Cock Island
This weekend is the Cock Island Race in Portsmouth, Va. I’ll be taking the boat from Wormley Creek in York County to Portsmouth. Steve N., Lee and Nelson have offered to give me a hand.
I’ve heard many stories as to how the race got its name, but nothing I could call authoritative.
Apparently, in the ‘olden’ days, Norfolk was the ‘good’ side of the water, and Portsmouth, was the ‘bad’. Still cock fighting, gambling, prostitution and the like were illegal. So a barge would be set up in order to host such events. The barge would be called ‘Cock Island’. And thus, any references to it meant that a cock fight was going to be held.
I’ve also heard that the events actually took place in Portsmouth. But ‘Cock Island’ was still the code word for finding the events.
As for the boat races, they started as bragging rights – type thing. One boat captain swearing his was the fastest and others going to prove him wrong.
The current iteration started about 20? 25 years ago, can’t find out exactly. It’s always been a 2 – 3 day party, interrupted by a race. And, at its peak, there were more than 300 boats involved. Then, apparently, a city group took over running the event and started trying to ‘regulate’ it more: limiting the number of participants and, more importantly, limiting the liquor. The race participation reached a low point at that time. In fact, the city was going to cancel it, since they weren’t making any money on it, or so they claimed. The Portsmouth Boat Club took over the event several years ago and participation is slowly picking up.