History: Horse On Board

HORSE ON BOARD

HORSE ON BOARD

Horses were once our primary means of transportation, but more recently they’ve been the passengers—in planes, trains, automobiles and ships.

By KIMBERLY LOUSHIN

hen the U. S. Equestrian Team’s designated Olympic mounts board a plane for the 2016 Games in Rio de

Janeiro, they’ll travel every mile in the lap of equine luxury. Everything from the plane’s cargo hold to the flight plan itself is designed to ensure the horses’ maximum comfort. After landing in Brazil, the equine athletes will board a cushy air-ride van for their final stretch to the Olympic Equestrian Centre in Deodoro.

But how did we get to this point? People have been tinkering with the best way to transport horses since at least 1500 B.C., when the main reason to move them long distances was for military, rather than sporting, battles. Over time, as horses gradually transformed from vehicles themselves into our competition partners and companions, the ways we move them from point A to point B have also evolved, thanks to human ingenuity and equine tolerance.

Gaining eir Sea Legs

Perhaps the earliest reference to transporting horses dates back to 1500 B.C., in a seal that depicts a horse on a boat. Horses were shipping by sea on Sept. 26, 1066, when William the Conqueror launched 750 vessels carrying 3,000 horses from the Norman coast toward England for the Battle of Hastings.

From at least 1500 BC until the 1950s, horses traveling overseas literally “shipped” by boat. Crossings could be perilous, but even when winds and seas were favorable, it was a struggle to keep equines fit on long ocean journeys. For the voyage to the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, the U. S. Equestrian Team used a treadmill for their horses.

INTERNATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE HORSE—KENTUCKY HORSE PARK PHOTO

Early vans and trailers were built for short distances, because few vehicles were capable of pulling a horse over many miles. Gradually, as technology and infrastructure improved, so did trailers. They became lighter and safer—and offered more amenities for horse and human.

Conditions on the ships were poor at best. Horses were either housed below deck, where inadequate ventilation took its toll on their respiratory systems, or above deck, where they were strung up in slings so they wouldn’t lose their footing as the boats pitched and rolled on the waves. e Crimean War (1853-1856) is probably best known for the dramatic cavalry action called the Charge of the Light Brigade. But the British horses who carried out that charge had already endured plenty of less romantic-sounding hardships on the crossing from England. Close con nement and crude disembarkation methods contributed to many shipping casualties: e horses— blindfolded, to prevent them from panicking—were hoisted in slings over the side of the vessel and lowered into the water, where crew members waiting in boats would swim them ashore.

Ocean crossings were perilous for other reasons, too. Stormy seas could splinter a ship, but fair, windless skies also were risky, because a becalmed ship could easily run out of fresh drinking water for man and beast. at’s one theory behind the name of the horse latitudes, the large stretches of ocean between 30 and 38 degrees latitude north and south, notorious for their calm seas. According to one persistent legend, they earned their name from the number of dead or dying horses thrown overboard when sailing ships stalled, and the drinking water ran out.

As accommodations on ships improved for human passengers, horses also got more creature comforts. A report by Gen. William Carter of the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps in the early 1900s prompted signi cant upgrades, like the discontinuation of slings for horses. Even so, technology brought new dangers for equines shipping overseas for war duty. During World War I, U-boats stalked transport ships, and on Dec. 2, 1916, the SS Palermo—carrying horses and ammunition from New York to Genoa, Italy—sank in the Mediterranean after U-72 torpedoed it. e 1916 Olympic Games in Berlin were canceled due to the war, but otherwise from 1912 until 1956, horses bound for the Games traveled by ship. eir human caretakers improvised to keep horses t on the long ocean journey. According to the Fédération Equestre Internationale, for the 1928 Games in Amsterdam, the U.S. team rented a treadmill that lmmakers had used for a chariot-race scene in a 1925 production of Ben-Hur. e Dutch team built its own shipboard treadmill when they traveled to the 1932 Games in Los Angeles.

From Hooves To Wheels

Once back on land, horses were expected to carry themselves from town to town. Until the 18th century, race horses usually walked to race meets, and trainers would have to carefully schedule their trips to ensure their horses were rested enough to run.

It was a retired race horse, the undefeated 18th-century English champion Eclipse, that historians believe was the rst to travel long distance in a horse trailer—in this case, a purposebuilt, four-wheeled cart pulled by two less celebrated horses. In 1789 Eclipse, then 25 and as famous at stud as he had been on the race course, relocated from Epsom to Middlesex after the death of his owner, Dennis O’Kelly. But old Eclipse had foundered and could not make the 20-mile trip on foot. As the peculiar vehicle trundled its prized occupant slowly through the English countryside, village residents sometimes ran alongside, hoping to peer in and see the great horse.

