Men of the Tuna Club

The Unique Fishing at Santa Catalina Has Drawn Together Sportsmen From Many Lands

MAY II. HOSFIELD

WHO arc the men of the Tuna Club? What sort of men are they? Where do they come from? What do they do? How often one hears the questions, and how hard it is to answer and answer well! For they are men from almost every walk of life. Some are known in every corner of the globe, others the larger fame has passed by, but each is drawn by the same magnet—the fish—and to read the roster of the famous club is to realize the widely different types of men who find the lure of Izaak Walton's simple pastime irresistible.

Statesmen and rail-road presidents, men of letters and heads of great corporations—the song of the singing reel and the thrill of the bending rod and the lighting fish makes the anglers roads all lead to Santa Catalina. There are some three hundred members in this organization, sixty-three of which are active, fifty-one honorary, and the remainder associate. The qualifications for active membership require the taking of either a one-hundred-pound tuna or a two-hundred-pound swordfish under club rules and tackle specifications, but the difficulty of doing this necessarily excludes a large portion of the angling fraternity from this class of membership. Associate members, however (who are elected from men in sympathy with the club's interests), have all the privileges of active members except those of voting and of holding office in the club.

THE president of the club, J. A. Coxe, of Los Angeles, is the founder of both the Los Angeles Motor Boat Club and the Rod and Reel Club of Southern California. Col. John E. Stearns, who holds the position of honorary president, after many years of active service, is one of the pioneers of the west and of the angling game in California waters. C. L. Griffeth, the vice-president, is a San Franciscan whose name is lent romance by the ownership of a big fleet of whaling ships. Thomas Manning, secretary of the club and yachtsman, is, to the members, perhaps the best known figure in the institution. He was one of the founders and the only man active in club interests during the entire life of the organization, he has devoted his life to the welfare of the club.

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Among the honorary vice-presidents is Col. D. M. Burns, of San Francisco, at one time the biggest political figure in the state, who was often said to carry the California elections in his pocket; Chas. Hallock, the founder of Forest and Stream; David Starr Jordan, long known as the president of Stanford University, and an ichthyologist of note, hut more recently as one strayed into the less luminous paths of pacifism and peace-at-any-price; Geo. F. Kunz, of New York, probably the greatest living authority on precious stones; Admiral Peary, the explorer; Geo. H. Hodgson, the English textile-machine manufacturer, whom neither the war nor the pleasures guaranteed by the possession of a three thousand acre shooting box within thirty miles of London can detain from his ten-year long habit of an annual six months at Catalina; A. W. Hooper, of Boston, who is one of the big men in munitions, but one of the truest sportsmen that ever played a fish. He has spent from three to five months on the Channel waters each season for more than a decade, and many a lionhearted foe has be brought to defeat— and the gaff hook !

NOT only to anglers but to sports' men in a dozen realms is the name of F. Gray Griswold, of New York, a familiar one. Mr. Griswold is one of those fortunate men who can enjoy as a steady occupation that which is to most men a hard won vacation pastime. During the successful days of both European and American racing he maintained splendid stables; the first polo team to visit the United States came under his care; big game and big fish have called him to all quarters of the earth, and his yacht Kona has given him some twenty thousand miles of fascinating travel. Other honorary vice-presidents of the Tuna Club are the executives of famous angling organizations of the Atlantic coast, England. France and Australia.

In the list of members the names of many prominent men appear. * Col. Roosevelt. Henry van Dyke, Stewart Edward White, at present forsaking his pen for a captaincy in the California "Grizzlies"; Alfalo, the English sports writer, and Vachell, also an Englishman of letters; the late Daniel B. Fearing, of Newport, who long possessed what is considered the finest library in the world on fish and fishing, hut who had of late presented it to the broader uses of a university; Prof. Hale, who seeks out the mysteries of the stars at the wonderful Mt. Wilson observatory; Henry E. Huntington, the Southern Pacific magnate, and Gifford Pinchot, the conservationist. whose fishing exploits at Catalina were written of so vividly by the late Dr. Chas. F. Holder, founder and first president of the club, and author of books on the Channel Islands.

