Top: Deerhound, Vanduara and Neptune in 1885. It is remarkable how well Vanduara’s heavy sails are setting in the glassy calm. And some of the key players in the Vanduara story: thread magnate Robert Clark (left) who campaigned her ferociously both north and south of the border; the Prince of Wales (centre) suffered repeated drubbings aboard his once highly regarded yacht Formosa – sadly the royal connection also ensured the maximum press interest; Vanduara’s designer George Lennox Watson, a genius of his chosen profession with an ability to combine the art and science of yacht design in a way few other designers would ever achieve
constructed yacht in Great Britain’. ‘Scientific’ wasn’t a compliment. Some
declared failure a foregone conclusion. As for her crew, the London press were scathing and patronising: they had no doubt that English sailors would prove far superior, at the helm or aloft. It was even suggested they would keep a ‘tidy, sweet- smelling ship’, with the insulting implica- tion that Vanduara’s crew would not! A Scottish visitor was coming aboard
for the first three races. He noted that you generally get more civility in England than in Scotland, but only if you pay for it. He also wondered how the muddy Thames could allow for sport at all, what with dodging tides, and avoiding banks, with the boats almost as much under the command of their pilots as their captains.
44 SEAHORSE
The Londoners had to be ‘running down with the ebb and back with the flood’. He longed for the peaceful anchorages of Holy Loch and Lamlash.
The maiden race For Vanduara’s first race in early June, at the New Thames regatta, there was high tension aboard, particularly as it was known that the ‘11 o’clock start’ would typically happen half an hour later. For the ‘builder, captain and interested
visitor’ those extra minutes stretched like hours. A game of ‘penny nap’ (as described in Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men and a Boat) was started but no one was concen- trating. The crew were busy arranging the sheets and halyards to be ready when the gun sounded. Then the five-minute warning
came and coats were thrown off, shirt sleeves rolled up, while the men crowded about, ready to ride up the mainsail. ‘Three minutes gone,’ cried the time-
keeper, sitting on deck, watch in hand. A deathly silence ensued broken by a shout from the masthead where half a dozen men were ‘swinging on the throat halyard like bees’, to register the last quarter: ‘four gone, four and a quarter gone, four and a half…’ ‘Shout with the puff,’ cried a man
behind the mainsail, who thought he would lose time waiting for the crack. With his words still reverberating they were suddenly pulling and hauling blindly, Lord knows how. The race was away. Vanduara sheered round with her head
downstream. Slowly the mainsail rose, while the cries still rang, ‘Now with the
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120
