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Humphrey Barton was a well-known name in the sailing world, as he was a
respected surveyor and partner in Laurent Giles and had written three books on
cruising following his famous Atlantic crossing. He was a keen offshore racer
and a sailor of considerable skill. His job brought him in contact with many
boats and owners and he was unstinting in his advice to would-be ocean sailors.
His first crossing has already been described, but this was only the beginning
of his Atlantic peregrinations. Hum’s first wife, Jessie, died suddenly in 1959,
after which he retired from Laurent Giles, handed the club over to Tim Heywood,
became the Club’s first Admiral, and went off cruising.
Over the next 15 years Hum made a further 18 Atlantic crossings, routinely
running down to the Caribbean for the winter and returning to Europe to collect
his mail in the spring. The last was at the age of 75. In the islands he found that
many local people suffered from poor near-sight as they grew older, with no
means of correction, so while at home he collected cast-off spectacles from
his middle-aged friends and regularly took a box of them out with him. He
would sit under a palm tree and try them on his ‘patients’, asking them to read
from a paperback to check suitability. He soon discovered, however, that the
ladies were more interested in appearance than visual acuity so brought along
their bible having learnt a page by heart. Not surprisingly he is still remembered
in the Caribbean as ‘The Spectacle Man’.
Hum married again in 1970 to the then Mary Danby, who had already made
a name for herself as a fearless cruising and racing crew (not least in that
toughest of all places, the galley). Together they made five more Atlantic crossings
before retiring to the Mediterranean in 1975. Hum died in 1980, but not before
he was awarded the Cruising Club of America’s Blue Water Medal, not, as is
usual, for a specific feat, but for his life-long devotion to the yachting cause. In
his later days he became quite whimsical and rather surprised the young reporter
sent to interview him about the award. When asked if there were any words of
wisdom that he would like to pass on, Hum replied, “Always keep the land in
sight and never never sail at night”.
Despite this advice Hum was a keen ocean racer, so it is not surprising that
many members of RORC who were qualified joined him at the outset. Indeed,
it was this hard core who supplied most flag officers for the Club for several
years and, despite their preoccupation with ocean racing, they brought energy
and experience to the new organisation which they had so readily joined.
One of these racing men, Dick Scholfield, was elected Vice Commodore at the
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The diminutive Sopranino]
inaugural meeting. Dick was a Colonel in the Royal Artillery but that duty does
not seem to have interfered too much with his sailing. He qualified for the OCC
three times over in the Indian Ocean before the Second World War and then, in
the late 1940s, built one of the first Giles RNSA 24s, Blue Disa, and raced her
11in the BA to Rio race alongside Blunt White’s White Mist. After Blue Disa Dick
owned an even more radical Giles design, Fandango, which he raced very
successfully for a number of years. He became heavily involved in sail training
so retired early from the army and became Race Director of the Sail Training
Association (STA) where, together with Colin Mudie, he introduced a rating
rule that allowed vessels from 3000 tons down to 20 to race competitively
against each other. Dick also skippered the famous Bloodhound across the
Atlantic in 1952, thus accumulating six qualifying passages before the Club
was formed.
The first Rear Commodore, Colin Mudie, worked as a designer for Laurent
Giles and had known Hum for some years. He was on the threshold of a career
as a naval architect extraordinaire and in 1950 had been responsible for the
detailed drawings of Patrick Ellam’s little Sopranino. Whereas Hum had set
out to show that a stout, heavy displacement, small boat could safely cross an
ocean, Patrick wished to prove that a light displacement boat was equally
seaworthy. Provided you could keep the water out, he believed that it would
float like a cork in any conditions. He experimented with a two-man sailing
canoe in which he made several Channel crossings, at times using a trapeze for
as long as seven hours. This convinced him sufficiently to commission the
bigger boat with accommodation so that he would not have to find a hotel, but
at 19ft 8in she was little more than a large, decked-in canoe. Hum described
her, after sailing her in the Lymington River, as an amusing little toy in which he
would not care to cross the Solent in a blow.
Patrick chose Colin as his crew for his planned transatlantic because he was
already acquainted with the boat, having borrowed her for several offshore
races. He was also a most useful hand, having served his time as a boat builder.
