It is hard to think of a sport that has
left as big a paper trail as the sport of
yachting. In addition to the records
common to all sports (race results,
rule changes, club histories and so
on), yacht sailing carries an enormous
data burden in terms of the boats
themselves. Naval architects’ plans lie
in garages, sitting rooms and
maritime museums. Race records are
scattered around the country and the
internet. These days, what with a lot
of sailing’s records being published
online, then disappearing without
ever being committed to paper
(“born-digital material”) we are in an
increasingly acute situation where
information accessible today might
not exist at all in 50 years’ time – or
even next year.
It is a situation that concerned
Maldwin Drummond, maritime
historian and ex-Royal Yacht
Squadron (RYS) commodore, who
died last year. His response was to set
up the Association of Yachting
Historians, which recently digitised
the entire archive of Lloyd's Registers.
David Elliott, who started Cowes
Classics Week in 2008 (as the Metre
and Keelboat Regatta), launched the
British National Yachting Archive with
Michael Campbell (then RYS
commodore) and Rees Martin, in
January 2009 at the Classic Boat
stand at the London Boat Show, with
NEWS FOCUS
The British National Yachting Archive
author and sailor Clare Francis. All
seemed quiet for a while after that,
but things were certainly happening,
and on our visit recently to see David
at home in West Sussex – his house
acts as HQ to the British National
Yachting Archives – we found him
hard at work on his Sisyphean task of
“consolidating everything that’s ever
been known about yachting”.The idea grows
In the cellar David, who sails the 1924
6-Metre yacht Monsoon, sits at his
desk, in front of dual computer
monitors that are connected to a 2TB
hard drive. His task is daunting to say
the least, but his past careers in
research science and business
consultancy might have steeled him
to it a bit. “It was originally intended
to be a virtual archive,” he says. It
would be a list of who’s got what and
where to find it. “But when you come
across stuf that needs a home, it’s
hard to say no.” So far, this has been
comfortably accommodated by
David’s ‘cellar’ at home (it’s
more like a series of
catacombs), but David is in
various discussions to see if
he can find a permanent
home for the collection and
database, presented in a
manner that historians can
access.The archive was also originally
intended to be solely British. But that
proved to be impossible too, with
boats designed in one country, built
in another, owned in two more and
taken around the world to race in
diferent championships. Today, for
instance, David is neck-deep in
Swedish Metre-racing archives. It all
started with the Metre classes, for
personal reasons, and the archive
already has 1,462 records just for the
6-Metre class. In terms of boats, there
are 11,456 in the archive so far. There
are also 48,000 images.
So far it is not practical to make
the archive publicly accessible. The
data management system David uses
is one more commonly used in areas
such as the banking sector and not,
he says, easily navigable for a
first-time researcher. “It would be a
disaster if I fell under a bus,” he says
with a wry smile.
The eventual aim, of course, is for
the archive to become a research
facility open to the public, but for
now, David is still very much at the
data-gathering stage and is
calling for anyone with
knowledge of archive
whereabouts, or who has an
archive, ranging from papers in
an attic to something more
substantial, to contact him at
[email protected]The British
National Yachting
Archive is calling
on anyone with
historic private
or public sailing
records to be in
touch