British Ocean Racing

By British Ocean Racing

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing many of these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patterson Press
• Release date: Jul 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528763431

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INTRODUCTION

by the

COMMODORE OF THE ROYAL OCEAN RACING CLUB

THIS book tells the story of British ocean racing since 1925, when a handful of enthusiasts met at The Royal Western Yacht Club at Plymouth, and formed The Ocean Racing Club, later to become The Royal Ocean Racing Club.

The original purpose in commissioning this book was simply to record the early life and growth of the Club within the memory of those who helped to fashion it but, when we came to sketching out the synopsis of the book with the author and the editor, it soon became apparent that its scope was far wider than a simple club history, and so, whilst admirably filling its original purpose, it grew into a history of British ocean racing. One has only to compare the dozen or so starters in two or three races during the season of the late twenties and early thirties with last year’s four hundred entries and a hundred thousand miles of sailing to realize why this is so.

One of the reasons for this increase in popularity in such a short time, apart from the inherent attractions of the sport itself, was the success from the earliest days of the R.O.R.C.’s Rating Rule, which successfully equated the performance of a wide variety of competing boats; a rule which has been widely adopted by clubs for short inshore races, passage races and handicap racing; which is used in the Baltic, Mediterranean and Australasian waters and in many other parts of the world. Because it is so widely used, it has become a common denominator for yacht designers the world over, and so, in addition to its original role, has greatly influenced the design and building of cruising yachts the world over. It has become in fact far more than a club rule, and so this story has become far more than a club story.

Ocean racing has provided an admirable testing ground, not only for design, but for sail plans, new techniques, new materials and new gear to work the ships. As so often happens, successful racing innovations have become standard practice, and so sailing men and women the world over have cause to be grateful to the founders of what has grown to be an international sport. When one reads of the considerable opposition to ocean racing in the early days, the foresight and wise administration of those founders is the more remarkable, because they provided a basis which was essentially so sound that the sport which they initiated has grown rapidly and with no major setbacks whilst maintaining a most remarkable record of safety at sea.

To the author and editor both active sailing members of the R.O.R.C., we are gratefully indebted, for a story which happily combines accuracy of research and the romance of offshore sailing, in which their own love of the sea may well have been the catalyst.

Our thanks are also due to all those from the Americas, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, who, by the ever-growing support of ocean racing and particularly of ocean races off these shores, have done so much to show that International competition in this field can be conducted in a spirit of friendly rivalry.

May we hope that this book will recall pleasant memories of the early days to those who took part; record them sufficiently graphically for those who have but recently joined us and help to increase, wherever it may be read, the number of those who go to sea in sail.

I march across great waters like a queen,

I whom so many wisdoms helped to make;

Over the uncruddled billows of seas green

I blanch the bubbled highway of my wake.

By me my wandering tenants clasp the hands

And know the thoughts of men in other lands.

The Ship, JOHN MASEFIELD.

A. V. SAINSBURY

PLATE 2

Tally-Ho. Lord Stalbridge’s cutter which won the Fastnet Race in 1927. Designed by Strange. L.W.L. 44 ft. 3 in., beam 12 ft. 9 in., draught 7 ft. 6 in., sail area 1,660 sq. ft. Photo: Beken, Cowes.

PLATE 3

Ilex. The Sapper’s famous yawl, which originally raced with the cutter rig. Designed and built by Camper and Nicholsons. L.W.L. 40 ft., beam 10 ft. 5 in., draught 7 ft. 6 in., sail area 1,658 sq. ft. Photo: Beken, Cowes.

1

THE IDEA

Notices of the Ocean race in the Press—The Ocean Race Committee—The Royal Cruising Club and the amateur spirit—Speed under sail—Smugglers and revenue cutters—Baltimore clippers and the clipper ship era—The American obsession with fast ships—Alice crosses the Atlantic—The race of Henrietta, Fleetwing and Vesta—The loss of six hands—Is ocean racing dangerous?—The Transatlantic race of 1870—Two hands lost off the bowsprit—Comparison of Cambria’s performance in 1870 and Dorade’s in 1931—Another Transatlantic race in 1887—Colly Colt and the modern spirit in offshore racing—The Kaiser’s Cup race and Atlantic’s record crossing—Comparison of Atlantic in a gale in 1905 and the J-class Yankee in 1935.

