Yachting Volume I Part 4

It now only remains to add a few considerations on the advantages and disadvantages of Corinthian crews for ocean-going yachts.

First, then, as to expense: the owner does not save anything by shipping an amateur crew. It is true he pays no wages to his Corinthian deck hands, but he must be prepared to incur a considerable outlay in alterations to the internal arrangements of the vessel, to buy new bedding and mess traps, and to provide a better cla.s.s of ship's cooks and a more numerous galley staff. Good temper will not prevail, nor can discipline be easily maintained, unless Corinthian Jack is well fed. If, as is sometimes the case, the amateur crew arrange to cater for themselves, the owner and captain must occasionally add to the luxuries of the lower deck mess. Some expense is also unavoidable from the extra wear and tear arising from the want of skill of novices who have not yet learned to handle sails and gear with a view to their preservation.

The safety and comfort of one's ship's company, too, is a double source of anxiety when some or the whole are not seafaring by profession. For it must not be forgotten even in the finest weather that there is no such thing as 'playing at sailors' when at sea. The risk involved is not appreciably increased by manning the vessel with amateurs, if the officer in command will take certain precautions; and this view was endorsed by the insurance companies, who in no instance increased the premium on the 'Hornet.' The owner must insist on shipping a due proportion of old hands in each crew, and take care to train them as helmsmen and leadsmen. He should relieve the 'wheel' and 'look-out' as often as practicable. Above all, he should be careful to shorten sail in good time, and always at dusk, until he can depend upon his crew. Active and courageous as the amateur seaman invariably is, he has not the practice aloft of the professional, he cannot shorten sail so rapidly, nor does his knowledge of the lead of the ropes enable him to identify them so readily in the dark. The services of a good professional boatswain, with an enthusiastic love for his profession and a cheery sympathetic manner as an instructor, are absolutely essential for the proper working of a Corinthian ship. A minute and careful observation of the barometer, and constant verifying of position by reckoning and by observation, are the duties of the officer rather than the crew. Unless the yacht-owner be an enthusiastic navigator, delighting in his s.e.xtant and mathematical formulae as well as a keen sailor-man, he had better not attempt this exacting if fascinating method of sailing his ship.

On the other hand, the Corinthian crew is a cheery one, well mannered and enthusiastic, grateful for any instruction which is given them, and happy in an exceptional and delightful holiday.

As a Corinthian crew is in general more numerous than one composed of professional sailors, when they have learnt their stations and become accustomed to the work, the vessel may be handled with that old-fashioned man-of-war smartness which is so attractive.

In conclusion, the national aquatic instinct, fostered as it is by the healthy sea-breezy tone prevailing in so much of our boyhood's literature, can only be cultivated by the majority of us as Corinthian seamen. Love for shipping and boats is not necessarily love for the sea and seafaring. Those who take to the sea as a profession are not always constant in their love. A voyage in a pa.s.senger ship, or even a trip as an honoured guest on board one of the floating batteries of Her Majesty's Navy, quite satisfies the still keen boyish aspiration.

It is only as one of the crew of a large yacht on a deep-sea voyage that the amateur can personally experience that 'life at sea' which has so fascinated his imagination. Though I dare not advise all yacht-owners to man their ships with their friends, I should hail with pleasure an opportunity of sailing again with some of my old shipmates.

CHAPTER IV

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN RACING YACHT

BY G. L. WATSON

Seven years ago the task of describing the form of racing yachts would have been a much simpler one than it is to-day. Then even the cruising vessels were more or less under the influence of the old tonnage rule, or of its later modification, and big and little were pretty much of a type;--a model of, say, a 'forty,' representing with sufficient accuracy a 'ninety,' or a 'five,' if we supposed the scale changed; and the individual yachts in each cla.s.s, while presenting differences to the eye of the amateur, were not to be distinguished apart by the general yachting public, except perhaps by the racing flag.