There was just room for the two of them to lie down together, somewhat
cosily. When standing, the small hatch came up to the man’s waist and he
could put his hands over both sides. However she had a self-draining cockpit
and a watertight hatch so, short of structural damage, she was virtually
unsinkable, if a little uncomfortable. In Patrick’s log it is amusing to note than
in a heavy gale they both ‘put on pyjamas and turned in’. They had devised an
ingenious self-steering system (there were no patent systems on the market
then), so once clear of shipping it became their practice at night both to enjoy
eight hours’ sleep – presumably in pyjamas! On the trade wind crossing they
averaged a very creditable 3·9 knots and then continued slowly north as far as
New York. They wrote of their adventure under the simple title Sopranino, and
both joined as Founder Members. Colin is still in harness as a naval architect
and remains an active member of the Club.
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Hum was well acquainted with the young brothers Stanley and Colin Smith who,
with their father, built small boats at Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. They had a long-
held ambition to cross the Atlantic under sail but had insufficient funds to build a boat
stout enough to cross against the prevailing winds, nor could they spare the time for a
trade wind crossing. Instead, in 1949, they sailed steerage to Halifax, Nova Scotia,
where they set about building to designs that they had sketched on their way over in the
steamer. Unfortunately they ran out of money before their vessel was complete so sailed
the 20ft hull with a second- hand upturned dinghy in lieu of a coachroof. So lionised
were they after this extraordinary feat that they were invited to exhibit Nova Espero
at The Festival of Britain in London in the spring of 1951.
Stanley Smith
Their short book, Smiths at Sea, tells of their adventure in a delightfully
light-hearted fashion which seems to have pervaded their attitude to both
work and play. Before the Exhibition they finished the hull and changed her
rig to yawl, after which they deemed her sufficiently seaworthy to make an upwind
crossing.
The Smith Brothers’
view of their creation
They sailed from the Festival carrying samples of British goods as well as the goodwill of
the nation, and bravely challenged the North Atlantic. The story of that eventful crossing
was recorded in Stanley’s second book, The Wind Calls the Tune. Stanley joined as a
Founder and went on to make further extraordinary voyages. He designed a 14ft cruising
dinghy called the Potter and delivered one to Sweden under sail in November. He did
confess to questioning the wisdom of the undertaking when, in the Kattegat at night, they
had to chop ice off the rigging to prevent capsize.
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Also in the spring of 1951 Hum was asked to survey a little 24ft gaff cutter called Wanderer II,
designed by his firm before the Second World War. She had already made a name for herself in
the ownership of Eric Hiscock, who had sailed her to the Azores and back, but he considered
her too small to carry the stores required for serious ocean cruising. Eric was more than a little
surprised, therefore, when her prospective new owner, a young London dentist called Bill
Howell, told him of his intention to sail her to the South Seas. But since the 24ft boat was all Bill
could afford, and he had told all his friends he was going, as Bill put it, ‘go I must, or at least try’.
Nova Espero with cabin and mizzen
ready for her second crossing
With very little seagoing experience apart from having worked his,
passage on a liner from his native Australia to England, he set about
learning from the few books available at that time. In the autumn of 1951 he
packed his dental instruments aboard and set sail for Tahiti with fellow Australian
Frank McNulty. They were more afraid of the land than the sea, so qualified
for the OCC on their very first passage by staying at sea all the way from
Falmouth to Gibraltar. The story of their voyage is told in Bill’s inimitable style
in his book White Cliffs to Coral Reef, in which he relates how in the cabin of
his minute boat he drilled teeth with his foot drill, using hypnotism in lieu of
anaesthetic, to supplement his meagre finances – all this in an engineless 24ft
boat in which he covered 18,000 miles in two years before selling her in
Vancouver and returning to his London dental practice. Bill remained an active
member until his death in 2002.
During this eventful period Hum was asked to survey a 70ft Fleetwood fishing
boat for Frank and Ann Davison. They planned to convert her for extended
cruising but ran out of money and into debt, so attempted to outrun the law
with the threat of a writ on their mast. After a horrendous two weeks drifting
up and down the Channel they lost the boat and continued their drifting on a
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life-float. Frank died of exposure but Ann was washed ashore on Portland Bill.
