A Tale of Three Cities: the 1895/97 Pacific Cable Matches
by Stephen Wright (originally published in En Passant, December 1999)
San Francisco vs. Victoria
The year was 1895. The chess world was buzzing about the international cable match between the Manhattan Chess Club and a team in London, England, which took place on March 9. One interested observer was Mr. W. Christie, manager of the C.P.R. Telegraph Co. in Victoria, B.C. Deciding that this would be an excellent way to advertise his company, he offered the Victoria Chess Club free use of the telegraph for a match with San Francisco players. After negotiations an agreement was reached to play a two-game match, with a team of players in consultation on each board; the match subsequently took place on the night of 31 May - 1 June 1895.
The Players
Foremost among the Victoria team were two Englishmen, Thomas H. Piper (1857-1938) and James R. Hunnex (1854-1938); their arrival from London in 1894 had led to an upswing in the fortunes of the Victoria Chess Club. Piper had once beaten the English champion Joseph Blackburne, and could fairly claim to be the strongest player on the West coast; in 1896 he defeated Joseph Babson, the former president of the Montréal Chess Club, in a match by the score of 7-2. Hunnex played in a few events in 1895 but thereafter seems to have retired from competitive chess, although he was an honorary Vice-president of the B.C. Chess Federation in 1916.
Three of the other Victoria players were from the same family: Peter J.A. Schwengers (1844?-1898) and his sons Conrad (1874-1954) and Bernhard (1880-1946). Peter Schwengers had emigrated to Victoria from Prussia in 1887, and had scored a victory over Louis Paulsen at Düsseldorf 1863. Neither of his sons had much impact on the chess world, but Bernhard later became Canadian singles tennis champion in 1911-1912.
Originally from Sweden, Aaron Gonnason (1865-1938) was a prominent personage in Victoria chess circles for many years. He donated at least two trophies bearing his name, one for the Victoria city championship (which he himself won in 1922), the other for an intercity provincial team championship. And the last member of the team was English-born Dr. Griffith Hands (1837?-1924), a class 2 player at the Victoria club.
The San Francisco players were all members of the Mechanics' Institute; the best known was sometime San Francisco and State champion Dr. Walter R. Lovegrove (1869-1956).
Propaganda
The San Franciscans regarded their city as the chess centre of the Pacific and assumed that
the unknown Canadians would put up scant resistance. This over-confident view was expounded
by the San Francisco Chronicle: "Lovegrove or Quiroga may strike terror into the heart of the
north by some brilliant combination beyond the scope of the ordinary mortal, but within the
reach of genius." By contrast, the Victorians were quietly confident in their English stars:
"It is safe to predict that Victoria will not take second honors in the match, and though our
American cousins are jubilant over an anticipated easy triumph, a surprise may be in store
for them." One of the players remarked that "I'm not afraid of San Francisco, but of the
man from New York," a reference to Wilhelm Steinitz and his recently published Modern Chess
Instruction Part 2, accessible to the San Francisco players but apparently not yet available
in Victoria - even a hundred years ago players were concerned about keeping up with the
latest theory!
Piper cited the lack of adequate preparation time and the absence of several of Victoria's stronger players as reasons for the defeat on board 2, but no doubt a major factor was sheer fatigue; despite a theoretical time limit of ten minutes a move, the games started at 6:30 on a Friday evening and did not end until 6:44 and 7:15 respectively the following Saturday morning.
San Francisco vs. Vancouver
The San Francisco players were eager for a rematch at the earliest opportunity, but this was
not possible for the Victorians due to the holiday season. Into the breach stepped Vancouver,
where the original match had been followed with great interest. Not to be outdone by their
Island neighbours, players from Vancouver arranged to play a similar match with San Francisco,
which took place on the night of 14-15 June 1895. Unfortunately the Vancouver players were
considerably weaker than their Victoria counterparts; this, coupled with the fact that the
San Francisco players were unlikely to underestimate their opposition a second time, led to
easy victory for the Americans in both games.
Jubilant at their victory, the San Franciscans wanted more than ever to rectify their initial setback, and sent a belligerent telegram to Victoria: "You ought never to let it remain a tie. Either be the Star Club or else surrender. Lovegrove says he would like to have another whack at Piper, but will have to wait till Victoria has trained up for the Stars of the West." Piper responded in tongue in cheek fashion: "Stars of the West is good, and we 'pale our ineffectual fire.' [Shakespeare, Hamlet] We acknowledge ourselves to be but, as it were, a rushlight burning dimly in the presence of a luminary emitting an utterly dazzling and overpowering effulgence." Eventually arrangements were made for a rematch on three boards to be played 1 November 1895, but at the last minute San Francisco found the date unacceptable and the match was postponed.
San Francisco vs. Victoria - The Return Match
The rematch did finally take place, on New Year's Day 1897. It was agreed to play one game, beginning at 7 pm with a time limit
of ten moves per hour. Each city had timekeepers who kept track of the elapsed time for both teams: C.A. Lombard and Thomas Lawrie
for Victoria, Dr. Benjamin Marshall for San Francisco. Playing for Victoria were Thomas H. Piper, W.C. Chapman, Major B. Williams,
and Dr. Griffith Hands. To facilitate transmission a direct cable was run into the Driard Hotel, the Victoria site of the match,
where numerous spectators also gathered to follow the game on their own boards. The San Francisco players, Walter S. Franklin,
Oscar Samuels, Rodney Kendricks, and Valentine Huber, were all members of the Mechanics' Institute, and all except Kendricks were
champions of the MI chess club in various years. The C.P.R. Telegraph Co. and the Pacific Postal Telegraph Co. gave the clubs free
use of their wires for the occasion; the chief operators were W. Christie and Tom Martin respectively. The day before the match the
Victoria Daily Colonist noted "In San Francisco the match is exciting especial interest, a young 'prodigy' having lately appeared in
the Bay City, who it is predicted, will before many years eclipse Pillsbury himself. The California club is confident of success,
and pins its faith on the youthful champion." Presumably this reference is to Franklin, a medical student who when he won the MI club
championship in May 1896 was "not yet 18 years of age."
Image courtesy of Special Collections and Rare Books, University of British Columbia (spam 9031)
"Although they did not win the match and by it the championship of the Pacific Coast, on New Year's Day, the Victoria Chess Club by that important contest supplied an advertisement of the city that is worth very considerable.... People who have thought of Victoria as little more than a frontier town cannot but find their opinion changing and their respect for British Columbia's Capital increased when they find that it has a chess club superior to any other in Canada and second to none on the Pacific coast. Such matches as that of New Year's Day go far to remove the impression--drawn from the pictures on the cans of salmon, which are perhaps the greatest advertisers this province has ever had--that British Columbia is a land of sea and siwash and salmon." [Ibid.]