A ROYAL PASTIME

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22231, 23 October 1937, Page 18

A ROYAL PASTIME

Story of the Britannia The King's Britannia. By John Irving. Seeley Service. 264 pp. (12s 6d net.)

So much a part of British yachting was the King's cutter Britannia that the history of the famous old ship is an excellent history of the sport from about the time the cutter was designed in the early nineties down to the present day. Probably no man could have made a better job of a history of the ship than John Irving, who for many years has been an unerring and enlightened critic of sailing, and whose intimate connexion with the sport of yachting is probably not approached by any writer. As the history of a ship which left a permanent mark on yachting throughout the world, the book succeeds by every standard, and all yachtsmen who read it will with understanding realise the author's difficulty in treating the subject of his tale as anything but a definite personality. But the book is considerably ' more than the record of achievement of a magnificent ship. It is the story of what so many yachtsmen have now come to regard as the decline of the really big class ships. The Britannia on two occasions restored big ship sailing to favour as a sport. Just before she was built, big class racing had become so entangled in rules and the devices to beat them that the sport had ceased to attract, and British yachting was faced with the unpleasant possibility of the death of the big yachts. With the advent of the Britannia, yachting revived. Up till the war competition was as keen as it had ever been; and improved handicapping devices made the racing better. After the war, big class racing was again at a very low ebb, and the Britannia, for years retired from racing and comfortably fitted for the cruising that King George loved so well, was rigged for racing and once again led the revival of the big class. The Britannia in her later racing years was

not able to compete with the new ships; but the record of her career forces the reader to the conclusion that the times had so changed for the worse that the times were actually out of joint. One of the Britannia's most famous victories was won in her second year, when she raced the American cutter Navahoe across the Channel- and back. The race was sailed in a gale of wind, over a course of 120 miles, and the Britannia won by two seconds. That sort of racing was unknown in the Britannia's later days, when the big ships laid themselves open to the charge that they had become so tender that in anything like a good breeze they were forced to stay on their moorings to preserve their delicate and extremely costly mass of rigging. Hull form has not greatly changed since the Britannia was launched, as a comparative diagram of the hulls of the Britannia and the first Endeavour show; but rigging has become so complex that the fine hulls of to-day must be used for harbour racing and contests in light weather, or not be used at all. For half a century those who control the sport of yachting have been trying to devise a set of rules which will cover all contingencies; but racing rules, except for one-class competition, have defied simplification, and it appears that the future of what is now J class is distinctly obscure. There is a strong body of opinion that the size of racing hulls will have to be reduced to a point at which they can be given ringing that will allow them to develop their full capabilities. The enormous increase in the interest in ocean racing is a healthy indication of this state of mind. Yachtsmen regard now with no excitement the doings of the J's and are not greatly interested even in the spectacular America's Cup, but yachtsmen will always look back on the Britannia as the greatest of them all