IN THE early months of 1925 there was much talk in the clubs and elsewhere, and some notices appeared in the Press, about what was known as the Ocean Race.

The Morning Post of the 7th March announced that It has now been settled that the Ocean Race, of which preliminary notice has appeared in these columns, shall be sailed under the flag of the Royal Western Yacht Club, and that yachtsmen taking part in it shall be admitted to honorary membership for the time being.

The Sunday Express followed with the information that A new 600 miles ocean race for yachts, starting from the Isle of Wight, has been arranged for the coming yachting season. It will be open to all nations belonging to the International Yacht Racing Union, and important entries are expected from America.

The last expectation, we may say immediately, was not realized. American yachts, which were later to play so big a role in Fastnet race history, did not appear at the starting line in 1925.

These Press notices were the result of a circular letter issued a few days earlier by a private Ocean Race Committee which had been recently formed. As it gave the original conditions and principal arrangements of the first Fastnet race, it is worth quoting.

5th March, 1925.

THE OCEAN RACE

Sir,

When the preliminary notice of this race was issued, the arrangements suggested were provisional. Since then some of the details have been settled as follows:—

(1) The Race shall start from Ryde, Isle of Wight, on August 15th, and will be open to fully decked yachts of any rig measuring not more than fifty feet, and not less than thirty feet on the waterline.

(2) The course shall be from Ryde to the Fastnet and thence to Plymouth; and the yachts will proceed first to the eastward, and will leave the Isle of Wight and the Fastnet upon the starboard hand. Distance about 600 miles.

(3) The Royal Victoria Yacht Club, at Ryde, Isle of Wight, has kindly undertaken to start the race; and Commander Humphreys, R.N., the King’s Harbour Master of Plymouth, has consented to join the Committee, and will ask the Naval Authorities to grant him permission to make any special arrangements which may be necessary in connection with the finish of a race of this description.

(4) The Race will be sailed under the flag of the Royal Western Yacht Club of England, to whom any questions arising out of the race will be submitted. It was decided at a General Meeting of this Club, held on February 19th, that yachtsmen taking part in the race shall be admitted to Honorary Temporary membership on arrival in the port.

(5) Yachts competing in the Race must sail in cruising trim, such items of equipment as are considered essential will be specified later.

The five succeeding paragraphs of the letter gave details of sail measurements, time allowance, prizes. The conditions governing rig and crews have more than obsolete technical interest. The instructions said that No allowance will be made for rig, or propellers. With regard to crew they state : No restrictions will be made as to the number of amateurs carried, but no more paid hands will be permitted than can be normally accommodated in the fo’c’sle.

A great deal of controversy, which reads a little strangely today, was to centre round the Ocean Race and the Committee organizing it. Before we move into the main story, in which the Ocean race quickly became known simply as the Fastnet, and the Ocean Race Committee transformed itself into the Ocean Racing Club—a club founded upon the Fastnet race and within a few years to become the Royal Ocean Racing Club—we might consider what went before this much, and often bitterly, discussed first Fastnet. It opened the new era in British yachting, which is at present in the fullness of its flood. And the roots of the idea that inspired the first Fastnet were deep in the history of seafaring.

It is as hard to describe the fascination of the sea as to explain the beauty of a woman, for, to each man, either it is self-evident, or no argument can help him to see it. So Claud Worth opens his Yacht Cruising. It was first published in 1910.