She was not one to give in and wrote a most moving book about their tragic
voyage, entitled Last Voyage, in which she expressed her maxim in life: ‘The
only way to live is to have a dream green and growing in your heart’. The book
was a success and provided enough funds for her to try once more. This time
she found a pretty little 23ft sloop called Felicity Ann and again asked Hum to
survey her. He found her sound and suitable for Ann’s plans, so in 1952 she set
off again, this time reaching Barbados to become the first woman to cross the
Atlantic singlehanded. She sailed on to New York before flying back just in time
to attend the inaugural meeting and thus become a Founder of the club.
Members may recall Chich Thornton’s account in Flying Fish 2003/1 of his
adventurous 1953 Atlantic crossing with his wartime friend, Victor Clark.
They had served together in the Royal Navy, but their paths did not cross again
until 1953 when Victor invited Chich to crew him on his first ocean passage.
Victor had bought the 33ft sloop Solace, and once again Hum acted as surveyor
and mentor.
Victor Clark – now in his nineties and thought to be the Club’s oldest member
After sailing trials in the Solent Hum saw them off in the autumn of 1953 and they made
an uneventful passage until, in the Cape Verde islands, they were boarded by thieves. Victor
pursued them across the rocks in the night, one of them dying of a heart attack during the
chase. On reaching Trinidad Chich jumped ship to return to his schoolmastering, following
a term’s leave of absence from Epsom College. He got back just in time for the inaugural
OCC meeting and remained a member until his death earlier this year, but not before he had
lent the only known edition of the first List of Members to the current writer. Victor had intended
to continue singlehanded but was persuaded to take Stanley, a 16-year-old lad from St Lucia, who
accompanied him for the entire circumnavigation. The
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voyage took six years, more than a year being spent at Palmerston Atoll where
Solace was wrecked on the reef. The entire population of the island turned-to
and rebuilt almost the entire starboard side out of local timber and bits salvaged
from other wrecks. When he eventually arrived back in the Caribbean to drop
Stanley, Victor called at Bequia and found it quite spoilt ‘... no longer the quiet
little village of 1953. There were half a dozen yachts at anchor ...’
A small boy rowed over from one of the boats and inveigled his way aboard
Solace, where he boasted that he had made several Atlantic crossings – admitting
when questioned that the first two were ‘in mummy’s tummy’. He introduced
Victor to his parents, John and Bonnie Staniland, who had, in fact, already
made four Atlantic crossings in their 46ft schooner Nymph Errant, by the time
the Club was formed. Although they were sailing at the time of the first meeting
they both became Founder members. Victor was also at sea in February 1954,
but Hum ensured that he was registered in time to become a Founder and, at
the age of 95, he is thought to be our oldest member. The story of his adventurous
circumnavigation was published under the title On the Wind of a Dream, a
phrase he took from an anonymous poem:
In fancy I listened – in fancy I hear
The thrum of the shrouds and the creak of the gear,
The patter of reef points on the mainsail a’quiver,
The bow-wave that breaks with a gurgle like laughter
And the cry of the sea birds following after,
Over oceans of wonder, by headlands of gleam
To the harbours of fancy on the wind of a dream.
Ian Nicolson was apprenticed to the yacht designer Frederick Parker before
the end of the war. They were one of the main rivals of Laurent Giles, which
was how he met Hum in the late 1940s. Ian soon became restless in the restricted
post-war Britain so decided to emigrate to Canada, and in 1952 bought a share
of the 45ft ketch Maken and sailed her from England to Vancouver. He later
moved to Nova Scotia, and while there read of the formation of the OCC, so
registered in time to become a Founder. He built a 30-footer which he named St
Elizabeth, sailing her home singlehanded to attend the first annual dinner, which
sufficiently impressed his then girlfriend to become his wife. Together they
built a 35-footer to a design which Ian describes as a ‘nursery-ketch’, it being
designed around their intended family. Since then they have built a further four
sea-going boats with their own hands and Ian has written 24 books on sailing
matters, a number which grows each year. Even so he still finds time to be an
active member of the club.