Under the present length and sail-area rule, the variety of type is enormous. Broad, narrow, deep, and shallow; boats with centreboards and boats without; single boats and double boats; plain keel, fin keel, and bulb keel, have all their representatives, and each has had its successes. But few of these types could have been successful under the old tonnage rule, and few of them may be successful under rules yet to come. Any history, therefore, of the development of the form of racing yachts would fail did it not take account of, and run parallel to, the history of the tonnage rule of the time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'BRITANNIA'

_R.Y.S. 151-rater. Designed by G. L. Watson, 1893. Winner of R.

Victoria Gold Cup, September 1893._]

Throughout the modern story of yachting the tonnage question has been the all-absorbing one. Looking back, through the pages of those sporting papers and periodicals which forty years ago devoted a meagre portion of their s.p.a.ce to yachting, one is struck by the same feature that shows prominently in the 'Field' or 'Yachtsman' of to-day. For one letter on any other subject, there are a dozen on the measurement question, and the writers handled their pens in much the same energetic way then as now, in abuse of rival theorists; but, more merciful than the moderns, spared us their elaborate formulae. These controversies happily have served the useful purpose of preserving for the historian of to-day a good many facts which might otherwise have been lost; for our dear old friend 'Hunt's Magazine,' in his flowery youth, is fonder of treating us to an 'Ode to the Yachtsman's Bride,'

or a relation of 'How Miss Delany married an Officer,' than to facts regarding measurement, or time allowances, and these are only to be picked up incidentally as it were from the correspondence of the quarrelsome gentlemen aforesaid. It is to be hoped that the yachting historian of the twentieth century may reap a like benefit from our controversialists of to-day, and that those mathematicians who now brandish their tonnage formulae to the terror of all quietly disposed yachtsmen will find a reader in the searcher after facts of 1950.

Yachting, then, may be said to have begun with this century; for although, as is shown elsewhere in these volumes, yachts are mentioned long before that date, it was hardly until the century opened, or indeed until after the Crimean War, that yachting as a sport became fairly established in this country.

The yachts of those days were round-headed things, of about three beams in length, in most cases innocent of metal ballast, and kept on their feet by gravel or by iron ore. What little racing there might have been was confined to scratch matches between the owners, and time allowance for tonnage was not thought of, though doubtless the tonnage rule as then used for the merchant shipping of the country was recognised as a useful measure for the purchase and sale of these vessels. Racing became commoner; soon more than two yachts came together to try conclusions, and it was presently discovered by some astute yachtsman that a good big ship, other things being the same, was faster than a good little ship, and therefore, where their purses admitted of it, owners built yachts as large as could be handled.

'Arrow,' 84 tons; 'Lulworth,' 82 tons; 'Alarm,' 193 tons; and 'Louisa,' 180 tons, were the crack cutters on the Solent about forty-five years ago, and, as may be well understood, little boats had a very poor chance with these giants, except perhaps in light and fluky weather. Mr. Holland-Ackers called attention to this fact, and proposed a table of time allowances between large and smaller yachts based on the length of the course and the difference of size between the vessels. The measure of this size was the tonnage, as ascertained by the then tonnage law of the land, which had been in force since 1794, or rather a slight modification of this rule, adapted to the peculiar form of yachts. In this, 'the old 94 rule,' as it was called, only length of keel and breadth were taken into account, the depth being a.s.sumed as half the breadth. Breadth was thus penalised twice over in the formula, and perhaps the most extraordinary fact in connection with this rule is, that it was in force for years before it seems to have occurred to our yacht-builders that a success was to be made by increasing those dimensions which were untaxed, or only moderately taxed, and reducing the beam which was taxed twice over.

