The name of Humphrey Barton has been an enduring theme throughout this

history, not just because he was the Founder but also because he was so influential

in the development of deep-sea cruising throughout its formative period after

 the war. He raised awareness of the possibility of crossing oceans in small,

 well- constructed boats by his much- publicised transatlantic voyage in

 Vertue XXXV. He went on to form and lead the first worldwide fraternity of

 deep-sea cruising folk and he led by example for the rest of his life, never once

 failing to write of his adventures to the end. Hum was the very embodiment of

 the Objects of the OCC.

When he died in October 1980 aged 80, messages of

 sympathy poured in from around the world and the affection and respect in

 which he was held can best be expressed by repeating some of these tributes.

 The first word came from Journal Editor, David Wallis:

‘The Spectacle Man has gone. This news will be received with

sadness by the natives around the Caribbean Islands who perhaps

recall the eccentric old Englishman who had a habit of rowing

ashore armed with a boxful of discarded spectacles which he

used to distribute as a kind of largesse among people for whom

the idea of a visit to an oculist was an unimaginable luxury. It

explains Humphrey Barton’s occasional appeals for discarded

spectacles and displays an aspect of his character unsuspected

by many who knew him as a somewhat formal, plain-speaking

man.

It was old age that finally vanquished the old lion. Towards the

end he had endured more ill health than would have been

necessary to scupper lesser men and he was sailing his beloved

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Rose Rambler almost to the last. Writing to this scribe a bare

week before he slipped his cable Hum was describing with

enthusiasm the marina at Larnaca where he had fetched up, a

refugee from Mintoff’s Malta which had proved inhospitable and

doused his dreams of ending his days in the Blue Sisters hospital.

Born in Wimbledon, Surrey, he lived an adventurous life,

learning to fly fighters in World War I at the age of 17. He

afterwards joined Callender’s Cables and served with them

around the world until he teamed up with Laurent Giles in 1936

as a marine surveyor.

When the Second World War began he served with the Royal

Engineers with the rank of major, subsequently rejoining Laurent

Giles until his retirement in 1959. He first came to public notice in

1950 with his epic passage to New York with Kevin O’Riordan. He

wrote Vertue XXXV on his first Atlantic passage, and then Atlantic

Adventurers, which took three years of research and was

reprinted several times with a translation into French. This work

formed the kernel of an idea for linking these wandering spirits

into an association and marked the beginning of the Ocean

Cruising Club.’

Peter Carter-Ruck, the Commodore of the day, wrote:

‘By one of those coincidences in life, the first year in which I met

Hum was 1954, the year the Club was founded. I was interested

in a Laurent Giles 43 footer lying at Falmouth, and Hum did the

survey for me. I didn’t meet him for some time, having been

unable to attend the survey, but when I did I found it a most

rewarding experience. A year or so later the late Rev Henry

Kendall, Warden of St Edward’s School, Oxford, and himself a

great sailor, asked if I knew ‘an amazing yachtsman’ by the name

of Humphrey Barton.

Regrettably it was not until the 1960s that I really got to know

him, having of course already read Vertue XXXV and Atlantic

Adventurers, and I could not but be impressed by his charm,

diffidence and modesty. With his outstanding record and the lasting

memorial to his endeavours in the shape of the Ocean Cruising

Club, he is to me one of the immortals.’

From across the Atlantic founder member Carleton Mitchell added:

‘Hum was undoubtedly one of the outstanding yachtsmen of our

time. Our courses converged infrequently, alas! But his

personality and charm will never be forgotten, nor his exploits

aboard Rose Rambler. The yearly distances Hum put astern over

such a long span of time, plus his activities as Founder and Admiral

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of the Ocean Cruising Club, are an enduring memorial and

continuing inspiration to all who go to sea.’

Hum’s daughter Pat reflects:

‘How do I remember my father? What has he passed on to me

that I treasure most? Undoubtedly the answer must be that he

has bequeathed me a very deep and abiding love of sailing and

an extremely healthy respect for the sea.