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In 1953 Hum went to meet a young man on his arrival at Gosport after sailing
his Vertue from Singapore via the Cape of Good Hope. Peter Hamilton’s
Speedwell of Hong Kong was a later model than Vertue XXXV and was
specifically designed for ocean cruising, but force of circumstances meant that
Peter had to sell her before his further plans could be fulfilled. After the inaugural
meeting Peter bought another Vertue, Salmo, and set off on what was intended
to be a circumnavigation. Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on your
point of view – Cupid intervened and Peter got engaged on the eve of his
departure. He made it as far as Montreal, but could stand it no longer so flew
home, married his fiancé, and took her on a would-be round the world honeymoon
cruise. This time nature interfered and, since the boat wasn’t large enough for
three, they turned back in Tahiti and sold her (the boat) in Los Angeles. This
romantic tale is told in Peter’s delightfully named book, The Restless Wind.
Mary Blewitt was assistant editor of the Journal of the Institute of Navigation
alongside Mike Richey, the Director, of whom we shall hear much more.
Mary, who later became Mary Pera, took a particularly keen interest in celestial
navigation and in 1950, before she had made an ocean passage, she published
her timeless little book Celestial Navigation for Yachtsmen. Such was its authority
that it soon became known simply as ‘Mary Blewitt’, and is still in use to this
day as a primer in basic celestial navigation. Her book cut away centuries of
obfuscation. She showed in simple language the basis of nautical astronomy
and how simple it was with the new tables to translate an observation into a
position line on the chart. She was also a keen ocean racer and regularly navigated
Bloodhound or Foxhound in RORC races. She also navigated for John
Illingworth when they won the Fastnet. Mary qualified on a return Atlantic
crossing in Bloodhound in 1952, thus becoming a Founder.
In his book The Circumnavigators, Donald Holm describes Al Petersen in
these words: ‘All wanderers on the sea are brothers, but this one is a born
gentleman and a rare sailor’. Amachinist in Brooklyn, Al scraped enough money
together to buy a 1926 Colin Archer gaff cutter of 33ft overall. She was called
Stornaway and the dinghy was aptly named Lewis. He left New York harbour in
1948 without telling anyone of his intentions, if he even knew himself. In an
interview in Australia his laconic reply when asked why he was solo was, “I
want to be alone”. Not surprisingly they dubbed him ‘Garbo’. He arrived back
in New York in 1952, where the caption in a NY paper described him as, ‘only
the fourth person since time began to have circumnavigated singlehanded’. He
then slipped back into anonymity, until a letter to Yachting magazine from
Edmund Poett (also a Founder Member), telling how Al had twice diverted to
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Al Petersen, ‘only the fourth man since time began to circumnavigate solo’
help him out of difficulties, came to the notice of the awards committee of the
Cruising Club of America (CCA). Interestingly, at that time they were
considering two other yachtsmen for the coveted Blue Water Medal
Patrick Ellam of Sopranino fame, and Carleton Mitchell for his
success in two transatlantic races in Caribbee – both of whom
were to become Founders two years later. Al was awarded the
medal, then returned to his machine shop to save for his next sortie.
Meanwhile he met and married Marjorie, an experienced dinghy sailor,
and together they gathered enough pennies to set off again. Over the
next 20 years they sailed on a shoestring to Singapore and to the Mediterranean.
They eventually swallowed the anchor in San Francisco Bay, but continued to
live aboard until Al’s death. Describing their frugal life aboard, Marjorie recalled
how when the knees wore through on their jeans they made them into cut-offs,
and when the seats went through they patched them with the leg bottoms. But
their little ship exuded efficiency. The leathered jaws were always tallowed, the
wooden blocks were free and gleaming and every rope was neatly coiled. How
Al heard of the formation of the OCC is not recorded, nor how he afforded the
$2 subscription, but he became a Founder and shows a circumnavigation as his
qualifying voyage. Stornaway, of whom they were both so proud, was sold on
but stayed in Sausalito where sadly only this year she sank through neglect.
When raised was so rotten she didn’t even make a good bonfire.
It will be remembered that Erroll Bruce and Adlard Coles – the latter now
known the world over as a publisher of sailing books and author of the classic
Heavy Weather Sailing – had shipped their boats to New York with Gulvain for
the 1950 transatlantic race. At less than 31ft overall Erroll’s Samuel Pepys was
the smallest boat in the race, while at 32ft Adlard’s Cohoe was slightly longer
but rated better. This was the first time that such small yachts had been allowed
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to compete in a transatlantic race and they were determined to prove the
seaworthiness of their little ships. It was a heavy weather race, but this did not
stop them from driving their boats to the very limit and almost beyond. They were
rarely more than a few miles apart so shared the same weather pattern, and it is
interesting to compare the logs of the two boats under similar circumstances.
