoke Dam, and Windsor Locks) in four and a half days.
While later trips have demonstrated that the River is never twice the same and that the long trail is a new adventure each year, some of the thrills of that first voyage will never be displaced.
Hartland Rapids was reached in late afternoon after the ten-mile run from White River. The fleet had planned to run the rips, though the precaution of landing the motion picture camera man was taken. The lead canoe made the triple drop and skimmed out into quiet water below without hazard, but the second caught the whirlpool above the last rapid and spun over in a flash. The two men hung to the rocks for a moment trying to save the craft, but in an instant canoe and men boiled in the white water. A hand and arm popped through the spray once or twice, then a head shot into sight. One man was secure. The other failed to come up. The din and churn of flung water gave no sign until a head appeared well downstream. A waiting canoe grabbed the exhausted paddler, to find that he still clung to his paddle. The canoe was smashed beyond repair. The crew joined other canoes and after a drying fire and grub below the rapid the fleet entered the first night's run, having portaged the rapids with the remaining canoes. E. G. "Piers" Plowman '20 was the doughty voyager who clung to the paddle; his crew mate was R. E. "Ruff" Miller '24.
The canoes ran on through the night to Bellows Falls, changing watches every three hours. A man paddled stern for a watch, then bow, then slept in the blankets amidships for the third trick. The fleet ran silently through the darkness, signalling back by flashlight warnings of shoals and obstacles.
From an early breakfast above the Falls, the craft portaged by truck, then back in the stream trundled on through long sun-baked reaches that wilted paddlers and sleepers. Past Brattleboro at dusk, the crews halted for mess on the rocky east bank and slipped on to reach Vernon Dam at midnight. Tired shoulders bore the dunnage and canoes through the light-flooded yards of the generating plant and around the tortuous trail down over the steep rocky quarry rim below, to the River.
Mac, genial camera man from Fox Film, bent under his load of paraphernalia, stumbled wearily through the maze of light following a portaging crew whose voices he could dimly hear ahead. Suddenly, with a dull plump he landed, camera atop, on the sand spit among the canoes below. Promptly someone gave tongue in a wild, "Look out!" But Mac although not irreparably injured had to be gathered up and laid away in a canoe bottom to sleep until morning.
The next morning's mess camp in the cove above the bridge at Turner's Falls is one of the indelible impressions of that trip. On a thin strip of sand, three morning ..fires sprang up in straight wisps of smoke, with a circle of pans and packages scattered around each, where an impatient gesticulating cook stirred flapjacks, poked the coffee pot, and growled regularly for more wood. Someone came in from a friendly nearby farm with Jersey cream. Before the camp the River spread in a wide reach bordered by the dark shadow of woods and marsh. The bridge swung across through the mist below out of unsubstantial vagueness to join the bank on our right.
The ripple of curling water came out of the mist, and two shadows grew evenly under the heave and give of hungry paddles,
Came a hail, and as the fog drew away two belated canoes swept up to the mooring with a great bunch of pink swamp azaleas at the bow of each. Pans clattered, new comers rummaged in packs, a cook tossed a last pan of flapjacks, and bellowed, "Come and get it."
That afternoon from a late noon mess at Sunderland the cruise made its first spurt, when the lead canoe, with three men paddling, covered twenty-one miles to a night camp site above Holyoke in three hours and twenty minutes. Ashore for ten hours, the crews had their first long sleep of the voyage that night in a fern-bordered camp on the east bank. It was there that Bob Bartlett, ex-'22, rigged a stern bell on his craft so that watches thereafter could be rung with regulation seamanship.
Each of the critical spots in the long cruise has its tales now for the three fleets that have gone down have encountered different conditions each time. . . French King Rapids below Vernon Dam was the dread of the first fleet, from the wild yarns of natives. Yet the crews in that season of high water passed uneventfully through the dreaded gorge. The men of the second trip still talk about the nightmare of running down that bad rock channel which they found in low water a turbulent rip.
It was at the mouth of Miller River above Turner's Falls that the second cruise collected one of its choice anecdotes. Charley Throop '22 was asleep in the blankets while his running mate Don Bartlett '24 paddled during the night watch. All hands were jumpy over the French King Rapids episode. As usual, signals were flashing down the line by flashlight. Bartlett, irritated by the blinding of some one's light barked, "Put that light out!" Instantly there was a scramble amidships, as Throop fought with the blankets, and he was all but over the side into the river before restraining hands reached him. Said all he heard was—"LIGHT OUT!"
The run southward to the Sound has no further particular hazards. The three fleets have made it under varying conditions with a chief pleasure in the growing power of the River widening always with its incoming streams into a great body where finally the salt tides and wind-rolled waves made wallowing canoes forget the placid upland reaches.
Each year the Dartmouth fleet has visited the Hartford Yacht Club, following a custom inaugurated by a warm invitation of Commodore Merritt in 1920. That first trip was tendered a dinner at the Club House and sang itself to drowsiness on the wide porches, to slip back to the canoes at midnight for the last day's run to the Sea.
A 500-foot film made of the first trip, covering the voyages from Hanover to Springfield, Massachusetts, is now owned by the College. Each cruise brings back a set of pictures of vagrant camps and flashes of action. Mr. George McCollom who was sent by Fox Film to shoot the first trip returned voluntarily the next year to share the thrills of the cruise. The great silver cup presented to the Canoe Club by Dr. John E. Johnson '66 to bear the names of voyagers who made the long cruise has already a well-lettered bowl.
Preparations are already under way at Hanover for the fifth annual cruise when the greatest fleet of all will follow the Spring flood down in the full of the moon in May. The trip has become a custom in time it will 'take rank in the honora able succession of Dartmouth traditions.
Each cruise that pulls down through the wide salt marshes that look out to the white-capped lighthouse point and beyond to the open sea, that finally drags its canoes from the River to camp on the open beach around a drift fire establishes again the fact that the Dartmouth outdoor spirit is not only alive but growing, finding new ways still to reach and possess the freedom and power of the Open Trail.
Just below Ledyard Bridge
In the Windsor Canal
The end of the Craise-Saybrook Beach
Diamond Peaks on College Grant
Instructor in English
