In the late 1870s, Czar Alexander II expressed a wish for a new yacht to cruise the Black Sea. The result was a marvel of technological innovation, majestic scale and luxurious appointments—and one of the most unusual vessels ever launched. Livodio was the brain child of Vice Admiral Alexander Popov, who modeled it on his own designs for circular, floating gun platforms—wide, shallow-draft vessels that were relatively stable under the weight of massive artillery pieces. Popov reasoned that a similar design for the royal yacht would reduce rolling (and royal seasickness) while supporting capacious quarters. ,
Livodio—seen here and on the following four pages in architectural diagrams—emerged with startling dimensions. She was 235 feet long and 153 across the beam, more than half as wide as her length. The 11,000-ton, ellipsoidal yacht towered 36 feet above the surface, yet drew only six and a half feet of water.
The Glasgow shipbuilders of John Elder & Co. rushed Livodio to completion in less than a year, but Alexander was assassinated shortly before the delivery of the yacht to Sevastopol. His heirs found Livodio a dubious legacy. Although she proved stable enough in calm waters, she disappointed Popov’s expectations by rolling violently in choppy seas. In consequence, the novel yacht was never used by any of the Romanov family; after years of idling, she was broken up for scrap in 1926.
At the water line Livadio’s bulbous hull widened into ledges that, by means of pillors. supported plut/orms extending from the upperdeck like the veronda of a royal dacha. The yacht had three smokestacks side by side; only the starboard one is visible here.
¦
Livudia contained imperially praparlianed chambers. On the upper deck, shown here, the family's apartments were situated forward, and each suite had its own grand piano.
The imperial saloon, near the bow, had another grand piano. Aft were the main diningroom and slateraams fara score af guests, yacht tenders in a variety af sizes were suspended around the hulls.
On Livadia's main deck, servants were assigned forward quarters, while officers lived aft. Galleys and a bakery were located between the funnels amidships. The Qutward-wing deck extensians could occommodategearas well as /unction as on-baard beaches.
Hinged by 40 wulertighi compartments, theyocht’s steel-encosed hold stowed cool and provisions—/ood forward and water, ice and wine aft. The steam engines, forward of amidships, combined to produce 10,500 horsepower, which drove the yacht at nearly 16 knots.
Chapter 5
A final burst of excess
Orld War I had a devastating effect on the yachtsmen of Cowes. Many British yachts were sold during the War at distress prices to newly rich yachtsmen in the neutral Scandinavian countries. The War also wiped out much of England’s aristocracy: Thousands of titled young men died in the trenches or went down in warships of the Royal Navy.
The British yachtsmen who began to appear at Cowes after the War resembled their American visitors: Most were self-made men or the sons of such men. Many sported titles awarded, like Sir Thomas Tipton’s, for service to the government or for charitable activity—Lord Waring was an ex-shopkeeper. Sir Howard Frank a real-estate magnate. Sir William Berry a newspaper owner. Sir Charles Allom an architect.
A number of these Cowes habitues seemed decidedly less at home on a yacht than the few remaining veteran sailors were. Sir William Portal, heir to a railroad fortune, spent most of the summer season on his comfortably appointed Voldoro, but disliked sailing when there was much wind, explaining that he liked an upright position. Herbert Weld was better known as an archeologist and naturalist than as a yachtsman; invariably his first move on coming aboard his yacht Lulworth was to retire below with The Times. Returning to deck after the yacht was under way and was heeling sharply, he would exclaim, “ Hello! We’ve started! ” Many a new millionaire, squadron leaders complained, assumed that when he had bought a yacht and hired a captain he was a fully accredited yachtsman. Often there was reason to doubt the strength of his ties to the sport. As evidence, the old guard cited a newly titled tycoon who surveyed the Solent from a launch with his captain. Pointing to a large cutter, he said, “Brown, that’s the Shamrock over there, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s ’er. Sir Walter,” the captain replied.
“And wouldn’t that be the White Heather just astern of her. Brown?” Brown acknowledged that Sir Walter was correct.