I learnt to know my father best when sailing with him delivering

yachts in the mid fifties. We shared many a grim watch together

and many that were a great delight to us both. He loved to find

new cruising grounds and to gather new harbours and anchorages

into his already vast repertoire. He would always share in the

excitement of exploring unknown places. The few motor boats

we delivered we both found tedious. But the many beautiful sailing

yachts from 7 to 70 tons that we sailed with crews large and

small to North European and Mediterranean ports gave us both

great pleasure and satisfaction.

Above all my father was proud of his seamanship. He could

handle a yacht under sail to perfection; he loved sailing in and

out of port instead of switching on the engine. But, just as

important, he knew how to handle men, how far to drive a tired

crew and how to inspire them to follow his leadership. Founding

the Ocean Cruising Club was just one of the ways in which he

has encouraged many cruising people to follow their own ambitions

and to enjoy the great and varied sport of sailing.’

Founder member and racing rival, Adlard Coles wrote:

‘I am glad to have been invited to give my recollections of our

late Admiral, Humphrey Barton, who was one of my oldest sailing

friends and a close contemporary.

Hum was one of the partners with Laurent Giles and Partners

which he joined in 1936 and could be termed the sailing partner

as it was his job to go on the trials of the new yachts designed by

the firm and, when required, to deliver them to their owners. His

professional training with one of the leading yacht designing firms,

coupled with his intensive sailing experience with new boats,

endowed him with a knowledge of yachts which was quite unique;

there was nothing in a boat that he could not do, whether in sails

and rig down to hull construction and accommodation below. He

was experienced in ocean racing as well as cruising.

When in America for the Bermuda and Transatlantic races in

1950, I saw Humphrey at the New York Yacht Club shortly after his

crossing in Vertue XXXV. He looked tired after his 47 day passage

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and the ordeal in the storm in which he had broken ‘a few ribs’ so

was recuperating before going as sailing master in Gulvain.

My last meeting with him was when he came to a reception

given for him in 1979 by the Royal Lymington Yacht Club to mark

the occasion of his award of the Blue Water Medal of the Cruising

Club of America, the highest honour which the club can confer.

This, I think, was a fitting tribute to one of the greatest amateur

seaman of our time.’

Colin Mudie, founder and professional colleague, contributed:

‘Everybody has his heroes and Humphrey Barton has been one

of mine since I first met him in 1946. There are many reasons,

of course, but one of them must be the manner in which he

practised what might be called ‘creative seamanship’. Anyone

who saw him sailing a big cutter out of St Peter Port hard on the

wind in a strong breeze and luffing his masthead neatly one by

one over a row of moored yachts as he came to them, knows

what I mean. To see him leave a lee quay in Cherbourg with all

hands on the spring or to moor at speed with precision and

confidence a few feet from disaster, was both a pleasure to behold

and an education in the arts of seamanship. Who will forget the

way he used the pumps that were keeping some old vessel afloat

to jet across Bournemouth Bay when the engines failed?

I first fell into the Hum orbit when I was an apprentice with

Laurent Giles and Partners. Although I was in the design end of

the business it was, fortunately for me, thought to be a good

thing that on occasions I should accompany ‘Mr Barton’ on

surveys. Thus it was that on one occasion I found myself well up

in the bows of a thirty square metre pushing strongly on the

great man’s feet to insert him right up into the pointed end. Lesser

surveyors used torches and non-committal words.

Later I had some sea time with him, mostly ocean racing. In

Tilly Twin in a great Fastnet gale year we were sporting a new

kind of crosstree socket and as we bashed out past the Bridge

buoy all the lee crosstrees fell out. Before even our mouths fell

open Hum ran up the mainsail, and I don’t mean hoisted it, lashed

the weather crosstrees in firmly, slid down to deck again and

gave us hell for hesitating to cross some rival vessel.

I was boat keeper on Vertue XXXV before the great voyage

and I have always suspected that I was earmarked as the very

ultimate reserve for his crew. I have mixed feelings about some

of the dangers of the passage but I have always wished I was

there when Hum’s porridge leapt out of his plate into Kevin

O’Riordan’s sleeping bag. It was, recorded Hum, in the immortal

words, ‘Bad luck for both of us.’

