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Boating on the Thames was a popular sport; similar rowing and sailing craft were found on the Seine and the Marne in France.
While the great names like Fife, Mylne and Watson in Scotland or Luke, Payne, Har- ley Mead and Nicholson in the south drew up the lines of most of the great yachts of the time, amateur yacht design became a popular hobby and some of the men whose names come most readily to mind were in fact amateurs – Albert Strange, Harrison Butler, H.S. Rouse and H.G. May. Claud Worth was just such an amateur designer. An ophthalmic surgeon in London by day, following publication of his two books on the sport he became one of the most eminent yachtsmen of his day. Most yacht design was inspired by racing and not all racing was in big yachts. You could thrash around the bay in a small, fast and often unseaworthy yacht but sailing off-shore in a small yacht was rarely considered sensible. Despite the efforts of John Macgreggor in his canoes, it was arguably not until Humphrey Barton sailed across the Atlantic in Vertue XXXV in 1950, surviving a knock-down and a hurricane in the process, that off-shore yacht cruising in anything less than 100’ came to public promi- nence. Claud Worth was a supporter of yacht cruising and published his manual in 1910. To quote him from the 1st Edition “To make an open sea cruise in a sea worthy little yacht
..........is to one who loves the sea the most perfectly satisfying of all forms of the sport.” Worth had already been working on his own yacht design in 1910 but it was not until 1914 that Tern 111 was launched in Whitstable. He had drawn the lines and sent them to his friend Albert Strange to be checked and faired. She was 53’ on deck, with a 44’ waterline a 12’4” beam and 7’6” draft. At 28 tons Thames Measurement, she would nowadays be considered quite a big yacht. Typical of his cruises, he sailed from the Hamble on 15th July 1921 out to Rockall west of Ireland and back to the Isle of Harris covering 1115 miles in just under 10 days. And all without an engine or the benefits of breathable Gortex. While he considered Tern 111 the perfect yacht, by 1923 “Mrs Worth desired more accommodation, an extra cabin.
.........it became obvious that the only course was to build a larger Tern.”
The contract was signed with Philips at midsummer 1923.
In his words, “they undertook to get on with the work as quickly as possible and have her ready for sea by the end of the following April. Ten months should have been suf- ficient but they took fourteen months and we did not get Tern IV until the autumn of 1924.”
A note of decided tetchiness creeps into his account, almost certainly due to the fact that Philip’s were building a second yacht to the same design at the same time, Gra- cie III. It is recorded that Worth was concerned because he felt the yard was putting the better timber into the other yacht. Obviously friction between boatyards and own- ers is not a new phenomenon.
Tern IV is 62’ on deck plus a bowsprit, has a 49’ water-line with 13’6” beam and 8’ draft 15
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