In 1816, cattle-breeder and race horse owner John Terrett shipped his runner Sovereign to the Newmarket races in one of the carts he normally used to transport bullocks. e modi ed trailer—Terrett had added springs for the horse’s comfort—was drawn by three draft horses, two at the wheel and one in front, and it traveled 40 miles a day—twice the distance a horse typically would travel on foot.

Over time, transporting horses became more popular among the wealthy. In 1836, the English race horse Elis traveled three days from Goodwood to Doncaster in a custom horse-drawn van that was large enough for two horses. “It had padded sides and a hard-stu ed mattress over the oor and was tted with proper stable appliances,” according to e History of the St. Leger Stakes, 1776-1901. “Drawn by six post-horses and attended by outriders, it attracted a good deal of attention on the 250 miles of road between Goodwood and Doncaster.” Elis and his companion e Drummer arrived well-rested, and Elis won the St. Leger, leading others to believe his owner, Lord George Bentinck, might be on to something. Bentinck must have been pleased, too: He later commissioned a painting titled Elis, and e Drummer, with

After more than a century of casual experimentation with horse-drawn trailers, developers finally produced the motorized horse box in time to transport horses for World War I. By the 1930s, when this photo was taken, the modern van—though primitive—was starting to take shape.

the caravan, which was shown in 1838 at the Royal Academy.

Injured horses also bene tted from the new mode of travel. Some city re departments used horse-drawn ambulances to pick up horses after accidents, and during World War I, special ambulances collected injured but salvageable chargers. is early equine rescue squad featured a stall that rotated on its base so that the patient could load and unload facing forward.

By 1914, the motorized horse box, tted to an automobile chassis, was in mass production. e British Army, ghting in World War I, relied on them to transport horses to war. ese early vans initially were intended for short distances, because few vehicles were capable of pulling a horse for sustained distances. As technology improved and infrastructure grew, in the 1950s long distance road travel became an option. It was faster, more reliable and less stressful for the animals.

Over the next several decades, the “traveling horse boxes” would become more sophisticated and speci cally designed for horses. Researchers and designers studied ideal air ow in an enclosed space, came up with ways to make trailers lighter and sturdier, and recon gured the simple box to allow for carrying not only the horse, but tack and dressing rooms, too.

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e Iron Horse

While the horse trailer was evolving, modern technology provided another solution for moving horses over long distances: the “iron horse” of the railway. From the 1840s to the 1950s, whenever foxhunters shipped to faraway meets and show horses arrived at prestigious competitions, when race horses left their winter quarters for the racetrack and yearlings headed to public auction, they traveled by train.

But rail transportation had its hazards. Loading and unloading presented a challenge at best and an outright risk at worst, as J. Wortley Axe, president of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, wrote in his famously damning 1905 report on rail transportation. Of the standard railway horsebox, Axe fumed sarcastically, “Every portion of it appears to have been designed with the special object of making the most alarming noises calculated to frighten the inmates. e same description applies with even greater force to the doors, which open upon the platform, or ‘dook,’ as it is called. It is too heavy for a man to let down steadily, and the traditions of the railway would be altogether violated if

INTERNATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE HORSE—KENTUCKY HORSE PARK PHOTO

Inevitably, horsemen and airlines spotted air travel’s potential for horses like these 1946 passengers. Transoceanic horse flights—faster and seemingly less stressful for the equine passenger—helped open the way for more global horse trading and international competition.

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Railroads were the fastest way to get a horse from one end of the country to the other between the 1840s and 1950s, though some condemned their noisy clatter as too frightening for many horses. The “iron horse” also helped spark a fashion for equine traveling clothes, from shipping blankets and boots to head bumpers.

Today’s equine air passengers travel in crate-like pallets, which hold as many as three stalls and a groom’s compartment.

it were not allowed to fall with great violence upon the siding. Everything about a horse box comes undone with a jerk and closes with a bang.” e dangers and inconveniences of rail travel led to specialized equipment for equine passengers. To prevent expensive blankets from getting ripped or soiled, owners could spring for more disposable traveling blankets. Wraps, shipping boots and head bumpers became commonplace, and as horses could travel farther a eld to compete, increasingly they, like their human counterparts, also boarded with their trunks.