After exceeding his yacht’s design speed over a 24 hour run, Erroll wrote:
‘Steering is difficult and the yacht rolling heavily.
Still, all the time we are driving forward at seven
knots, and often over. Occasional freak waves knock
the yacht about. At 6.30 p.m. in a squall, with Jack
at the helm, a very steep sea struck the boat. She
lifted bodily out of the water from the stem to the
mast, while the rest of the hull was immersed up to
the cabin top. The helmsman who had previously been
sitting in a normal cockpit found himself sitting in
a rectangular wooden box comprised of the cockpit
coamings, while all the rest was under water. The
yacht was planing with an immense bow wave abaft
the mast and about 3ft higher than the rail. On top
of the wave Jack said it was like standing on an
overhanging cliff looking over a plain towards the
horizon.’
While running before the same gale Adlard wrote:
Still blowing hard from astern and in twelve hours
we logged eighty-four miles–or seven knots. This is
above our maximum theoretical speed, but frequently
the boat is held on a wave and planes for some
seconds at a much higher speed. This is most exciting
to the helmsman, as the tiller goes stiff and the bow
wave froths up on either side level with the guard rail
and water pours over each side deck, as though we
were submerging.’
Samuel Pepys beat Cohoe by five hours, but had to give her seven on handicap
which gave the latter first place. Erroll entered Samuel Pepys for the next
transatlantic race in 1952, and was again the smallest boat in the race, but this
time she won. Among his crew was Bill Wise, who became a Founder and
remains a member to this day. Erroll still took an early morning singlehanded
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sail in the Solent in his eighties. One morning he slipped overboard while docking
and had considerable difficulty getting out, after which he wrote to the
Commodore offering his resignation on the grounds of bad seamanship. It was
not accepted.
Bill has some interesting reflections which illustrate the different development
of yachts and racing on either side of the Atlantic:
‘Whilst we British had suffered a virtual ban on
sailing from 1939 to 1945 and our boats were almost
all pre-war, they had built new ones and were
developing new techniques. Our elderly craft looked a
trifle shabby in Long Island Sound compared with
the smart new Americans, but we could show them a
thing or two in crew training! Anyway, after a
month working up in the Sound, we inSam Pepys
gained a creditable place in the Bermuda Race gained a creditable place in class and 5th overall out of 52 boats competing
We had acquired some new-fangled nylon sheets
(too stretchy for anything except the spinnaker;
Terylene / Dacron had yet to be invented) and shock
cord (this did prove extremely useful and one of my
first actions, on getting back to Portsmouth, was to
visit the local chandlers and tell them to get hold of
some at all costs). We Limeys were much impressed
when the start of the Halifax race was postponed
because an American yacht’s refrigerator had broken
down! The locals were surprised to find we did not
even have an icebox, and still more surprised to find
we had no engine.
One device which we did beat the Americans to was
our radar reflector. Reflectors had just to
appear on buoys and I got a collapsible model
knocked up in the naval workshop which caused a lot
of interest when hoisted on the Samuel Pepys
yardarm. It became known as the ‘Wisdom’. I also got
the workshop to make us a very stylish rotatable
wooden frame on which I wound a few turns of wire
as a DF loop. It worked perfectly and we homed in on
Bermuda without any last-minute panic. We also had
the new RN boat’s crew oilskins, a vast improvement
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on the old tarpaulin jacket. Seaboots, however, had
not progressed beyond the clodhopper stage and were
forbidden absolutely by our skipper. Apart from one
nylon spinnaker, all sails were cotton or canvas and
could not be bagged when wet for fear of mildew so
there was always a sodden jib or two on the floor of
the forepeak.
We signalled several passing merchant ships,
‘Please report us to Lloyds of London’. This went by
light at night or by international code flags in
daylight. We did worry slightly when one e foreign
ship responded with, ‘Will report you to LYONS of
London’ (a well-known tea house) but even that got
through. When we identified ourselves to a passing
liner as Samuel Pepys, we asked her ‘what ship’ and
she replied ‘Mary Windsor’. We later found that we
had indeed been talking to the Queen Mary.....