Sir Walter said, “But damned if I can recognize the white cutter,” and asked who owned her.
After a pained pause, the captain replied, “You do. Sir Walter.”
One of the glories of modern-day yachting, Marjorie Past’s 316-/ao( Sea Cloud—launched in 1931 and originally named Hussar—combined the beauty o/a square-rigger with the efficiency and comfort supplied by four diesel engines and a gyroscope stabilizer.
The new look at Cowes was particularly distressing to the squadron’s most prominent member. King George V, who had succeeded to the throne upon Edward VIPs death in 1910. Unlike his father, he did not enjoy the social life ashore. Instead of strolling the squadron lawn, he preferred clapping on his brimless sailor’s cap and going ff r a brisk sail aboard the royal cutter Britonnio—and the stronger the wind the better.
Queen Mary gamely joined her husband on some of these expeditions, smiling regally to the subjects who flocked around the royal yacht, and then ducking below. But one sail in the summer of 1923 was too much for her. In a howling gale, with Queen Mary huddled below and King
George dashing about the deck helping haul the lines, Britonnio’s jib topsail broke loose. Its steel halyard thrashed about like a gigantic snake, whistling around the mast and banging a tattoo on the deck. Everyone, including the King, pitched in to make it fast, ducking to avoid being decapitated by one of its murderous loops. When it was finally secured, the King shouted to the skipper, “Send someone below to find out how the Queen is.” A sailor went below and soon came back on deck.
George V (in profile) faces Queen Mary and Princess Mary, balh in yachting caps, as a rayal yachting party gathers around the binnacle af Britannia aff Cowes in the 3 920s. The decision af the King a year earlier to re/urbish the 221-tan royal cutter stimulated a postwar revival af yachting in England.
“Well, how is Her Majesty?” asked the King.
The sailor doffed his sou’wester and seemed at a loss for words. “Well, what did she say,” His Majesty shouted. “Speak up!”
The seaman gulped, stammered and then answered. “ Her Majesty said—’ Never again, she’s damned if she will!’ ”
George V was more interested in the speed than in the comforts of Britonnio, and his spending habits differed greatly from those of his father. A guest aboard the yacht was amazed to be offered a halved cigar after dinner. A London jeweler was given a similar lesson in royal parsimony when he submitted samples for a gold yachting trophy to be awarded by the sovereign. George selected a cup—but sent word that he could not afford its lid as well. He often boasted that the main saloon of the Britannic still had its original carpet. After the skipper spilled ink on the carpet, the King refused to order a replacement, instead giving instructions for cleaning the carpet when the yachting season ended.
A refreshing glimpse of life aboard a royal yacht with George V was provided by a yachtsman who visited Cowes near the end of George’s reign. The visitor was Gerard B. Lambert, the sort of sailor-gentleman George V could expect to like. Lambert had made his fortune with a mouthwash, but his lineage was impeccable. During his visit, he was amused when a British reporter said the American yachtsman must have felt especially at home in Plymouth, England, because of his Mayflower ancestors. In fact, Lambert’s ancestors had reached America before the Pilgrims, arriving in Virginia on the Francis Bonoventure in 1619.
Lambert took to England not one but two yachts: the big, beautiful 32-year-old schooner Atlontic and the handsome J-boat Yankee, a racing vessel that he had brought along to try in the summer’s regattas. When Atlantic anchored at Gosport, near Portsmouth, Lambert received an impressive greeting on his yacht from an Officer of the Day dressed in full regalia—including a sword that tangled with the officer’s legs after he had had a few of Lambert’s cocktails. But the yachtsman was more intrigued when he was “commanded” (as royal invitations were expressed) to come to dinner aboard Victorio and Albert III.
His irreverent American companions sarcastically saluted Lambert as he departed in evening dress inAtlantic’s tender. And Lambert commit-ed afoux pos right at the start: Approaching the high-sided royal yacht, he nosed up to the starboard gangway, only to be waved off by a deck hand’s “discreet arm,” as he put it. Victorio and Albert III had two gangways, and the starboard was used by no one but the Royal Family.