Worth was a founder member of the Royal Cruising Club. When, in 1880, this club was formed in the Lincoln’s Inn chambers of Sir Arthur Underhill the seed was also laid of what was to be the Royal Ocean Racing Club. No member of the new Cruising Club then owned a boat of more than 10 tons T.M. A type of Englishman was taking to the sea who was well-educated, critical, amateur, and taking to it young enough to be relatively poor. Talk of the Elizabethan spirit has become a tiresome modern cliché, but it was something Elizabethan rather than late Victorian that was stirring in the well-breeched eighties. The members of the club had small boats and the irreducible minimum of professional aid for the times—two paid hands, perhaps one, perhaps none but the man who looked after the boat while she lay on her moorings during the working week. It was the dawn of the amateur spirit in yachting, artistically preserved in The Riddle of the Sands, officially recognized in the Royal Cruising Club, and producing a break-away body in the Ocean Racing Club.

Many early members of the Ocean Racing Club were also members of the Royal Cruising Club, and it might have seemed natural that the older club, like the Cruising Club of America, should have brought the new activity under its own name and wing. However, the Royal Cruising Club was not prepared to organize offshore racing officially, and the formation of a new club inevitably followed.

The members of the Royal Cruising Club showed that well handled little ships could go into deep water safely, and that amateur seamen might be competent seamen—platitudes today that were then a discovery, at least on this side of the Atlantic. The later Ocean Racing Club showed that little ships might be driven fast—raced—over deep water, also by amateur seamen. This too was no platitude when first propounded; indeed the ethics of ocean racing caused trouble in many minds and led to numerous letters to the papers. There was something in its air suggesting that the dangerous seas were being made a playground for the exercise of an irrelevant competitive spirit. However, competition raised that oldest of seagoing instincts, the urge to drive the ship and prove her ability, and injected it into the new but older sport of voyaging in small, mainly amateur manned, yachts.

The well developed smuggling proclivities of the British nation during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries produced the revenue cutters and the rival ships of the smugglers which were, until then, the fastest sailing craft of their size ever to have appeared. They were not ocean racers, but the pursuits of smuggler by revenue cutter in the Channel were definitely offshore races. The ships themselves were the forerunners of the yacht as evolved in the mid-nineteenth century; indeed, some smugglers and revenue cutters became yachts, and a few yachts worked later for the revenue service—also, it is believed, for the smugglers.

The low coasts of Kent and Sussex, the Straits of Dover, and also that marshy strip of Hampshire just east of Hurst that faces the Needles and is passed often hardly noticed in the course of each season by the offshore fleets, were the favourite areas for the smugglers’ operations. No sailing craft small or large had hitherto been produced in Europe that were so purely devoted to speed as the revenue cutters or the luggers favoured by the smugglers, and none that had carried such crowded sail. An 85 ft. revenue cutter of the 1820s would have a running bowsprit of about half the length of the hull, a boom far overhanging the counter and, apart from her all plain sail, she would set when the wind was free a course as well as the fore and aft mainsail, a square topsail and topgallant, and ring-tails extending the leach of the main. Such a boat would carry thirty hands, which indicates that the modern offshore racer is not so over-manned as may sometimes appear to be the case. With their big bellies and bluff bows the hulls of the revenue cutters were ill-formed for the speed they achieved under the brute force of their sail spread, and their speeds, even with the wind free and everything hoisted, were not comparable with the modern offshore racer—about 8 to 9 knots in broad reaching conditions was considered the maximum of the best boats, such as the Badger and Eagle. The long pursuits of cutter and smuggler over the coastal seas of autumn and winter—the seasons favoured by the smugglers—were the closest thing to offshore racing in small craft that had yet appeared. Meanwhile a better type of boat was being evolved in America.

The Baltimore schooners appeared early in the American schooner tradition which eventually closed with the schooner rigged ocean racing yachts of the twentieth century. The Baltimore model was refined and a type of hull developed, hitherto unknown in heavily canvased sailing craft, in which the old-fashioned full bows were eliminated and replaced by the utmost fineness and delicacy of line. Such were the American opium clippers which under racing canvas carried their dark and valuable cargoes from India to the China Sea. Essentially this was ocean racing, and a tradition in ship design, building and handling grew up that directly influenced the later racing of yachts offshore.

