He watched Britannia sail her first race in the Thames Estuary in 1893; observed Kaiser Wilhelm II board Meteor off Cowes in 1906 and reported on the challenge for the America’s Cup by Sopwith’s Endeavour in 1934. Yet Francis Bernard Cooke never sailed a boat bigger than what he himself described as a ‘pocket cruiser.’
FBC, as he signed off his 100s of articles, pontificated on ocean passage-making; deep sea cruising and the Fastnet Race, yet he spent his 76 years cruising mostly between Harwich and the Thames and competing in handicap races on a few miles of the upper Crouch in Essex.
Cooke wrote with great authority on the evolution of the modern yacht; singlehanded cruising and the luffing rule yet was equally at home advising on how to poach an egg on board, preventing a dinghy nosing your stern and placing a pig of ballast in the right place.
If ever anyone epitomised the valuable training that sailing on the East Coast provides the small-boat novice, with its shoal waters; fast-running tides and shifting sandbanks it is Francis B Cooke.
Apart from the yachting press and every national newspaper in the UK, and some from the USA and Europe, editors from every journal in Britain called upon FBC’s expertise. From The Tatler, and to the , and , they kept his Blick typewriter ribbons rolling.