The port gangway was carpeted. At the first landing, Lambert was formally received by Sir Philip Hunloke, the captain of Britannia. Sir Philip ushered the King’s guest to the Master of the Household in a reception room where the other guests were already standing about. The
Master of the Household presented a diagram of the dinner table for that night, so everyone would know where to sit. A few moments later came an announcement that Their Majesties were approaching.
George V in dinner jacket and Queen Mary in a long gown and magnificent choker moved grandly down the line, shaking hands as their guests bowed and curtsied. With no more ado, the royal couple led everyone into Victorio ond Albert’s dining saloon (poges 154-155). Lambert had the place of honor on the Queen’s right. He was relieved to find on his other side the wife of Sir Ralph Gore, a yachting friend. Lady Gore helped put him at ease; Since it would not do to be looking away when the Queen had something to say, Lady Gore promised to alert Lambert when the Queen turned to him. “Fine! ” said Lambert. “When you see the Queen turning just say ‘Lee-ho’ ’’—the British term for coming about. The system worked, Lambert reported, since the Queen, “slower in stays, would make a more magnificent maneuver” than he would.
With waiters bustling about (there were 350 servants and crew aboard Victoria and Albert III), the dinner proceeded to a stately conclusion. The Queen and the ladies retired to their saloon, and the King and the gentlemen lighted their cigars and passed the port. King George turned to Lambert and asked if he could visit the American’s two yachts.
The next morning Lambert was visited by Hunloke, whose functions also included royal security; he asked for the names and background of every guest on Atlontic (there were none on YankeeJ. At 11:30 a. m., Yonkee’s crew was mustered on deck to do their best imitation of a Royal Navy salute as George V climbed aboard. The King went all through the big J-boat, asking about every unfamiliar piece of gear. At one point, a passing vessel erupted with cheers as her passengers recognized His Majesty hanging over the American yacht’s bow examining one of the forestays. George V waved back. The royal presence, however, was too much for Yankee’s steward; when the King asked him a few questions, the steward stammered, “Yes, His Highness!” and “ No, His Highness!” Accompanying the King to Atlantic, Lambert was amused to see that his American guests, so taunting the night before, were now drawn up in ranks like sailors, rigidly erect with their hands at their sides.
The visit went well—at least in part because these particular Americans were so scrupulously respectful in behavior. Regrettably, George V could not always count on his own subjects to comport themselves properly at Cowes. The King was horrified one Sunday morning when the wife of a titled British yachtsman appeared in a scarlet bathing suit and dived from the deck of her yacht in full view of the pleasure fleet. Her husband was blackballed by the squadron. But the incident that evidently vexed George V the most was precipitated by, of all people, his wife.
Taking tea one Cowes Week afternoon with Lady Baring, Queen Mary overheard the younger set describing the latest water sport; aquaplaning—riding on a board pulled by a speedboat. One of the aquaplaners was Lady Baring’s daughter Poppy. Intrigued, the Queen suggested that the next time they went aquaplaning they come near enough to the royal yacht so that she could see what this new stunt was like.
The next afternoon George V, annoyed by a loud, snarling noise nearby, looked out a porthole and saw Poppy Baring and Lady Glanaris
Mainwaring, both in tight-fitting bathing suits, zooming around and around Victoria and Albert III on aquaplanes towed by a huge speedboat. As Lady Mainwaring roared under the royal yacht’s stern, she glanced up and caught the eye of the King; his look must have curled the hair under her cap. At her signal, the speedboat raced away. Shortly thereafter. Royal Yacht Squadron Vice Commodore Sir Richard “Tiggy” Williams-Bulkeley received a royal message deploring; (1] young ladies in tight bathing suits, (2) noisy motorboats and (3) encroachments on the privacy of the royal yacht. Evidently the Queen intervened, because Lady Mainwaring and her husband, Sir Harry, were among the guests at dinner aboard Victorio and Albert III a few nights later. The King took the opportunity to repeat his disapproval of such antics. Lady Mainwaring realized with surprise that His Majesty did not know that Queen Mary had been on deck waving to them during the entire performance.
