Spotlight on Collections - Gorman's Diving Horses

You never know what curiosities you can find in the Amesbury Carriage Museum postcard collection. Here’s a photo from the Salisbury Point Railroad Historical Society Collection of Gorman’s Diving Horses, which were part of a traveling show that performed all over America and Europe. That’s right – diving, not driving. These horses did not pull carriages. Oh no, they dove off a high platform into a pool of water.

Between 1902 and 1906 Gorman’s Diving Horses, named King and Queen, performed their amazing but terrifying feet of jumping from a platform as high as 40 feet into a pool of water. This brother and sister pair of beautiful and graceful white Arabian horses were said to jump without provocation.

The story goes that when the pair were weaned they were separated from their mother so they would jump a fence and swim a river to join their mother in a nearby pasture, said ACM volunteer Joyann Reynolds, chair of the ACM Collections Committee.

The dismayed farmer would erect higher and higher obstacles to try to contain the young horses, but every day they were found alongside their mother. Sometimes they were seen playing in the river, enjoying themselves before joining their mother in her pasture.

The farmer realized the potential of these amazing horses and built a platform with a ramp for the horses to jump from. He gradually made it higher and higher. The horses were never forced to jump and appeared to use the ramp on their own. They would swim and then return to the shore on their own. The farmer claimed they could jump from 100 feet, but the performances were limited to 30 to 40-foot platforms.

August 19,1902, Amesbury Daily News, Page 1

King and Queen were so popular that they began touring the country and gained the attention of J. W. Gorman, who had a traveling amusement show. Gorman purchased the pair for top dollar and they became known as Gorman’s Diving Horses.

King always let Queen go first. She would lower her head and spring outward and down and land in the water with a great splash. King would wait on his own for Queen to clear the area and then repeat the dive.

The horses were known for their beauty and playfulness and seemed to enjoy diving and swimming. They were so popular they outgrew the small venue at Salisbury Beach by 1906. King and Queen continued performing for about 20 years. “We can only hope they retired free from harm and with a river nearby,” Reynolds said.