It is not far-fetched to see the influence of their older tradition in the natural flair that Americans have shown for offshore racing in yachts. No national naval architecture in the sailing days was so fully imbued with a single minded pursuit of speed as that of America, but it was carried to excess. Sharp-lined, lightly built hulls, efficient rigging and well fitting duck sails were adopted when the economics of the situation hardly demanded it. Speed became something of a fetish. When Nina, Paul Hammond’s fine lined schooner by Starling Burgess, came to England in 1928 to achieve her run-away victory in the fourth Fastnet she represented in the most obvious form the outcome of tradition—the old swagger, which has generally been absent from the British tradition of naval architecture. It is hardly too much to say that British yacht architects designing offshore racers have had to turn their backs on their own tradition to achieve their results.

A common belief is that the crossing of the Atlantic in yachts was a rare occurrence until the present century; hence much is made of the four Transatlantic races for large yachts held between 1866 and 1905. Yet between 1851, when the America crossed the Atlantic, and 1905, forty-five yachts made the crossing, which is an average of not quite one per year. The unrecorded cases might well bring the average up to one. Thirty-five of these were west to east passages, and the great majority either way were made by American yachts. We have to confess that the Americans not only led the way in the contemporary sort of ocean racing in small yachts, but in the yet earlier days were deep-water yachtsmen long before ourselves.

The fastest of the passages was of course Atlantic’s famous achievement in the 1905 Spanish race, when she took 12 days, 4 hrs. and 1 min. between Sandy Hook and the Needles. After this date no more Transatlantic crossings were made in yachts of ocean racing type until the schooner Primrose IV sailed over to take part in the second Fastnet of 1926. In the first of the Transatlantic races, in 1866, three schooners, Henrietta, Fleetwing, and Vesta, all between 105 ft. and 107 ft. in length, were matched against one another with stake money of $30,000 each.

The month chosen for the race was December, one of the two stormiest of the year in the north Atlantic, when in the latitude of Newfoundland there are gales blowing for 30 per cent of the time, while even in the latitude of New York the percentage drops only to 20 in the western half of the ocean. Working canvas was carried, plus square sails, and the first 5 days of the passage the yachts spent mainly in hard and brisk reaching, sometimes reefed, sometimes not, and often in snow storms. Speeds were a little below 10 knots. Henrietta was leading by the fifth day of the race. Then, in a south-west wind which soon freshened to gale, the mainsail had to be furled, the jibs taken in, and with the schooner under only a staysail with three reefs in it, a speed of 8 knots was still maintained. Later, however, after taking a heavy sea on deck, Henrietta was hove-to, it appears at about 9 p.m., and she remained so for 8 hrs., some hours after the wind had gone and it was calm and moonlit over a sea that hardly remembered the old wind. Ocean races, as the contemporary doctrine stresses, are lost at night—though not as it happens in this case.

The Vesta here overtook the Henrietta, for she was kept sailing under a reefed staysail. Indeed, it is doubtful whether she could have been safely rounded up and hove-to, being a centreboarder with no outside ballast. On the evening that followed disaster overtook the third yacht, the Fleetwing, which was astern and on a course farther to the south. By 7 p.m. it was blowing a gale after a morning of light winds, and in the early hours of darkness a sea was shipped that washed six of her crew of twenty-five hands out of the cockpit. They were not found. Two others went overboard but got themselves back.

Though Henrietta had been hard sailing initially, Vesta, which was ahead in the latter stages of the race, clearly deserved to win, and appeared likely to do so when she picked up the Scillies lights 50 min. before Henrietta. The centreboarder lost time, however, weathering the islands, and Henrietta passed her well up to weather, and went by the Needles with a time of 13 days 21 hrs. and 45 min. Even Fleetwing, which had spent some time cruising round with little hope in the area where her hands had gone overboard, overtook Vesta in a gale that sent her rushing up Channel to reach Cowes some 8 hrs. after Henrietta.