The younger generation added a dash of the flapper era to Cou'es during the 1920s. Here Helen “Poppy" Baring (rightj and Lady Loughborough ride in the rumble seat and the Honorable Mrs.
Lionel Tennyson sits beside Poppy's brother in his rakish roadster.
Gerard Lambert and his friends notwithstanding, visiting Americans did little to enhance sobriety or support protocol at Cowes. The flapper fad crossed the Atlantic, and squadron members were shocked in the summer of 1924 to see a woman guest walk onto the squadron lawn in a sweater and sailor pants. A rules-committee meeting was called, and a new ordinance was voted: Any lady wearing trousers was forbidden entrance to the squadron grounds. A similar emergency occurred when a member of the squadron discovered a woman in the writing room, sitting at a desk calmly doing her correspondence. The nearest members gathered and conferred in whispers about what to do. Obviously she was an American who did not know that women were not allowed in the building. Unwilling to confront her themselves, the members ordered a steward to expel her politely while they scurried from the scene.
Another American was not so innocent. While the Duke of Leeds was showing a group of visiting yachtsmen and their wives around his steam yacht Aries, one of the women lagged behind and filched a cookie from a silver container, dropping it into her purse. Noticing that she had been seen by English yachtsman Anthony Heckstall-Smith—who later recorded the episode—she said, “1 guess they’ll be tickled to death when I get back home and tell them that it belonged to a real live Dook.” Heckstall-Smith suggested that she get Dolly—as the Duke of Leeds was known to his friends—to autograph the cookie, but his sarcasm was lost on the visitor. “I just wouldn’t have the nerve,” she replied with a sigh.
To many American visitors, the titled British yachtsmen were as puzzling as they were fascinating. Heckstall-Smith, who became the prime raconteur of these giddy years at Cowes, found himself helping an American woman identify some British yachts lying off Cowes.
“Who owns that one over there with the black and white ports and the fancy rig?” she asked.
“Ernest Guinness,” Heckstall-Smith answered.
“What, the guy that makes the guinness?”
"The same.”
The woman pressed on. “And that cute little black steam yacht?” “That,” Heckstall-Smith responded, “belongs to Richard Hennessy.” “Hennessy’s brandy?”
“The same family.”
Bearing doivn on Victoria and Albert III, two Cowes vacationers wave at the royal yacht. King George V disliked the informality of the '20s and the/requent intrusions an his privacy.
“What about that big white ketch?” the woman asked.
“That’s Coriod. She belongs to John Gretton.” Heckstall-Smith could not resist adding, “ He makes the beer called Bass.”
Incredulous, she demanded, “But they’re all flying the White Ensign, and that means they’re all members of the Royal Yacht Squadron?” “Correct” Heckstall-Smith answered. “You’re learning fast.”
Cowes yachtsmen jokingly referred to Guinness, Hennessy and Gretton as the “Beerage.” But to an American accustomed to Prohibition, anyone who sold liquor was a bootlegger or a gangster, probably both.
“But I just don’t understand,” she said. “You say all these guys make hootch and yet they’re members of this club?”
“Yes, they’re all members,” Heckstall-Smith replied.
“ No kiddin’!” she said. “And they told me this was a high-hat club!” Vulgar Americans and flappers, aquaplaners and the Beerage—all these signs of changing times at Cowes were bad enough. But the horror of horrors for the veteran yachtsmen was the news in 1925 that Castle
Persian carpels, silk curtains, greenery and glittering silver enhance the slate dining cabin af Victoria and Albert III. the finest steam yacht afloat at the turn of the century.
