Foreign News: Cowes Week

Scudding grey clouds and squally weather ushered in Cowes Week, Great Britain’s chief yachting fixture. The regatta started with tragedy. Just before the first race the Britannia, King George’s 38-year-old cutter journeyed for position by the starting buoy off Calshot Head, proud of her new Marconi rig with its towering hollow mast. King George was aboard, snugly dressed and eager for the day’s sport. A squall struck the Britannia’s vast mainsail. She heeled over and nosed into a grey comber. Right before King George’s eyes the wash swept Second Mate Ernest Friend overboard. Sailors threw him a lifebuoy immediately. The ship luffed and signalled for help. Sir Thomas Lipton’s Shamrock V heard the cry “Man Overboard” and hove to. But it was too late. Ernest Friend never reached the floating buoy, disappeared. He left behind a widow and four children. King George called off the day’s racing and hurried back to the yellow-funneled Victoria & Albert from which Queen Mary had seen the tragedy. All the yachts at Cowes half-masted their flags.

There were other accidents. Seaman Pengelly, another member of the Britannia’s crew, jumped smartly into a dinghy, slipped, sprained his back, was carried into East Cowes hospital. Early that morning a motor boat belonging to Lady Hulton caught fire. Lady Hulton, Vice Admiral Francis Herbert Mitchell and a mechanic jumped for their lives, all badly burned. They were fished from the water by the crew of the Conqueror, steam yacht of the U. S.-born department storekeeper H. Gordon Selfridge.

The Britannia withdrew from the next day’s racing and left the King’s cup an easy prey for indefatigable Sir Thomas Lipton. He had won it once before, in 1908. This year he won it as a member of the most exclusive club in the world, the Royal Yacht Squadron.

Reporters know that the little parallelogram of green lawn beside the Yacht Squadron is many times harder to get into than the Royal Enclosure at Ascot. Royal influence means nothing at all to the Squadron’s admission committee. Sir Thomas Lipton, probably the best known yacht owner in the world, was one of Edward VII’s best friends. Despite all King Edward’s blustering, the squadron consistently refused to admit Sir Thomas. No reasons were ever given, but gossipeers said it was because Sir Thomas was “in trade,” that his America’s Cup racing was considered pure advertising for Lipton’s Tea. A few yachtsmen have made the additional point that for all Sir Thomas’s racing, he knows nothing about yachting. He has seldom been on a Shamrock in an important race. He leaves everything to his well-paid sailing masters.

Last week, however. Sir Thomas was a member. The Squadron’s burgee flew from the Shamrock’s truck and from the stern of his steam yacht Erin floated the White Ensign, a flag which only ships of the Royal Navy and yachts of the Royal Squadron may carry. But he did not set foot in the clubhouse last week or step on the sacred lawn. That was his rebuttal for the years that he had been denied membership.

Many U. S. yachtsmen were on that lawn last week. The Squadron may be proud, but it is also punctilious. The U. S. owners of the yachts which had raced across the ocean (TIME, Aug. 3) were all given the privileges of the club for Cowes Week. They were quick to learn other peculiarities of “the most exclusive club in the -world.”

Members may not order dinner for any hour they choose or eat what they wish. The Squadron is run like a private house. If a member wishes to dine he must warn the steward before noon. Dinner is served at 8:30 at an enormous round table at which the senior officer present (who has already chosen what the members are to eat) is host. No checks are ever signed. Members are tactfully billed at the end of the month for what they have consumed.

No one may smoke until after the Royal Toast, but in the middle of dinner a huge silver sarcophagus full of toothpicks is solemnly passed round the table, a relic from the founder of Cowes, Henry VIII.*

*Henry VIII, although a yachtsman, did not found the Royal Yacht Squadron (1812), but he built the clubhouse. It occupies the remains of Henry VIII’s fortified West Castle.