Anyone now living who can remember the great whaleboat races that were held off Oak Bluffs and at New Bedford during the eighteen seventies must have been a small child and must be an elderly person today. The participants have gone; the whaleboats have disappeared from these waters and, except for modern reproductions which are not exactly true to the old models, from all the waters of the earth; and the eyewitnesses of the races are a dwindling few.

At various times in recent years the name of Captain Isaac C. Norton has figured in print. The captain is one of those remarkable characters who seldom do anything that is not worthy of passing mention.

Having arrived at the age of eighty-two-years, of which thirty or more are never guessed at, his trim six-foot figure with military shoulders and snow-white vandyke beard is a familiar sight in Vineyard Haven and causes no little comment whenever he is seen, even by those who have known him for a lifetime.

The annual Cottage City whaleboat race announced for Friday, but which was postponed on account of the high wind and the non-arrival of the New Bedford competitors, came off Saturday afternoon at 4 o’clock. Four boats were entered, viz.: The Oak Bluffs, The Edgartown, and the Sixth Ward and Sixth Ward, Jr., of New Bedford. The course was three miles, the boats starting from the judges; boat off the south end of the plank walk and pulling alongshore passing the Oak Bluffs and Highland wharves, thence around the buoy off East Chop and return. In drawing for positions, Edgartown was No.