Ocean racing might be supposed to be a dangerous sport, and the first of such races would seem to have proved that indeed it was. Races, however, are not usually undertaken in the north Atlantic winter; and further, with the smaller yachts which were to be the making of the sport, greater rather than less safety seems to be achieved, for reasons that may later become apparent. Ninety-three years later Alan Paul, writing officially as the secretary of the Royal Ocean Racing Club, was able to point out that it was one of the safest of sports, and to record that in the years since the Second World War, in the course of which well over a million miles of club races had been sailed, not a yacht nor a man had been lost. A sport is not necessarily better for being safe; an element of danger is perhaps essential if it is to be worthy, and the potential danger of racing yachts offshore must always remain. But the facts speak for themselves as a tribute to skill, to wise organization, and—let us never forget—to fortune. It is not always the careless that the sea kills.

Four years later there was another Transatlantic race, and it was the one occasion when a challenger for the America’s Cup has raced to its appointment. And once more, though the race was sailed in July, it took a toll of life and two men were lost overboard. James Gordon Bennett, who had owned Fleetwing in 1866, had now bought the schooner L’Hirondelle, and after extensive alterations and with the new name of Dauntless she was sailed to England and refitted in Cowes for a match race back against James Ashbury’s schooner Cambria. Dauntless was 120 ft. overall compared with Cambria’s 108 ft., and both were magnificent examples of the contemporary schooners, possibly the best on their respective sides of the Atlantic at that time. With reefing topmasts more than 32 ft. in length, reefing bowsprits of about 35 ft., and swinging main booms longer than a Class I ocean racer of today, the two schooners represented the finest of their breed, and also all their faults of design, especially in rig. The owners were on board their ships, and the great yachting writer and architect Dixon Kemp was also among the afterguard of Cambria, which carried thirty-six hands. Dauntless had thirty-four and five amateurs. The prize was a silver service of no doubt vast weight and ebullient Victoria elaboration, valued at $ 1,250.

The start was made off Cobh on 4th July, and it is particularly interesting to compare the speeds of these two large schooners with that of the little yawl Dorade of 37 ft. on the waterline while making a similar crossing in 1931 during August, when average conditions differ little from July. Dorade remained close to latitude 50° N. until slanting south at approximately longitude 50°, and during much of the passage was tacking just north and south of this parallel. In the 1870 race Dauntless sailed well to the south, but Cambria followed the northerly route, touching latitude 55° N., appreciably higher up than Dorade, and eventually sighting Newfoundland when working south.

Two hands were washed off Dauntless’s bowsprit while furling the flying jib. The yacht was hove-to for 2 hrs.—long enough as it transpired to lose the race for Dauntless—but the men were never recovered, and the death roll for two ocean races now mounted to eight seamen.

Dauntless came to the finishing line 1 hr. and 43 min. astern of the British schooner—a small time, however, on a passage lasting, for Cambria, 23 days and 5 hrs. Dorade, only a little more than one-third of Cambria’s length, took 12 hrs. less on a longer passage from the Bishop. This indicates, as nothing else could, the developments that had occurred in the architecture of offshore racing yachts, especially in rig and in the technique of handling, between 1870 and 1931.

Dauntless was once more, 17 years later, to race across the Atlantic. By this time she was 20 years old and she was soundly beaten by a new schooner Coronet. It is apt to recall what Alf Loomis has said about Caldwell Colt, who at that time owned Dauntless: But it seems that ‘Colly’ Colt, although a boaster and exhibitionist of sorts was a nearer approach to the present genus of ocean racing men. . . . He raced, not as Bush did, vicariously from his cloistered home on the heights, nor yet as Bennett had done, for the glory and prize at stake, but because he knew he would have the hell of a good time.

However, in spite of Colt, yachting on the two sides of the Atlantic remained largely indifferent to offshore racing. The races that had been held made newspaper ripples and caught the more discerning glances of the yachting public for a few days, but it was not until the time of small yachts dawned that ocean racing gained any general support. And it did so then only slowly, and in the course of many setbacks.