Later we were becalmed within sight of a fleet of
French tunnymen, fishing on long poles. One of
them decided to give us a fish and approached within
a few yards but then panicked, and went full astern
hooking a fishing line round our mast. Fortunately
the line parted but not before we were heeled,
gunwales under. Determined to do his bit for the
entente, he then floated the fish and a bottle,
of wine astern in a bag. That night we dined well on
fresh tuna steaks and vin ordinaire.’.’.’.’.’
At the same time, on the west side of the Atlantic, Carleton Mitchell was carving
out a name for himself with his famous Phillip Rhodes centre-board yawl,
Caribbee. While Samuel Pepys was the minnow of the 1952 transatlantic race
fleet and had to fight it out with Frederick Morgan’s Joliette, Caribbee at 58ft
overall, and Jaques Barbou’s Janabel of the same length, were the big boys.
Carleton used this passage as his qualifier to become a Founder, but he had
already cruised many thousands of miles in Caribbee and in his book Passage
East wrote poignantly about life aboard, a description which applies equally to
cruising and racing.
‘I’m in a sentimental mood. Down below my shipmates off watch
are asleep, confident of us on deck. I look down and see the oil
lamp swinging in the gimbals on the bookcase over the fireplace.
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By its light the cabin is very snug and cosy, completely
disassociated from the noise and rushing water on deck. Every
detail of that cabin is familiar, every corner and every blemish
on the panelling. It is my true home. Sitting at the table I have
eaten conch in the Bahamas, soft shell crab in the Chesapeake,
and herring in the Baltic. Leaning back against the cushions I
have laughed and sung and swapped lies with a wonderful
succession of shipmates. At that spot just abaft the main mast
my closest friend was married. At that chart table I have known
uncertainty and indecision yet have ticked off thousands of miles
from the tropics to just short of the polar circle; in those bunks I
have slept the deep sleep so impossible ashore. No other place
means so much to me. In fact, as Rat said to Mole of ‘messing
about in boats’ – ‘Nice? It’s the only thing’.’
These two transatlantic races, 1950 and 1952, supplied a total of 15 Founder
Members, more than one-sixth of the 86 who joined at the outset. Five of them
are members still: Tim Heywood and Harvey Loomis who were with Hum in
Gulvain; Bill Wise who sailed in Samuel Pepys; Carleton Mitchell of Caribbee,
and Hugh Austin who raced in Joliette.
Carleton later commissioned the beautiful Sparkman and Stephens yawl
Finisterre in which he won the Bermuda Race three times running, a feat never
repeated. He wrote several books on both cruising and racing and is a brilliant
marine photographer, publishing Yachtsman’s Camera, a stunning collection of
his photographs, many of which can be seen in the Mystic Seaport Museum.
Although no longer actively sailing, he remains a member to this day.
The most famous name to be entered in the Founders List was probably that of
the immortal Sherman Hoyt. He was 75 years old when he joined and showed
six Atlantic crossings in the 1930s as his qualification. By then, however, his
name had become a household word in yachting circles on both sides of the
Atlantic, with his helming the big schooners and the Js. He was always in
demand as skipper of the classics and continued to win races when many of
his contemporaries had long retired. He won the Fastnet in 1928 as skipper of
the celebrated schooner Niña, and subsequently became Rear Commodore of
the RORC, a singular honour for a foreigner.
What could have been a contentious issue in our Corinthian club is that Sherman
was essentially a professional and it was he who deprived Sir Thomas Sopwith’s
Endeavour of what should have been a British victory in the 1934 America’s
Cup. Endeavour had proved herself the faster boat, winning the first two races
convincingly, and was three minutes ahead at the lee mark in the third. A wind
shift meant that she could lay the course to the finish, but Sopwith chose to
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point above the layline when he had only to steer for the line to win. The wily
Sherman had often sailed against Sopwith and knew that he always covered
tenaciously, so he took Rainbow even further out to windward and drew Endeavou
r into a totally unnecessary tacking dual which he won, going on to finish more than
three minutes ahead, an incredible gain of six minutes on the home leg. By very
similar tactics Sherman evened it, two all, in the fourth, and then went on to win
the series against a demoralised British crew, thus altering the whole complexion
of the America’s Cup for more than half a century. His yachting obituary for the
1962 Newsletter was written by Jack then OCC Rear Commodore USA East,
whose father had been Sherman’s friend and racing contemporary.
