Sackett's Harbor

Speed the Cable

Sackett's Harbor or Speed the Cable is an American Country Dance. It was published by Elias Howe in 1858 in Complete Ball-Room Hand Book, Boston. It was interpreted by Ralph Page in about 1984. Found in Cracking Chestnuts. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

Howe writes:

Forward and back six, swing six three-quarters round to the left — first couple chassee across the set back and cast off — turn contra corners — forward and back six and swing round to the right to place.

Called "Speed the Cable" in Howe's book. The association between the cable and Sackett's Harbor is explained in Cracking Chestnuts. It makes an excellent story, go look it up.

The animation plays at 120 counts per minute normally, but the first time through the set the dance will often be slowed down so people can learn the moves more readily. Men are drawn as rectangles, women as ellipses. Each couple is drawn in its own color, however the border of each dancer indicates what role they currently play so the border color may change each time through the minor set.

An online description of the dance may be found here.

The dance contains the following figures: circle, cast, turn corners (and probably others).

If you find what you believe to be a mistake in this animation, please leave a comment on youtube explaining what you believe to be wrong. If I agree with you I shall do my best to fix it.

If you wish to link to this animation please see my comments on the perils of youtube. You may freely link to this page, of course, and that should have no problems, but use one of my redirects when linking to the youtube video itself:
https://www.upadouble.info/redirect.php?id=SackettsHarbor

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © ~1984 by Ralph Page. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This website is copyright © 2021,2022,2023,2024 by George W. Williams V
Creative Commons License My work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Most of the dances have more restrictive licensing, see my notes on copyright, the individual dance pages should mention when some rights are waived.