The final pre-1914 Transatlantic race was even more unlike the current commodity than any of the earlier. But for us it has a certain adventitious interest, for it was won by the three-masted schooner Atlantic which made a record crossing. Atlantic sailed another crossing in 1935, and in the course of the bad weather experienced it was possible to compare her performance with the J-class Yankee, also on passage at the same time under reduced rig. The comparison affords one more example of the superiority of the modern yacht in the deep ocean. The relative performance of Fleetwing in 1870 and Dorade in 1931, and of Atlantic and Yankee both in 1935, throw into high relief the progress in yacht architecture that would not be easily detected otherwise; for close studies of the past in relation to the present are rarely made and in the case of sailing ships’ performance are always difficult owing to sparseness of information.

The fleet that assembled for the Kaiser’s Cup in 1905 for the race from New York to Cowes would seem today to belong to a remoter past than half a century ago; it consisted of a yawl, five two-masted schooners, two three-masted schooners, a topsail schooner, a barque, and a ship. Atlantic, 185 ft. in length and under her 18,000 odd sq. ft. of working canvas, was fast enough to carry with her for a great distance the depression which brought her strong quartering winds and gales, and because no smaller ship can maintain the necessary maximum speed, Atlantic’s record is unlikely to be bettered by today’s superior but smaller yachts. She made the passage in 12 days, 4 hrs., 1 min., with an average speed of 10.32 knots and a best day’s run of 312 miles. Let us now pass over 30 years and see her again on an Atlantic passage.

Owned now by Gerard B. Lambert she is escorting the J-boat Yankee over the Atlantic, the latter under a yawl rig with her racing mainmast shortened by 20 ft. It was in the nature of an unofficial race, a race that Yankee won by some 30 miles, having been consistently ahead of Atlantic during the crossing, and by as much as 80 miles when in mid-Atlantic.

On the 9th day out there was a rising S.S.W. wind and a falling glass. By the time this had reached Force 7 Yankee was moving fast, averaging about 10 knots, and at times logging 12 knots under staysail and trysail. The wind hardened to Force 9 (this is according to Alf Loomis’ log) but no water was taken on deck and the motion below was not violent. Atlantic meanwhile was hove-to 40 miles away. Earlier she, too, had been making 12 knots, and shortly afterwards, when shortened down to a trysail and forestaysail, a sea was shipped over the starboard bow that took away 12 ft. of the bulwarks, several steel stanchions, and lifted a lifeboat out of its chocks.

At the time when the wind was estimated by Yankee’s navigator to be Force 9, gusting Force 10, the yacht was sailing easily under staysail and trysail. At no time did it seem necessary to heave-to; and shortly after, when the wind let up a little, Yankee was logging 12 knots. The comparison between the behaviour in a heavy ocean seaway of one of the best types of old yacht and a racing yacht of 1930 vintage with the basic characteristics of the ocean racer, is an object lesson in what naval architecture had achieved in the 30 years since Atlantic had taken shape on William Gardner’s drawing board. The very beauty of this lovely schooner was her handicap, the ineffably graceful sheer which gave so little freeboard amidships and such inadequate reserve buoyancy in a seaway, compared with the moderate displacement of the racer with her considerable buoyancy assured by generous freeboard throughout her length.

The foregoing notes on the first ocean races and the types of yacht that took part in them may have served to illustrate the grave faults in the ocean-going yachts of half a century and more ago, and these were able, partially at least, to justify the objections of the bulk of experienced yachtsmen to ocean racing. In so far as the story in this book is concerned with the yachts themselves, it deals with the eradication, slowly and as a result of extending experience, of the faults of yacht architecture that Jack Laurent Giles once neatly summarized in a litany for yachtsmen:

From lack of freeboard, sterns too long,

From lean bows and narrow beam,

From reefing bowsprits, sluicing seas,

From fo’c’sle cooking and from long booms,

Libera nos Domine.

2

BERMUDA AND HONOLULU

The Bermuda and Fastnet, two founder events—Thomas Fleming Day’s belief in the seagoing ability of small yachts—The first offshore race in 1904 organized by him—His initiation of the Bermuda race and the general disapproval of it—The only partial success of