Rock, the house right across the street from the squadron, had been bought by none other than the notorious Rosa Lewis. Rosa was proprietor of London’s Cavendish Hotel, known as the proper place for gentlemen to commit their improprieties. (Rosa herself, of working-class birth, was said to have been a mistress of Edward VII at one time, and it was rumored that Edward had given her the hotel.)
Rasa Lewis presents a dignified mien in a 1927 phatograph. But the racy parties she often gave at Castle Rock in Cowes embarrassed the stuffier members of the Royal Yacht Squadron across the street.
From the moment she moved into what she called her “little place” at Cowes, Rosa was an irreverent and disruptive presence. Nearly'every night the staid silence of the area was shattered by the noise from Castle Rock, crowded with an assortment of actresses, young British bloods, elderly peers and free-spending Americans who were forever buying rounds of drinks. Like moths to a flame, some of the more adventurous squadron members were drawn across the street to Rosa’s roulette parties. These festivities lasted most of the night, and Rosa presided over them with a chaotic kind of discipline. The free-flowing food, liquor and fun attracted even one or two Princes of the Royal Family. They could count on Rosa not to reveal their indiscretion to George V, but they found that royal rank conferred no privilege at Castle Rock. When a young Prince asked for a private room, Rosa wheeled on him. “A private room? A private room, did you say? Whatever for? If my friends aren't good enough for you to mix with, my boy, you know what you can do.”
Rosa took particular delight in denigrating royalty and aristocracy and in puncturing the pomposity of the squadron members. Sitting in her glass-fronted garden house, sipping champagne and watching the pretentious parade on the squadron lawn, she would point out a dignified yachtsman and murmur to everyone present: “Silly old man! If his wife knew what I know about ’im she’d take an ’airbrush to ’im.”
At first the squadron made an uneasy agreement with its new neighbor: Since no women were permitted inside the clubhouse and there were no other toilet facilities handy, Rosa rented to the squadron a ballroom building in her garden. It became a “Ladies’ Annexe,” and was visited by more and more ladies. As Rosa delicately put it, “While they won’t ’ave me on their old lawn, I ’ave to let their lady friends into my garden for their personal convenience, as you might say.”
The women’s issue at the squadron meanwhile escalated, with a few younger members, urged by their wives, campaigning for new rules admitting women into the clubhouse. At first they were allowed on rare occasions to view the squadron’s trophies—escorted by members, of course—and to watch the fireworks from the covered platform on the waterfront on the last evening of the regatta. But the campaign for ladies’ privileges became intense—enlivened by an incident that made some of the older members apoplectic. One Cowes Week morning, early-rising yachtsmen looked across the anchorage to see a pair of pink crepe de Chine panties flying at the tip of the Royal Yacht Squadron’s masthead. The spectacle did not last long. Soon the squadron’s imperturbable signalman, a venerable employee named Wagstaff, marched to the mast, lowered the flag of defiance and, without changing expression, hoisted the squadron’s burgee. A search for the miscreant was unsuccessful.
Yachtswomen’s rights were finally taken up in 1932 by one of the most conservative members. Lord Albemarle, who proposed that ladies be
Allowed to have luncheon and dinner “in the small room at the west end of the Castle,” but only in the off-season, when they were unlikely to have a disruptive effect (a grand total of 17 members had entered the clubhouse the previous winter]. With so prestigious a member as Albemarle on the ladies’ side, Williams-Bulkeley, who now was commodore, threw in his support, and by a vote of 41 to 25, ladies were at last permitted inside the premises of the Royal Yacht Squadron—through a separate entrance to the Castle. No women—except Queens Victoria and Elizabeth II—were admitted to membership until 1964, when female relatives of members were finally granted associate membership.
