Pittsburg Boy Takes Boating Bet, Threatened by Tramp

1897

IN A SKIFF

A Pittsburg Boy Made a Trip to This City.

He Made the Trip In Eighty Hours Actual Working Time and Thereby Wins His Expenses and a $25 Wager—Exciting Experience Enroute.

There arrived in the city Wednesday a couple of young men—John Phin and Godfrey Nelson by name—who have led an exciting life for the past two weeks.

The pair left Pittsburg just two weeks ago Wednesday in a small pine skiff, and one of them—Nelson— rowed the entire distance—four hundred miles—to the Portsmouth wharf. It appears that the young men are employed in one of the Pittsburg rolling mills. They belong to an athletic club, and a wager was recently made that Nelson could not row from Pittsburg to Portsmouth in eighty-five hours, actual working time. If he succeeded in doing it he was to receive his expenses and $25. He took up the offer and two weeks ago started on his trip. Phin came along to represent the club and see that he did not shirk his work and tie onto a passing boat. They covered ground rapidly, and when they rounded into the wharf here the actual rowing time was just eighty hours. They immediately wired the result to their friends in Pittsburg. They spent the morning here and left this afternoon for Cincinnati. They expect to return to Pittsburg on one of the packets the first of the week.

Mr. Nelson, who is a very pleasant gentleman, said to a Times reporter that the trip was a pleasant one and at times exciting. At a point near Marietta a tramp endeavored to take possession of the boat and was for dumping Nelson and his partner in the river. Nelson pulled a gun and bluffed the fellow off, however. They also had some trouble with shanty boatmen. Nelson has been tramping about the country for several years in the summer time and working in the Pittsburg mills in the winter. He is an expert oarsman and a fine walker.

—The Portsmouth Times, Portsmouth, OH, July 17, 1897, p. 1.