This is all the more remarkable, as builders of the mercantile marine seem to have caught this point much earlier, and were building vessels with enormously increased depth and reduced beam, though it is true the slowness of these ships did not invite imitation, as the American clipper ships, built under a fairer tonnage law, were rapidly sailing them off the seas. Happily, in 1854 the law was changed for the present method of measurement by internal cubic capacity, and the genius of our shipbuilders, thus left unfettered, was equal to the task of regaining our supremacy on the ocean.

But among the yachts the old {L - B B (1/2 B)}/94 prevailed, and gradually builders discovered that, by increasing draft and amount of ballast, beam could be pared down, and a boat of nominally the same tonnage made longer and to carry more sail than her predecessor. Lead ballast was slowly introduced, despite all sorts of adverse prophecies from old salts that it would strain the ship and would cause her to plunge so heavily as to go under; and presently, when some unknown genius first put lead outside, and from a timid hundredweight or two this increased to tons, the veterans gave the new type up altogether as past praying for, and left them to their well-merited fate. I have been unable to get any definite information as to the first application of outside ballasts, but in 1834 Messrs. Steele built the 'Wave' for Mr. John Cross Buchanan, and on this vessel a metal keel was fixed. There may, however, have been earlier instances of this in the South. But Providence was on the side of the heavy lead keels, and each year yachts got longer, and deeper, and narrower, and had more and more lead outside, until there was none left inside at all, while they more and more nearly approached Euclid's definition of a line as having length but no breadth. _A propos_ of these proportions, a good, and it may possibly be true, story is told of an enthusiastic cutter-man on the other side of the Atlantic, who, intensely prejudiced against the fine broad ships of America, asked a friend here to buy, and have sent across to him, a typical British 5-ton cutter, stipulating only that she should be fast, and at least as narrow as anything of her cla.s.s. The little craft was safely brought across and put in the water in New York Bay, and after a trial sail the owner invited one or two friends to come off for a day's pleasuring in the new ship, with the object of showing the advantages of five feet of beam against ten. But, on coming alongside, the first to get out of the dinghy took hold of the runner, and taking a nice wide step, so as to get well into the centre of the boat, stepped clean into the water on the other side.

But long before the advantage of subst.i.tuting untaxed depth for the heavily taxed beam was discovered, and about 1850 Mr. Wanhill, of Poole, introduced the raking sternpost, thus getting, on a given length of keel, a much longer water-line. But even this device was used in moderation, 50 to 60 being the utmost rake given, with the sternpost showing at the water-line, and such vessels as our modern cutaway fives, tens, twenties, or forties, with the keel a fourth of their over-all length, were as yet unthought of, though the direct inducement to build them was far stronger then than now.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'Cygnet' cutter, 35 tons. Built by Wanhill, of Poole, in 1846.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Midship section.]

I may cite an exception to this, however, in a vessel called the 'Problem,' built at Kirkcaldy about 1850 or 1851, and described in 'Hunt's Magazine' of August 1852. The 'Problem' presented a similar profile to that of our fashionable fives or 2-1/2 of three or four years back, the stem and sternpost sloping down and meeting in a point as in the 'Lily,' 2-1/2-rater; 'Natica,' 5-rater; and 'Varuna,'

40-rater. But the vessel was built without any idea of racing, she having three masts, square-rigged on each mast, and whatever advantages she may have possessed seem to have escaped the notice of the regular yacht-builders. A much likelier idea was struck by 'Vanderdecken,' in a letter to 'Bell's Life' in 1852, where he proposes a 'tonnage cheater,' in which he had got the sternpost pretty nearly amidships, with the profile resembling in an exact degree that of our most modern small craft. But though, if properly designed otherwise, the proposed vessel would have been a certain success, the jump was too big a one for our yacht-builders, and 'Vanderdecken's'

idea lay on the shelf for many years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'VARUNA'

_40-rater (Capt. J. Towers-Clarke). Designed by G. L. Watson, 1892._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'Problem,' 1852.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Deck plan of 'Problem'.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Profile of the 'Varuna,' 1892.]

