75 Years of Balls: The History of the Imperial Poona Yacht Club

By Jeremy Atkins

“The yachting world is divided into three factions: those who believe the Imperial Poona Yacht Club exists, those who may be termed the ‘come-on-pull-the-other one’ lot, and my wife,” wrote former yachting journalist John Chamier in an article in The Field in December 1979.

As unbelievable as it may sound, the Imper

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeremy Atkins
• Release date: Apr 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780950917948

Jeremy Atkins

Jeremy Atkins was elected to membership of the Imperial Poona Yacht Club in 1981 when he left Oxford University having studied sailing and tomfoolery. On graduating he settled into a career in market research while also founding and running the Laser 2 Class Association in the UK and Worldwide. Having self-published his first book in 1984, he returned to writing, and self-publishing, in 2009 to write the history of the Imperial Poona Yacht Club and two other sailing clubs he was a member of. In 2013, having run his own market research agency for 15 years, he acquired the nautical list from multinational publishing company Wiley, re-founded the independent Fernhurst Books and became a publisher for real. Since then he has published over 70 nautical books. In 2020 Fernhurst Books set up Self Publishing House to help would-be authors publish their own books. Jeremy is a past Laser II National Champion and currently sails a Fireball and Solo at Draycote Water Sailing Club, where he has been Commodore for 5 years.

Book preview

THE FIRST INCARNATION

The Foundation

Somewhat surprisingly, for a Club which was set up on almost anti-establishment lines, a Minute Book was maintained up to the 1950s. It records:

The Imperial Poona Yacht Club was founded on Sunday, April 22nd, 1934 on the banks of the River Thames at Abingdon, the station of the Oxford University Yacht Club. During the Sunday afternoon’s racing in which R.F.B. Bennett, then Vice Commodore of the O.U.Y.C., and A.W.A. Whitehead were taking part, there arrived Sir Archibald Hope, Baronet, and Charlie H. Johnston. They were expressing themselves in Anglo Indian terminology. These suggested the formation of a limited club on Anglo Indian lines, and there appeared to be three good reasons for its formation.

1. Experiences, of those present, with Anglo Indians, culminating perhaps in information given recently to Sir Archibald Hope on the subject of the Fishing Customs of the Hill Tribes of the Brahmaputra.

2. The need for an association to knit together the small but diffuse collection of people who had in recent years, in their various permutations and combinations, been at the back of much party-making.

3. The desirability of some society to collect keen young sailing men, often but not always from the Universities, without the rather unjustified premises on which the Oxford and Cambridge Sailing Society had been founded.

The Oxford & Cambridge Sailing Society had been formed on 24th February 1934, but Reggie Bennett had not been invited to be a member. On the face of it, this was surprising given that he had sailed for Oxford in the Varsity Match since 1931, and was the Vice Commodore (senior undergraduate) of the OUYC, but Reggie and Stewart Morris (the Society’s leading light) never got on. Reggie may have been using Anglo Indian terminology to mock those returning from India, but he was also making fun of Stewart and his Society.

One can perhaps see some of Reggie’s mischief-making in evidence in the report in the other history in this volume that "the Society’s founding meeting heard that ‘certain people’ from the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club [where Reggie was known to sail] considered it [the Oxford & Cambridge Sailing Society] a name to which the persons present had no claim – it would not be representative of either Oxford or Cambridge. Reggie uses rather similar language when referring to the Society’s rather unjustified