‘Yankee yachtsman’ Sherman Hoyt, a renowned racing helmsmanParkinson,
Perhaps the boat which did most to increase Founder membership was the 63ft
yawl Bloodhound. She was owned by Myles Wyatt, Commodore of the Royal
Ocean Racing Club, but he took time off from racing to do a circuit of the
Atlantic in 1952. His family of four all joined, but unfortunately Myles missed
the deadline to be counted a Founder although he did qualify with the rest. In
those days it was the practice to show all passages over 1000 miles in the List
of Members, and Mary Blewitt, Dick Scholfield and Colin Mudie all show legs
of this cruise as their qualifying passages. Bloodhound, it will be recalled, was
later sold to Her Majesty the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. Sir Myles, as
he became, was elected Admiral of RORC and inaugurated the Admiral’s Cup
series of races, the British equivalent of the American ‘Onion Patch’.
Another name to be conjured with amongst the Founders was the journalist
Weston Martyr. He had become, as he puts it, ‘infected with the disease of
ocean racing’ while living in New York in the early 1920s, and on his return to
the UK in 1924 he contacted his old friend and fellow journalist Lieutenant
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George Martin, who owned the lovely French pilot cutter, Jolie Brise. Martyr
passed the infection to Martin and together, largely through the columns of
Yachting World, they raised enough support in 1925 to organise an offshore
long distance race –now the classic Fastnet Race. However this was to cost
Martin his cherished membership of the Royal Cruising Club. There was a lot
of scepticism about the safety of racing offshore at night, and when that
conservative sage and exponent of cruising Claude Worth declared it
unseamanlike to hold a public race in close waters, the acrimony was such that
Martin was forced to resign. Seven boats came to the line in this, the first
ocean race in European waters, from which the Ocean Racing Club was born
(then without the appellation Royal). Jolie Brise won convincingly, but to dwell
on that is to depart too far from Weston Martyr.
This race, of course, was not sufficient to qualify Martyr for the OCC, and if
he is to be believed he sailed then with extreme reluctance:
‘I have never been to sea with a single big mainsail and my
terror of the rig may be all nonsense. I hope it is, for next month
I am sailing from Ryde to Plymouth via the Fastnet in a fifty foot
cutter. I journeyed to Southampton some little while ago, and
my friend, the owner of the cutter, believes I made the pilgrimage
to have a look at the boat, whereas I really went to take some
careful observations of her boom. I saw it – a mile of it – lying on
trestles in the yard, and ever since I have been trying hard to
invent an excuse plausible enough to enable me to back out of
the Ocean Race without arousing the suspicions of my friend. My
friend is counting on me, he is a difficult person to deceive, and
he is very large and very strong. So I think I shall have to break
a leg.’
Martyr, a native Devonian but one who had knocked about the world a bit,
wrote lyrically about cruising in small boats. Despite his misgivings, he did sail
in that first Fastnet and went on to cross the Atlantic in Jolie Brise the following
year, thus qualifying as early as 1926. His voyage in the first List of Members
shows 1925, but that must be an error as he could not possibly have crossed
the Atlantic, sailed in the Bermuda Race, and then returned for the Fastnet in the
same year. Had he remained a member there is little doubt that his writing
would have won him ‘The Award’ in the early days. Now he might have won
the Geoff Pack Memorial Award which has, in a journalistic sense, precisely
the same motive – ‘to encourage cruising in small boats’. Martyr, like Arthur
Ransome before him, had the ability to spin a most evocative yarn, in the sense
before that term took on its present pejorative overtones. In the opening
paragraphs of his timeless classic The £200 Millionaire, he writes:
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‘A little green sloop, flying the Red Ensign, followed us into port.
She was manned solely by one elderly gentleman, but we noted
that he handled the boat with ease and skill. It was blowing hard,
and the little yacht ran down the harbour at speed, but when
abreast of us she luffed head to wind, her violently flapping sails
were lowered with a run, and she brought up alongside us so
gently that she would not have crushed an egg. We took her
lines and made them fast, while her owner hung cork fenders
over the side and proceeded to stow his sails. Urged by a look
from my wife which said, ‘He is old and alone. Help him,’ I offered
to lend the lone mariner a hand. But he refused to be helped.