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Ian Nicolson, founder member, Port Officer Clyde and fellow surveyor reflects

on Hum as a man of his time:

‘Many people look upon the 20 years starting in 1945 as the

golden age of yachting. It was still a truly amateur sport, limited

in its appeal, free from commercialism, innovative without being

gimmicky, with roots in tradition yet interesting, progressive and

a great pleasure to everyone concerned. In that era the leading

firm of European designers was Laurent Giles and Partners, and

Hum Barton (one of four partners) was their surveyor. He did not

carry out a vast number of surveys, under 700 which by current

standards is a modest number. But such was his standing that he

was in constant demand, his opinions were widely sought and his

judgement was trusted. The reasons for his prestige are obvious;

he was often at sea in all weathers, and he knew the factors

which make a boat safe, sea-kindly and reliable.

As a yachtsman he was unusual in that he was a successful

racing man yet he cruised widely with enthusiastic enjoyment.

Some of his cruises had more than a touch of the racing element

in them; for instance there was his 23 day voyage along the

French coast which covered 22 harbours in a boat only 21 foot 6

inches on the waterline, with no engine. And this was no glorified

dinghy which could be tacked on a button and ghosted into a

windless land-locked rabbit-hutch of a harbour. How many sailors,

amateur, pseudo amateur or professional could equal that record?’

Finally, perhaps the present writer could be allowed space for a few reflections

on Hum as I knew him in his old age. We met in Malta when he was 76, some

30 years my senior, but we got to know each other well in the two years we

had together on that island. I had joined the OCC two years previously, but

before I knew of its existence the name Humphrey Barton was etched on my

mind as one of the greats.

I recall holding a party for the large crew of a visiting yacht, watching the

young paying court to Hum with a degree of reverence usually reserved for

popes or presidents. Once, when the party was on Rose Rambler, Hum took

me aside and whispered that it was his and Mary’s wedding anniversary and

asked me to propose a toast. I was somewhat diffident as the other guests

were Batchy Carr and Charles Nicholson, both of Hum’s age and all four of

us ex-fighter pilots, they in the First World War and me after the Second. I

valiantly tried to dredge up flying stories to match theirs, but couldn’t compete

with Hum’s four engine failures in one flight, each time landing in a field to

make repairs.

Hum had accepted that there were few deep-sea miles left in him and greatly

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relied on Mary for the heavy work, be it up the mast or on the foredeck, but

they were usually the first away in the spring and often the last back of the

several Med commuters who wintered in Malta. But by 1980 his time had

come; after fighting many an illness successfully he was flown home for a

mercifully short spell in hospital and, as Mary put it, “was spared the final

indignity of living ashore”.

Despite his addiction to ocean crossing Hum always spoke nostalgically of

gunk holing. I like to think that his restless soul found peace in the way that the

inimitable Belloc describes it:

‘I love to consider a place which I have never yet seen, but

which I shall reach at last, full of repose and marking the end of

those voyages, and security from the tumble of the sea.

This place will be a cove set round with high hills on which

there shall be no house or sign of men, and it shall be enfolded

by quite deserted land; but the westering sun will shine pleasantly

upon it under a warm air. It will be a proper place for sleep.

The fairway into that haven shall lie behind a pleasant little

beach of shingle, which shall run out aslant into the sea from the

steep hillside, and shall be a breakwater made by God. The tide

shall run up behind it smoothly, and in a silent way, filling the

quiet hollow of the hills, brimming it all up like a cup – a cup of

refreshment and of quiet, a cup of ending.

Then with what pleasure shall I put my small boat round, just

round the point of that shingle beach, noting the shoal water by

the eddies and the deeps by the blue colour of them where the

channel runs from the main into the fairway. Up that fairway

shall I go, up into the cove, and the gates of it shall shut behind

me, headland against headland, so that I shall not see the open

sea any more, though I shall still hear its distant noise. But all

around me, save for that distant echo of the surf from the high

hills, will be silence; and the evening will be gathering already.

Under that failing light, all alone in such a place, I shall let go

the anchor chain, and let it rattle for the last time. My anchor will

go down into the clear salt water with a run, and when it touches

I shall pay out four lengths or more so that she may swing easily

and not drag, and then I shall tie up my canvas and fasten all for

the night, and get me ready for sleep. And that will be the end of

my sailing.’159