Jacob Bates Finds New Pastures in Newport
Last week Mr. Bates, the famous horseman, arrived in town, from Boston, and ’tis supposed he will perform this week.Jacob Bates may have planted this item with printer Solomon Southwick, but it’s more tentative than his usual style.
When Bates arrived in New York and then Boston, he took out long advertisements proclaiming his skills, his triumphs in Europe, and exactly when locals would have the fortunate opportunity to see him perform.
But no such advertisements appeared in the Newport newspapers, not even little ones. Was he out of money? Or did he not need to advertise in Rhode Island because there was already plenty of interest in horsemanship—as reflected in this newspaper item?
Southern New England was known for producing horses. Since the late 1600s, Rhode Island’s governors usually listed horses first on their lists of the colony’s exports. The principal market was the sugar islands in the Caribbean, where the animals provided power for planting and refining as well as transportation.
In 1715 the governor of Barbados complained about how French and Dutch colonies had come to rival his island in producing sugar “owing to the great Supplies of Horses they receive from New England.” In 1729 a British merchant claimed that New England captains had told him they didn’t have to pay fees on French islands as long as they arrived with sixty horses. Two years later, British Caribbean planters asked Parliament to forbid the sale of horses outside the empire, but the mainland traders managed to head off that legislation.
Rhode Island was also a center of horse racing. The Rev. James MacSparran wrote in America Dissected (1753) that Rhode Island’s “fine horses…are exported to all parts of English America. They are remarkable for their fleetness and swift pacing, and I have seen some of them pace a mile in little more than two minutes, a good deal less than three.” Eventually these horses would be recognized as Narragansett pacers.
Thus, in moving his equestrian exhibitions from Boston to Newport, Jacob Bates was shifting to a smaller town but perhaps finding more appreciative audiences.
3 comments:
The Preakness is 13/16 of a mile with some of the best purpose-bred and trained horses from around the world, and the winning time is usually about 1:55, so I'm not too sure I buy this brag about 2 minute miles.
To be fair, the claim was between two and three minutes, closer to two. But I, too, was skeptical. Timekeeping outside of a controlled setting just wasn’t that reliable.
Races in colonial America were run on the turf, not on dirt. The track record for one mile on the turf at Churchill is 1:33:78. An excellent winning time would be in the neighborhood of 1:35. Narragansett Pacers are the forerunners of today's standardbred horses and although they were probably 5-10 mph slower than today's thoroughbreds, they still are very capable of 30mph. Therefore, I don't find the time cited to be outrageous.
George Washington owned Narragansetts and raced them.
Somewhere in my notes, I have a reference to there being a breeding farm for Narragansetts on Boston neck in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
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