Life, 1885-07-30 · page 12 of 16
Life — July 30, 1885 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "Combination No. 11" - America's Cup Satire This cartoon mocks the 1885 America's Cup yacht race challenge. The titled illustration shows two women in an absurd "combination" pose—one standing primly ("A Bather"), one crouching awkwardly ("A Crab")—satirizing proposed yacht designs to compete against the British challenger *Genesta*. The accompanying text humorously debates converting various vessels (the *Puritan*, *Priscilla*, *Dolphin*, or original *America*) into competitive racing boats. The satire targets American overconfidence and silly improvisation: vessels with "slow" names can't possibly be fast; the British are "bloody Sassenachs" (insulting term for English); and there's absurd mention of smuggling someone named Courtney and "his saw" aboard. The "How to Keep Cool" section below pivots to unrelated humor about staying calm during summer heat—typical period filler humor for *Life* magazine.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
A. BATHER, could occupy a sufficiently small space and yet serve the purpose. He further stated that some of the crew, being hungry, eat a large portion of the ballast, with the dual result of inca- pacitating them for work and of shifting the ballast whenever they crossed the deck. Matters looked black for a time, when the happy expedient of putting the voracious sailors in irons and making them lie in one spot was adopted, and the cutter was brought safely into New York Harbor. Upon leaving the Genesta, the Sport's thoughts turned to her opponents, and it did not seem possible that the America’s cup could be saved from the grasp of the bloody Sassenach. Both the Purttan and the Préscilla were built for this very purpose, but it is morally impossible for any vessels with such names as these to show any speed. No man ever heard of a fast Purstan, and the same, of course, is true of the Priscilla, by reason of the axiom that the whole is greater than any of its parts. We may have to fall back on the original winner, the | America, Even though a schooner, she could be converted into a sloop quite as easily as her owner could be converted from a Republican to a Democrat, and then to a friend of the working man. A CRAB, COMBINATION No. 11. Better still, the Do/phin could be made into a sailing ves- | COMBINATION. sel. She would lose but little speed by the removal of her boilers, and the Genesta’s patent bellows and suction-pump would be nowhere beside all the heated cranks the Dolphin could produce, to say nothing of the inferiority of the hole in the foreigner’s deck when compared with the loop-hole left in the Dol/phin's contract. If neither of these expedients are adopted, America's chances of holding the cup are small, unless Courtney and his saw can be smuggled aboard the Genesta. J. F. J. HOW TO KEEP COOL. ~ IT in a refrigerator. Call on a Boston girl. Peddle ice. Get left (cold day). Swear, swear off, swear often. Get a man to blow you off. Play poker and get frozen out. Raise the wind and pay your debts. Stay out late nights and get a blowing up from your mother-in-law. Eat cucumbers. Practice, shivering. Go to Philadelphia. comicbooks.com