Early Yachting.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 160, 28 August 1886, Page 5

Early Yachting.

The pastime of yachting apparently dates from the time of the Stuarts, although, according to the researches of the Jlate Admiral bmyth. the Plantageneta had yachts and termed them "esneccas," a word by tho way which seems to be of doubtful derivation. However, if we desired to prove the antiquity of yachting we Bhould have to, travel back much further than the timeof the Plantagenete, and, as previously said. ,we can be content with the generally accepted assertion that yachting as a pastime dates from the time of the Stuarts. Mr Pepy says in his *„' Naval Minutes" that the word " yacht" was not known in England until the Dutch in 1660 presented a vessel to Charles 11. which they termed a yacht, and which he named Mary. In IGG2 thia monarch is said to have designed a yacht for! himself and named her Jamie. She was matched against the Bezan belonging to the Duke of York, for a afake of £100, and the course was from Greenwich to Gravesend and back. Peppy eayß : "The King lost it goiner, the wind being contrary, but saved stakes in returning. There were divers noble persons and lords on board, hia Majesty sometimes steering himself." The King's craft is said to have been " frigatelike," but- very shallow in body, having only 3 feet 6 inches draught of water. Charlea altogether built fourteen yachts, and appears to have tested the speed of all, aa.he was, very fond of steering. The larg-. est of these yachts was the Mary (not the Mary previously referred to), which wae 67 feet on the water-line, with a beam of 21 j .feet/and^a draught of water , of 7$ feet. The taste for yachting gradually extended during the reign of Anne and the Georges, and was even takenup by Irish gentlemen ; so much indeed did the latter think of the pastime' that in 1720 they established a club in ' Cork Harbbur to promote it, and some curious chronicles exist relating to the custottaa pf y'achtmen at that date. „ Yachts at this time were common about the Solent and Sourhamp'tori watVr,' and an advertisement in a paper dated 1778_offers a yacht of seven tons for "aale7 *" with figurehead gilt andrgopse.stern^rjainted forVand aft." Theyaohtu of the middle of the last century 1 , 1 although if gdirge6uBly gilt, and decb- f 'rated with' bright 'red'Wi blue jJigments, and : upnolBtered"with>ichf velvets, could "not, hive bdenVeryj satisfactory eeaibbats, and' !, wtffin^tKe'ieveßjie cutter model waBgfadu'. y >ally x adtfpt&d'atfqut the end of the" last y c«n^ ! tury^'The' Duke of Kicftri'ond,^ who, It can beiaeduWe'drdweii his'yactiting proclivities' ' •kisroyal ancestor— built oneof these cut-

ter yachts" on the Itcben, " Southampton, in 1783, and sailed from thence, according to a contemporary .chronicle,* fo^JTrajjce.on July sth of that year, accompaned by his brother, Lord George Lennox and Captain Berkelyl. Trips to the-French coast and > the Channel however agreeable they might have been in 1784, had<some< drawbacks in 1794, as ifc is recOided in a Hampshire paper that "on July 28, 1894, some gentlemen who were taking a cruiee round the Isle of Wight fell in with the Du'gomar, privateer, and were taken into Dunkirk, where they were stripped of everything valuable, and then set ac liberty. — " Art Journal " for July.