throat; now up with the peak, that’s right, my boys, up with him.’ Now ‘well’ the throat; now ‘away’ with


the peak. There was a shout for the topsail, and the big yard was soon hauled up to the truck. The visitor had great satisfaction looking back to see that the Prince of Wales’s famous Formosa had not yet got hers out, nor had her other rival, Cuckoo. Vanduara’s men had been ‘smartest in getting the cloth upon their boat’. It was a fine ride. Catching the breeze


fresher, the Scottish flyer reached fast away from her rivals, swung round the Mouse Lightship fully six minutes ahead and went spinning along with the prize seemingly safe in hand. Their mascot, Watson’s young relative,


‘our fair haired bonnie lassie from Scot- land’, was working the tiller ropes. Now they had leisure to watch the clouds of white smoke rising above the green woods that lined Shoeburyness meadows, perhaps from the gunnery school there. The cradle of the ‘Woolwich Infant’ towered above the yellow sands. As they span up to Gravesend they were


cheered from yachts, from laden barges like floating hay stacks, and even the lads of the training ship mounted the rigging to wave. Giving her a ‘clean full’ Vanduara swept between the mark and the club


46 SEAHORSE


steamer. She had won her maiden race. Now there was time for handshakes and the sending of telegrams to anxious friends in Paisley, in Gourock, in Glasgow centre. The critics had been repudiated. Scotland had shown them how it’s done. From then on Vanduara did great


things. The crew, fired by local papers call- ing them ‘raw Scotsmen’, worked as one, crying out ‘Bonnie Scotland’ and ‘Scotland yet’ when things got tough. They were racing for national pride,


more than a 100 guinea purse, victorious even when the Prince of Wales came in


person to compete with his own boat. The Royal cutter was beaten hand-


somely, for ‘without any luffing or jockey- ing or humbugging of any sort’, they literally sailed around her, so close they could see Prince Albert Victor and Prince George sitting up to windward, with his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, sport- ing a yachting cap, watching from the cabin entrance, no doubt a little disap- pointed that his prize yacht was being so thoroughly outclassed. A famous member of the Royal


Thames, aboard Vanduara for that race, declared he had ‘never sailed in a faster or more comfortable boat – and never seen a boat more smartly and so quietly handled’. So much for the criticism. So much for


English superiority. Perhaps the yacht club gossip would be more respectful now the English had been beaten so soundly on their own waters. That season Vanduara achieved the


status of legend. She met the fleetest Eng- lish yachts, in all sorts of weather and in all sorts of waters, both narrow and wide… and she beat them all. Winning the Duke of Connaught’s Cup in a race from Dover to Cowes Road, she fought 110 miles against a headwind most of the way, a hard thrashing match under reefed canvas throughout, coming in some 11 or 12


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