The Ladies’ Annexe in Rosa Lewis’ garden ballroom was also still available; the squadron by now had bought it. But Rosa kept her house and garden, and continued to embarrass the members. The serenity of one Cowes Week Sunday was destroyed when Rosa was rowed out to visit an American yacht. Clad in a flowing pink gown and a picture hat, she rose from the rowboat in a bosun’s chair, and her American hosts, Dan Simonds and John Parkinson, were so struck by the sight that they hauled her to the mast top and kept her there. While Rosa screeched obscenities, British yachtsmen gasped and watched through their telescopes. It was Rosa who, when she returned to the Cavendish in the late 1930s, delivered the obituary on the golden age at Cowes. “The fun’s all over m’dear. We won’t none of us see no more of that sort of thing.”
In America, the years after World War I seemed to promise an endless increase of yachting fun. It was, of course, fun with a purpose, as the American sociologist Thorstein Veblen had pointed out in his Theory of the Leisure Closs, published in 1899. Veblen wrote that “to gain and hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence.” His memorable phrase for this manifestation was “conspicuous consumption,” which, he explained, “is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.”
America enjoyed a giddy postwar boom, and yachtsmen proved Veblen’s theory as never before, building the biggest, fastest, most ostentatious pleasure craft the world would ever see. Not the least of the factors contributing to this phenomenon was the perfection of the diesel-powered engine, which produced far more energy than steam did.
Steam did not disappear immediately. In 1904, for example, William K. Vanderbilt Jr. had a steam yacht resembling the torpedo boats used during the War. When this proved too slow for him, he took her to naval architect Clinton Crane, who installed bigger steam boilers. That did the trick; and the yacht’s name. Tarantula, was regarded as an apt one by every yachtsman near her; she left such a high, rolling wake that Vanderbilt was sued for damages by boat owners all up and down the East River.
But by 1922, Willie, as he was known, traded up to a diesel yacht. She had been built as a sloop of war in England in 1917. Vanderbilt named herAro and installed two 1,200-horsepower diesel engines capable of driving her at a cruising speed of 14V2 knots for 5,000 miles. Aro was a seaworthy vessel with a steel-plated hull; and Vanderbilt, who had a master’s certificate and knew his navigation, saw that she was outfitted with the best equipment, including one of the first examples of an auto-
Mafic pilot, a device Willie called “Metal Mike.” He wrote that Metal Mike steered Ara “automatically and truer to course than any quartermaster could.” The yacht also had a fire-alarm system and a wireless apparatus with a 2,500-mile range, allowing Vanderbilt to maintain contact with land at all times. Information received by the wireless was used to publish a daily shipboard paper titled The Ara Daily News.
Besides reading their own paper, Willie’s guests could while away their time at the Steinway grand piano in the Adam-period music room or browse in the yacht’s library. They could promenade on the 212-foot deck or retire to one of the six staterooms, each with a private bath. Card-players had a special room for their games, well ventilated to get rid of pipe and cigar smoke. Ara’s dispensary was as complete as that of a drugstore, and her staff included a doctor. She also was equipped for oceanographic explorations, complete with aquariums (pages 160-161J.
In 1927, Vanderbilt tookAra on an eight-month Mediterranean cruise. He and his guests swam over the side, watched movies of Willie’s other cruises, dined on the awninged deck, enjoyed the scenery and made short trips ashore. One morning Vanderbilt woke his guests at 3 a. m. to watch a volcanic eruption on Stromboli Island off Italy—only to have the volcano cease as the sleepy-eyed guests came grumbling on deck. On a summer night when Ara was anchored in the open roadstead off Athens’ port of Piraeus to escape the inner harbor’s mosquitoes, a firing exercise by the Greek Navy grazed the yacht.
In their pursuit of pleasure, American millionaires furnished their yachts with every amenity. In addition to the customary grand saloons warmed by marble-manteled fireplaces, there were gymnasiums, swimming pools and movie theaters. Lounger IV, built for inventor James Hammond, featured a bed that rose when a lever was pushed, allowing the owner to look out the porthole without sitting up.
