THE SPORTING SPECTATOR: So You Wish to Own a Yacht?
Jonhson, Paul
THE SPORTING SPECTATOR PAUL JOHNSON So You Wish to Own a Yacht? BEAVERBROOK ALWAYS pronounced it "yat." He said, "Let me give you some good advice, Mr. Johnson. Hesitate a long time before...
...King Henry never smiled again...
...He would be on the television every night along with the football managers and showbiz ruffians who now constitute our ruling class...
...On the day of the disastrous charge, Cardigan behaved characteristically, leading his men with conspicuous gallantry but failing to collect them after the action or get them back to the lines in order...
...Article and cartoon reproduced by permission of The Spectator magazine...
...And all of them expensive," said Lord Curzon who, like his enemy the Beaver, had burnt his fingers with these millionaires' toys...
...The first really big pleasure yacht, capable of ocean voyages, was built by the American millionaire George Crowninshield in 1815...
...Whatever made you think that yachting is about pleasure...
...An early example from European history was the White Ship, built by Henry I (an unusually rich sovereign) to his own specifications for pleasure trips, and fitted with all the latest gadgets...
...It did not stop his own son, Sir Percy, from building and sailing a luxury yacht, described in William Ailing-ham's diaries...
...Charles II's yacht, on which Evelyn sailed, was not enormous-20 meters or 60 feet long—with a maximum width of 18 feet...
...On 25 November 1120 the court had been in France for four years and was going back to England...
...That way, you get rid of the money at approximately the same speed, but have none of the anxiety...
...Thank God he is not around today...
...It must have been in the late 1940s...
...ORD BEAVERBROOK ALWAYS pronounced it "yat...
...There Aare at least 40 different ways of spelling the word, from yeagh, holke, yuath, yought, yott and yuacht, to fact, zeaghr, yoathe, and zoughe...
...ty it is—I want a sword...
...Henry I went with the main fleet, but his son and heir William went later on the White Ship, together with two bastard half-brothers, seven earls and barons, and the chief household officers...
...THERE OUGHT TO BE A BOOK about the large steam-powered yachts developed in the last decade of the 19th century, especially by the rich men of the New York gilded age...
...They charter their boats instead...
...It was built for speed, as a court vessel, for transporting noblemen...
...They got the sea-officers drunk too, and the mariners, and then urged them to put on speed to overtake the fleet...
...It put ideas into the head of Lord Byron...
...In any case, the yacht I want does not exist...
...Pleasure...
...But as Rothermere said, "If you need to know how much it costs, you can't afford to run a yacht...
...A typical example was "Jim" Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, who commanded the Light Brigade in the cavalry division led by his hated brother-in-law, Lord Lucan, in the Crimea...
...Hence his boat-building activities in Genoa, which produced the Bolivar, and led in turn to Shelley's disastrous design for a super-fast and unstable yacht of his own, which foundered in a storm...
...They lived on Long Island or up the Hudson, and sailed to Wall Street every morning, parking their yachts at the nearby piers...
...Taki says that all yacht crews are spoiled, difficult, selfish, and unreasonable: "Nothing but trouble...
...Moreover, for your money, you don't get much beyond boat and crew (plus 23 flatscreen TV sets, a wine cellar, a cinema, helipad, elevators, beauty salon, and gym which you may not want...
...It was baptized Cleopatra's Barge, and he sailed it from New England across the Atlantic and into the Mediterranean, where it set 58 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY/AUGUST 2005 PAUL JOHNSON new standards of luxury and pretentiousness...
...Atypical monster on offer is theAnnaliesse, which has five decks and formal dining for 36 people, an eight-person Jacuzzi, a spa with sauna, steam-room, and massage parlors, high ceilings, marble fireplace, and gigantic mirrors, with 180-degree panoramic windows in the master suite...
...But what about the pleasure...
...By contrast, Lucan lived with the men and horses and shared their discomforts...
...Rothermere, not the present one but his grandfather, also gave me a lecture on not acquiring a yacht...
...Built in 1897, it was taken over by the U.S...
...Yet I have a hankering to own one...
...Private steam yachts of great size and luxury were common in those days, but it was also possible for enthusiasts of relatively modest means to acquire a taste for living on the sea...
...Queen Victoria and Prince Albert did wrong to treat him as a hero...
...It's pure freedom...
...JULY/AUGUST 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 59...
...The hire price is 661,500 euros a week, well over half a million pounds...
...Oh yeah...
...But by then, the mid-19th century, it was common for the English gentry and nobility to have designed and built such craft and go about their pleasures afloat...
...The great thing about a yacht," said old Aristotle Onassis, sitting on his boat the Christina in Monte Carlo harbor nearly half a century ago, "is that you raise anchor and then you tell the entire world to bugger off...
...And why not...
...The grandees, perhaps not liking the look of the weather—late November is a bad time for the Channel—got drunk...
...This boat, by no means the largest or most expensive on offer, is 85.3 meters long, has a crew of 34, and can accommodate three dozen guests...
...It had a crew of 150...
...Instead he went back to his yacht, had a champagne dinner, and was soon fast asleep...
...The Dutchcertainly popularized the yacht, but I doubt if they invented it...
...He called it Mary...
...You have to pay, in addition, for all the food and booze, all the fuel—at astronomical 2005 prices, bumped up in Mediterranean ports—and docking fees, which in smart harbors run at $5,000 a day or more...
...The yacht foundered on a reef off Barfleur and went down with all hands save one, a butcher from Rouen, who lived to tell the dreadful tale...
...I can do without Jacuzzis and all the other color-supplement tackle: what I insist on is a library capable of carrying 10,000 volumes...
...It's an ingenious way in which rich men punish themselves for having too much money...
...In the late 1920s D.H...
...Hesitate a long time before you buy yourself an expensive steam yat...
...It's much simpler," he said, "to take 100,000 in Treasury notes and just set fire to them...
...I don't know exactly when the inflation in sailors' wages and the demand for preposterously elaborate equipment and accommodation first took yachting out of the range of all but the super-rich...
...Nowadays comparatively few billionaires own yachts because year-round huge bills make them too burdensome...
...Lawrence, as his letters reveal, developed a passionate desire to acquire or share a yacht with some of his literary friends, and spend his life with Frieda chugging or sailing gently from one Greek or Italian port to another...
...A typical vessel was the Mayflower of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull...
...Cardigan, a selfish man spoiled by his seven doting sisters, sailed to the war in his luxury yacht (he had £40,000 a year) and berthed it in Balaclava harbor so that he could dine and sleep on it each night...
...president, until turned down in 1929 by Hoover, who thought it old-fashioned...
...Navy and eventually became the official yacht of the U.S...
...No wonder he founded the Exchequer and invented the first pipe roll in 1130...
...As Henry had 30 male bastards, the dreadful Gordon Brown may well be one of his grasping descendants...
...John Evelyn recorded in his diary, 1 October 1661: "I sailed this morning with His Majesty in one of his yachts (or pleasure boats), vessels not known among us till the Dutch East India Company presented that curious piece to the King...
Vol. 38 • July 2005 • No. 6
