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