Dering Harbor’s Discovery Changes Shelter Island Forever Part 4 of 9 Compiled by Patricia Shillingburg

Delightful Family Resorts     Waldo Kraemer remembered that The Prospect Hotel in the early 1900s held about 235 guests and was just a cut below the Manhanset House. The rates in 1905 were thirty five dollars a week, American plan. When it burned down in 1941 (sic.) the rates were about fifty dollars a week, also American plan.     The ballroom was in a separate building with a big, wide porch that had French doors to the dance floor, so that you could see everything that went on, nobody sitting inside. The hotel boasted a good strong trio. Mr. Austin at the piano, Mr. Jacobs, violin, and Mr. Heinroth, cello, played every night for dancing. Every Tuesday night was children’s night. We were taught to dance and had games. All ages attended.    The hotel was the great social center. Big, spacious porches with comfortable chairs and a wonderful class of guests. Some families would stay all summer, bringing multitudinous trunks. Papas would spend the weekends.      Stewart Herman’s research found fewer descriptions of the goings-on at the Manhanset House, however, one can assume that both piety and temperance lodged there too, although not quite so ostentatiously. It's rates were slightly higher and its tone more secular. The reportings on The Prospect might include a review of a sermon or the announcement of sermons by six different preachers, reports of events at the Manhanset House were more on the side of gaiety:  On Thursday last week the guests of Manhanset went on the steam yacht Mystic to Purple Jenning’s grove and had a clam bake. Judging from the straw left on the grounds, they had a good time.      Herman also found, The major coup of the new spa's inaugural weeks was having everyone on the Brooklyn Yacht Club cruise in attendance at the very first Saturday night hop. Let the diarist of the fleet rise to his own inimitable climax:    Immediately after 8 bells the little steam yacht, plying as a ferryboat between the Island and Greenport, was taxed to her utmost to carry the numerous yachtsmen and ladies of the village across the harbor. At 9 o'clock the hop was in full progress, and a jollier crowd I never saw. Yacht clubs have enjoyed similar scenes, but never before had such entire eclat attended like hopicular arrangements.      Herman describes the importance of yachting in Dering Harbor:     In August 1876, to the accompaniment of flags and fireworks, a N.Y.Y.C. flotilla consisting of twelve schooners and five sloops anchored off Manhanset for two days. Lanterns were strung on the yachts at night, fireworks blazed from every boat and the Manhanset House, we are told, replied in kind. It was the first of many annual visits which, two years later, the New York Herald described at considerable length exclaiming, “People turned out by the hundreds and remained for hours, looking at the handsome specimens of naval architecture.    A few years later another awestruck reporter, standing atop Tower Hill, counted 165 yachts and sailing craft in Dering Harbor. Other clubs were finding their way to the Island on their annual cruise. In 1884 Boston’s Eastern Yacht Club came with ten boats and in 1885 the American Yacht Club of Rye, New York arrived in force with an additional two hundred passengers aboard an accompanying steamer Cygnus, leased for the occasion. They packed the Manhanset House from stem to stern. That same year the Prospect House greeted the Atlantic Yacht Club during its two day stopover with a dinner and hop.