The Royal Harwich Yacht Club is one of the oldest in the country and originated out of the Harwich Regatta which had been held for nearly twenty years, when a group of yacht owners at the Regatta Dinner in September 1843, at the Three Cups Hotel, determined to form an east coast yacht club. This was initially called the Eastern Yacht Club. The first Commodore was TM Gibson MP, owner of a 30 ton yawl ‘Claude’ and a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron.
Within two years of its formation the renamed Royal Harwich Yacht Club was accorded royal patronage, appropriately by the dowager Queen Adelaide, the widow of William IV, known as ‘Sailor Bill’; and also the right for its members to fly the blue ensign defaced with the lion rampant. In the library there is a warrant permitting this use by a member of 1853. No one knows for certain why the lion was chosen as an emblem.
Throughout the 19th century the Club’s chief activity remained the organisation of the Harwich Regatta and of races between the east coast and the Thames estuary. Although many of the classes were restricted to ‘smaller’ boats of 15 or 18 or 25 tons, some were open races attracting big craft of almost 200 tons.
James Ashbury’s schooner ‘Cambria’ was 188 tons. This was the yacht he sailed to New York in the Great Atlantic Race of 1870, beating the American ‘Dauntless’ by a whisker, and the yacht he then sailed as the first America’s Cup challenger, coming in tenth in a fleet of eighteen. Our painting of ‘Cambria’ which hangs in the Ashbury Room shows her passing Sandy Hook lightship and wearing the RHYC burgee, as Ashbury was Commodore at the time. Ashbury was also a member of Royal Thames and they have an identical picture to ours but with their burgee at the masthead! In fact, the challenge was made under the flag of the Royal Thames. However, Ashbury challenged again in 1871 in ‘Livonia’; this time under our burgee. James Ashbury was inducted into the America’s Cup Hall of Fame in 1997.
At the turn of the century the heavyweights were 19 and 23 metre yachts. HM King George V, who as Duke of York and the Prince of Wales was Commodore between 1896 and 1911, was Patron of RHYC when he sailed ‘Britannia’ to win the Down Swin Race of 1921. The saloon doors of that famous yacht now grace the archives cupboard in the library.
Sir William Burton, the most brilliant helmsman of his day, was helmsman of ‘Shamrock IV’ in her post World War I challenge for the America’s Cup and a man who raced in practically every class of boat. He was our Rear Commodore 1909-10; Vice Commodore 1911-35 and Commodore 1936-45. For members in those days it was a different world of real wealth, leisure and yachting on a grand scale.
By 1939 there were signs of change. The Royal Harwich One Designs, built in 1937, are day racers, not boats you could live aboard. The same year saw the birth of the National Twelve Foot dinghy. The RHYC AGM minutes of 1939 record thanks from the secretary of the class association for the Club’s help in organising the national championships in Harwich harbour.
At the last AGM before the war the Club considered the establishment of a base for the Club at Pin Mill. However, during the war the Royal Navy developed a small naval base at Woolverstone which Austin Farrar, a member since 1936, had leased to form Woolverstone Shipyard. He now offered some land, launching facilities and Nissen huts to the Club. Discussion led to the decision to accept “Mr A Farrar’s offer for something in a small way at the Cat House.” The next meeting of the Committee was held in The Club House. Austin Farrar was accorded Honorary membership at the Annual General Meeting in December 1996 to mark the ‘Fifty Years at Woolverstone’ celebrations in 1997.
A new Club House was opened by Robin Knox-Johnson in 1969 and has been upgraded and extended since. HRH The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, visited the Club as Patron in 1993 during the 150th anniversary celebrations of the formation of the Club and unveiled the Honours Board.