E.N. DICKERSON, the New Yorker, who maintains residences and shooting boxes in half a dozen places in this country and Europe, and is the proud husband of the only woman who has ever taken a season's record tuna, is another club member. Not only was Mrs. Dickerson's fish a season's record, but the second largest of this species largest species that has ever been landed on regulation tackle. The world's record, held by Col. Morehouse, being 251 pounds while Mrs. Dickerson's fish weighed 216. L. D. Mitchell, of Nova Scotia, who is now at the front in France, took a 710-pound blue fin on the Atlantic coast, and although his was a wonderful feat, it cannot be compared to the skillful fight an angler must go through to bring in one of these fish on the twenty-four strand line and sixteen ounce rod.

Both "Dusty" and William Farnum are persistent swordfish anglers of the Tuna Club and their fast cruiser Ding is kept busy whisking these stars of the moving picture world to and from the fishing grounds whenever the studio allows them a respite. In fact, swordfish seem to be almost outrunning the long famous tuna as attractors of the big sportsmen. W. C. Boschen, for many years a New Yorker, started the game by capturing the first true swordfish (355 pounds) ever taken on rod and reel, during the season of 1913. Since that date this sport has grown in popularity until it overshadows all else. Hugo R. Johnstone, of Hamilton, Mass., and Pasadena, Cal., now serving his country as a Lieutenant in the navy, exceeded Mr. Boschen's record with a fish of 362 pounds, but Boschen recaptured his laurels with a catch weighing 463 pounds.

Mr. Boschen is a most indefatigable fisherman and seldom spends less than three months a year at Catalina. Aransas Pass and other well known angling centers used to see much of him also, but since learning the fascination of the swordfish game other fields have lost much of their charm.

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L.G. MURPHY—better known as L« "Old Hickory" from the well-regarded rods he makes of that wood—is another annual visitor, having spent each summer season at the club for the past twelve years. A. J. Eddy, of Chicago, is a rod man also, as well as a great corporation lawyer—having instituted the use of the nine-ounce rod in the light tackle class—and F. J. Rabbeth, the inventor, who was a member of the Creedmore rifle team that defeated the rest of the world, are also anglers enjoying the sport and difficulties of using their own inventions.

H. U. Mudge, of the Rock Island railroad; T. H. Wheeler, vice-president of the Standard Oil Co., and J. G. Newcomb, of the same corporation; Steele, the organizer of the Harvester Trust; E. L. Doheny, whose oil and mining activities have made him one of the biggest figures in the west, and I). P. Kingsley, president of the New York I.ife Insurance Co., all find Catalina's angling possibilities a fascinating way of forgetting the cares of "Big Business."

Major F. R. Burnham, whom Richard Harding Davis immortalized as a "Real Soldier of Fortune," captures fish with all the skill that he exhibited in outwitting Matebele warriors. W. N. MacMillan, who also knows the wilds of Africa, and who owns the big Nairobi ranch over which Col. Roosevelt hunted and wrote in his early ex-presidential days, was a record holder of the club and an enthusiastic angler until the great war called for his services. Osthaus, the painter of dog portraits; Howard Heinz, of Pittsburgh, who is "Pickles" to Catalina; Yelie, the automobile manufacturer; Zane Grey, who can write fiction about fish as well as people; Wm. F. Plumphry, president of San Francisco's Bohemian Club, and Sir Henry Blosse, the Irish sportsman, are enthusiastic members.

"JIMMY" JUMP, the light tackle J man, and C. G. Coon, who. under the guidance of Captain Farnsworth, was the angling pioneer on the west coast of Mexico; Thos. Thorkildsen, who superseded "Borax Smith" as the "king" of that commodity; Wm. H. Bartlett, of wheat fame as well as the owner of over six hundred square miles of New Mexican soil, and H. W. Adams, the vice-president and manager of the cattle company that this huge estate supports; Dr., now Major, B. F. Alden, head surgeon of the French Hospital in San Francisco, who operated on himself for appendicitis, and is soon to take a base hospital staff to France; the Banning brothers, owners of Santa Catalina Island; Roy Carruthers, manager of the Palace in San Francisco, and D. M. Linnard, of the Huntington and Maryland in Pasadena; Geo. Pillsbury, Jr., who landed the second marlin taken on rod and reel, and did it while managing a skiff alone, far out on the rough-waters of the Channel—all these and many more arc the men who belong to the Tuna Club. East and west, north and south, the far corners of the earth send them to Santa Catalina. And there they find the joy of keen days in the open, never-to-be-forgotten fights with the unsurpassable fish of the west coast waters, a summer sea and a smiling land, and a group of sportsmen with whom it is a pleasure to associate and an honor to compete.