Flight Of Fancy

Airlines revolutionized cross-continental and international travel in 1924 when KLM Royal Dutch ew Nico from the Netherlands to Paris in the rst documented air transport of a live animal. Nico was a bull, not a horse, but the future of long-haul equine travel was clear. In 1946, eight horses traveled from Shannon in Ireland to what is now John F. Kennedy International Airport (N.Y.), and three years later the famed Irish trainer Vincent O’Brien added some cachet to ying horses when he put two top runners, Cottage Rake and Hatton’s Grace, on a plane for the short hop across the Irish Sea to England for the 1949 Cheltenham National Hunt Festival—and both horses won. e jet age was in full swing by the 1960s. Fueled by a growing global horse breeding business, equine transatlantic air travel became almost mundane. is was particularly helpful when it came to international events like the Olympics. Rather than losing muscle-tone and tness over a weeks-long ocean crossing, equine athletes now could arrive at competition venues in a matter of days.

By today’s standards, the air travel then was fairly primitive. Horses walked up a ramp into a Boeing 70, and the plywood stalls were built around them once they were inside. At this time, airlines favored open stall systems that were similar to large crates: e stall fully surrounded the horse, and its head was free, but the ceilings were so low a horse could easily hit its head.

Tragedy struck the 1964 U.S. Olympic team en route to Tokyo. e airplane was an hour out from its departure at Newark airport and ying at about 12,000 feet when three-day eventer Mike Plumb’s mount, Markham, panicked and tried to jump out of his crate.

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“He broke the stall apart,” team veterinarian Dr. Joseph O’Dea later told e New York Times. “He took part of the ceiling of the plane apart and was almost out of the stall.”

Seven men tried to hold the gelding steady but could not, O’Dea added.

Markham, who had recently endured a bad van ride, managed to get his front feet over the edge of the box and cracked one of the interior windows. All attempts to settle him, including sedatives, reportedly had little e ect, and team coach Bertalan de Némethy ultimately instructed O’Dea to destroy Markham. e rst widely publicized equine ight accident happened four years later when an Airspeed Ambassador aircraft carry-

Horse flights have become commonplace and are part of the small but lucrative air-freight business for a range of carriers, from the horse-specialist Tex Sutton Forwarding Co. to the familiar passenger line KLM to major cargo shipper FedEx. A single flight of valuable equine athletes or breeding stock can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars for a shipper, but they must be handled with care. As Emirates Airline cargo chief Ram Menen once confided to Bloomberg News, “The horses we move are worth more than the plane itself.”

ing three crew members, ve grooms and eight race horses from Deauville, France, crashed on landing at London’s Heathrow airport; investigators later attributed the crash to metal fatigue. Only two grooms survived.

But equine air travel was here to stay. It was becoming fast and e cient, and regular service from Europe to the United States, Japan and Australia put international competitions, sales and stud farms within easier reach for horse owners, buyers and breeders. And as horse ights became routine—and a big business—shipping methods evolved, too.

Today, our equine partners often travel in pallets when they y. Each pallet includes stalls for three horses, as well as a groom’s compartment, and horses walk into them on the ground; airport crew then lift the pallet into the air and load it on the plane. Like their human counterparts, equine passengers can travel on varying ticket classes, too. An economy pallet holds three horses, business accommodates two, and if an owner feels particularly generous, he can buy the equivalent of a rst-class ticket: an entire three-horse pallet for a single animal. Costs can vary widely, and most shippers—including everything from specialized livestock handlers to FedEx—work up a custom quote for each trip. Domestic tickets typically range between $3,000 and $6,000, while an international ticket can start at around $7,000. As a rule, there is one “ ying groom”— that’s the o cial title for professional horseARND BRONKHORST/ARND.NL PHOTO ight attendants—for three horses. During ights, horses have free access to hay, and grooms o er them water every six to eight hours and during landing or refueling stops. ere are no such comforts for the grooms. “On a ight full of horses, there are no air stewards or stewardesses, so the grooms and vets are left to fend for themselves,” traveling race horse groom Leanne Masterson told Horse & Hound in 2014. “No in- ight entertainment, either, so a good book is essential!”

After all, the horse’s comfort and safety are the priorities on these planes. While most nd ying about as uncomplicated as a normal van ride, more sensitive horses will wear earplugs to help deaden any disturbing sounds. Even the ight plans are planned with the precious equine cargo in mind, so there’s less steep banking on turns, for example, and pilots use the full length of the runway to make takeo and landing smoother. ose details count, especially when your freight is a living animal that’s carrying a nation’s medal hopes to the Olympic Games.