The evasion of length by this method, however, raised a terrible storm of discussion. 'Bell's Life' and 'Hunt's Magazine' were inundated with indignant letters on the subject, until, in 1854, the Royal London Yacht Club, followed by the Royal Thames, arranged to measure the length on deck, subtracting from this length the whole beam, instead of three-fifths of the beam, so as not to dis-cla.s.s those vessels with excessive rake already built. This rule, under the name of the 'Thames Rule,' became the recognised method of measuring yachts, and, indeed, still remains the standard measurement for rates for buying, selling, and hiring.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Vanderdecken's tonnage cheater.]

Slowly at first, but steadily, yachts became longer, narrower, and deeper; the crack yacht of one year being displaced the next by something with more length, less beam, and more ballast. Here and there, it is true, an occasional vessel of exceptional excellence held her own for a year or two with the newer ones; but what looked for a little like high water was but the mark of an exceptional wave which in its turn was covered, and the true flood seen to be a bit away yet.

To check the growing tendency towards length and depth at the expense of beam, the New Thames Yacht Club, at a meeting on March 12, 1874, adopted the following rule:--

The length shall be the distance from the fore part of the main stem to the after part of the main sternpost measured in a straight line along the deck.

The breadth shall be the distance between the outsides of the outside planks or wales, measured where that distance is largest.

The depth shall be the distance between the top of the covering board and the bottom of the keel at the middle point of the length.

The product of the length, the breadth, and the depth, divided by 200, shall be taken as the tonnage of the yacht.

But the influence of this rule was not far-reaching, and confined to the New Thames Club, and (in a slightly modified form) to the Queenstown Model Yacht Club; few yachts were built under it, and these were not conspicuously successful. Nor was the reason of this very far to seek. The tax on depth induced builders to cut down freeboard, and, so far as might be, draft, while to make up for this latter deficiency the amidships draft was carried well forward and aft, and only little rake given to the post, with the result that the few boats built under this rule carried an extremely awkward sail-plan, and were abnormally slow in stays.

The great general effect of the 94, or Thames Rule, has been described; but among its minor influences may be mentioned the inducement to have the utmost water-line length on a given deck or measurement length. One obvious manner of attaining this was by keeping the sternpost upright or nearly so; while the writer, in a little cutter called the 'Peg Woffington,' built for himself in 1871, took a farther advantage of the rule by putting a ram bow on her, thus getting the water-line even longer than the measurement on deck. An additional interest attaches to this yacht as being the earliest sailing yacht, so far as I have been able to ascertain, which had all her ballast outside.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dog-legged sternpost.]

In 1873 Mr. James Reid, of Port Glasgow, just then beginning to make his mark as a yacht designer, devised what was called the 'dog-legged'

sternpost, fitting one in the 10-tonner 'Merle.' This, as will be seen from the sketch, retained all the advantages of a raked sternpost, and yet gave as long a water-line length as the length on deck; but the device had but a short life, as in the spring of 1877 the Yacht Racing a.s.sociation, which had been formed the previous year, decreed that the length should be measured to the fore side of the rudder stock.

This regulation, made so late in the building season, somewhat unjustly threw out three yachts built under the existing rule.

Unfortunately, a policy of procrastination seems to have haunted the Yacht Racing a.s.sociation since its inception, as in most instances where the building rules have been changed, these changes have been decided on so close to the coming season that builders have been unfairly pushed in the designing and getting ready new vessels.

I would venture to suggest to that body, and this in the interests of yacht-owners quite as much as of builders, that no rule affecting the construction of racing yachts should be considered after the end of October.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Immersed counter of 'Quiraing,' 1877.]

In the fall of 1877, in designing 'Quiraing,' and with the same end in view, I got the water-line the same length as the length for measurement by immersing the counter as in the sketch.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'DORA'

_10-rater, centreboard (R. G. Allan, Esq.) Designed by G. L. Watson, 1891._]