A classic example of luxury afloat was Lyndonia, built in 1920 for Cyrus H. K. Curtis, publisher of The Saturdoy Evening Post. Slim and graceful, Lyndonia measured 230 feet from her scroll-decorated clipper bow to her wide, covered fantail. Each cabin and stateroom was furnished ndth antiques of a different period. The Curtises’ stateroom was done in Adam period. The main saloon was William and Mary, with heavy walnut paneling, electric candelabra and plate-glass windows instead of portholes. The smoking room was Tudor, with a great oak desk and scattered leather armchairs. Lyndonia also had seven tiled bathrooms, and her silk-curtained, Jacobean dining saloon “might have been transplanted from the St. Regis,” wrote a Yachting reporter. He nominated the vessel as “yacht of the year.”
A particular feature of many 1920s yachts was the bar. The United States millionaires, even more than most Americans at the time, openly flouted Prohibition, and a wealthy man’s choice of bootlegger was as important as his choice of tailor. Indeed, one of the attractions of a yacht during Prohibition was the fact that liquor could be drunk legally outside the three-mile limit off the coast of the United States. A few yacht owners, feeling a need for discretion closer to shore, fitted their vessels with hidden bars. Some of these became legendary. One yacht, for example, had a control panel with buttons that not only served to call servants
Or turn on music, lights, heat or fans, but also would whisk aside a panel to reveal a bar and would even lower a wall between the owner’s stateroom and that of the woman occupying the stateroom next to his.
It was a time when American tycoons could indulge any whim, however expensive. Newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, who was nearly blind, insisted that his 304-foot steam yacht Liberty have rounded corners in all the passageways and no steps on deck. Sensitive to noise, he had the yacht’s engine room and bulkheads heavily soundproofed; and when Pulitzer was aboard—he liked to cruise aimlessly off the United States coast, keeping in touch with his office by radio—the deck hands were forbidden to do any noisy work except during specified hours.
One of the fussiest yacht owners on record was tin magnate William B. Leeds. After he and naval architect Clinton Crane had agreed on the plans for his new steamer Noma, Leeds immediately started having second thoughts and continued to do so throughout her construction. He altered the yacht’s length, then asked for more speed than the planned 17 knots. He ordered custom-designed porcelain bathtubs after deciding that the ones called for were too small. Crane tried to point out that each change added to the cost, but Leeds kept making alterations, finally calling in an architect who knew nothing about ships to design the woodwork of the grand saloon and the other large cabins. With no concern for weight, the architect produced, and Leeds insisted on, a massive structure of joinery decorated with carved dolphins, starfish and scallop shells. Crane feared that, with all these weighty additions, the 252-foot yacht would not make the speed he had promised. But she did, and Leeds happily paid more than half a million dollars for his Noma.
Leeds had a business partner, Daniel G. Reid, who asked Crane to build a sister ship to Noma. While he gave Crane less trouble than Leeds had, Reid could be a terror to his crew because of his temper. “Daniel Reid, when sober, was one of the mildest mannered men you ever saw,” Crane recalled. But one evening aboard his new yacht RhecJoir, Reid got a head start on the cocktails while waiting for his dinner guests to come out to the anchorage. Inspecting the dinner table and discerning a flaw in the arrangement, Reid flew into a rage, yanked the damask tablecloth and sent the silver, china and glassware flying, then hustled the steward up the companionway and threw him over the side into Oyster Bay harbor, just as guests arrived in the launch. The guests rescued the steward: but. Crane reported, “dinner was considerably delayed.”
Yachting in the 1920s tended to attract, as well as breed, eccentrics, and not only in the United States. One man who had occasion to deal with many of them was Herbert E. Julyan, a London-based broker of luxury yachts. Among his clients, Julyan recalled in his memoirs, was a landlubber who kept getting lost belowdecks; finally, the owner had the interior woodwork on one side painted white and on the other side blue so he could find his way about. Another client was a seasickness-prone financier who purchased a yacht anyway because, as he explained, “I bought a big telescope and as soon as I opened it I thought 1 would like a yacht,” presumably the better to see the horizon.
Impulse buying took many forms, including the delayed version that occurred in 1930 when Julyan endeavored to sell the 248-foot yacht
World History