Said he, ‘Thank you, but please don’t trouble. I like to do
everything myself; it’s part of the fun. But do come aboard if you
will, and look round. You’ll see there’s nothing here that one old
man can’t tackle easily’.
We went aboard and found the green sloop to be one of the
cleverest little ships imaginable. It is difficult to describe her gear
on deck and aloft without being technical; suffice it to say,
therefore, that everything was very efficient and simple, and so
designed that all sail could be set or lowered by the man at the
helm without leaving the cockpit. The boat was 30 feet long by 9
feet wide, and my short wife, at any rate, could stand upright in
her cabin. Her fore end was a storeroom, full of convenient lockers,
shelves and a small but adequate water-closet. Abaft this came
the cabin, an apartment 12 feet long, with a broad bunk along
one side of it and a comfortable settee along the other. A table
with hinged flaps stood in the middle, while in the four corners
were a wardrobe, a desk, a pantry and a galley. Abaft all this
was a motor, hidden beneath the cockpit floor. A clock ticked on
one bulkhead, a rack full of books ran along the other, a tray of
pipes lay on the table, and a copper kettle sang softly to itself on
the little stove.’
One Founder’s name which still stirs the imagination is that of Edward Allcard.
He owned the 34ft gaff cutter Temptress, still in the Club under the ownership
of Mark Fishwick, a journalist and author of pilot books. Allcard made several
remarkable voyages in her. His first was in 1949 with an 80 day non-stop
singlehanded passage from Gibraltar to New York, which he recounted in his book
Single Handed Passage. An even more gruelling return trip the following year took
him into hurricane conditions approaching the Azores where Temptress had to be
lifted out for repairs. The subsequent resumption of the voyage resulted in Edward’s
claim to fame, producing a tale which has gone down in the annals of yachting
lore, when a beautiful young Portuguese stowaway, Otilia, appeared after several
hours at sea. He eventually put her ashore in Casablanca when the story received
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widespread coverage in the British and international press, resulting in her being
flown to the UK by a newspaper while he continued alone to Plymouth. Hum
claimed to have known the true story but took it to his grave.
In 1954 Allcard began a protracted 16 year circumnavigation in his next boat,
Sea Wanderer, leaving Temptress mothballed in Plymouth for several years, selling
her only after she had been badly damaged in a bizarre arson attack. She changed
hands a number of times before Mark found her in 1973. Over the past 31
years he has put a lot more miles under her keel, including an eight year sojourn
in the Caribbean between singlehanded Atlantic crossings.
However, Temptress can boast an even earlier connection with the Club. In 1929
she was chartered by a youthful Humphrey Barton (by his own admission, with
little more experience than dinghy sailing on the Broads!) for an ambitious cruise
from the Solent to Brittany and North Spain. The only major incident appears to
have been hitting the bridge at Audierne but clearly this did not put him off, indeed
it fired him to much greater things from which we are all the beneficiaries.
Many of these Founders, and those who followed, wrote of their exploits and
thus left an indelible mark on those formative days in the development of ocean
cruising. Throughout the years the writings of the few have had an influence
beyond their numbers. Some of the older generation were inspired by the gritty
prosaic prose of McMullen while others were attracted to the lyrical descriptive
writings of Belloc. His essay, The North Sea, is still a classic which should be
read by all after they have weathered their first gale at sea. The next generation
was instructed by the precise writing of Hiscock or encouraged by the lighter
yarns of Pye, while up to the present the wonderfully understated prose of
Mike Richey continues to give courage to many a putative ocean sailor.
There are many famous names who missed the deadline to become Founders
but had equal influence on the early days of the Club. It was the exploits of this
handful of early members which gives a taste of the metal of those few who
had the courage and initiative to cruise and race the oceans half a century ago.
Their boats were small, their equipment was sparse, they hanked on their headsails
and tied down their reefs. Often they had no engine so they had no electricity,
relying on paraffin for cooking and lights. They navigated by the heavens and
were lucky if they had a radio receiver let alone a transmitter, so they identified
themselves by a hoist of flags. By modern standards their passages were slow,
but they sailed not just to get there but for their love of the sea and their love of
the challenge it presented. The landfalls they made were not encumbered by a
forest of masts but by the beauty of nature often quite untrammelled by the
trappings of modernity. They were the men and women who shaped the future
of ocean cruising, and these same people founded the OCC.
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