Delivery – Part I
How getting one boat to the start of an ocean race in 1926 helped to kick-start a new era in international ocean racing. Clare McComb has been back in the family archives
In April 1926 paid hand John Blackmore rowed through the privacy and darkness of Falmouth Harbour to pay a visit to Jolie Brise’s owner George Martin, recent winner of the first Fastnet Race; it was a chance meeting, but George felt able to share a big secret with his sometime skipper and old friend. Today Atlantic crossings are still serious sailing, if com- monplace; in those days word that the Commodore of the newly formed Ocean Racing Club was pointing his pilot cutter towards America would have made smoking gossip for the newshounds. George was cruising editor of Yachting
World so his exploits tended to end up all over the press. However, Blackmore was an ex-Brixham fisherman, tough as they go, who could be trusted not to blab to anyone; in his time he had been a smuggler and knew all about secrets. He must have longed to jump ship and join the Jolie Brise in her brave voyage to the New World. Departure had been delayed a full day
because of Sid Briggs, George’s new skipper, whose years on sailing schooners, tramp steamers and Thames barges had filled him with respect for the old seafaring superstitions. Had they started out on a Friday the entire voyage would have been fraught with ‘sailors’ horror’ for him, so George, who minded about his crew’s feelings, had decided to wait. Sid lived in Teignmouth where Jolie Brise was being fitted out, and in 2016 his granddaughter, Hazel, who still lives there, was amazed to discover a page torn from Jolie Brise’s log book filed among the family documents (pencilled on the back were Sid’s careful workings out for numbers of rolls of wallpaper…). The precious page was filled with George’s neat writing outlining preparations that were being made for the Atlantic voyage ahead. The log refers to his ‘tiresome’ overnight
journey from London to the southwest, with ‘all sorts of troublesome luggage’ – which we now know included two radio sets, a loudspeaker and batteries, a clock, a chronometer and a large compass, along- side the usual suitcases. Everything was crammed into a third-class carriage with 6ft 7in of George, leaving little room for
40 SEAHORSE
any other passengers. The log also docu- ments that the galvanised steel for the masthead had cracked and needed replac- ing; the arrival of new sails from Tom Ratsey’s; and the smooth installation and testing of the wireless equipment which George wanted ‘for time signals and weather reports’. This had been designed and donated by William Rathbone, an early radio experimenter and friend from Eton days, who came down to Teign- mouth to teach George how it worked. The meticulous planning paid off, for
the crossing involved a wonderful voyage with no mishaps at all, excepting some broken china – not even a cut or a bruise: Jolie Brise arrived in almost as good condi- tion as she had started. George declared she was a wonderful little vessel, ‘absolutely trustworthy in any weather, and far more comfortable below when it was blowing hard than anyone would ever expect’. They had left Falmouth on Saturday
3 April and reached Montauk Point at the eastern end of Long Island on 20 May with everyone in good spirits. There had been few of the ‘quarrels which so often grow up for little or no reason, when men
are cooped up together for a long time’. George must be given some credit here because he took double watches at the first sign of tetchiness, usually to relieve his friend Weston Martyr who became over- tired towards the end of the voyage, and rather impatient with Warneford, the meticulous navigator. Strangely,
the
double watches seemed to invigorate George, who claimed to feel stronger and stronger as the days rolled by. They had made a perfect landfall at the
Canaries but then sighted nothing for several thousand miles, finding their way using only the sun and stars. Warneford loved ‘sailing over the big seas with the wind aft, like riding a switchback: you could see for miles on top and then plop into the hollows’. Off the Portuguese coast, Cape St Vincent about 100 miles abeam, they caught the North East Trades and ran under square trysail to stop the rolling, using various jibs according to the wind strength, and topsail and trysail top- sail if it lulled a bit. The squaresail proved a bit of a handful ‘when there was weight in the wind and a sea on’. Once Martyr and Briggs went aloft, unhanked it from its
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