LETTER OF THE MONTH
SUPPORTED BY OLD PULTENEY WHISKYCUTTY SARK
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In a celebration of the famous tea clipper, we look back at the birth, design, building
and naming of a legend
WORDS ERIC KENTLEY B
y 1868, almost all new ships for the China trade were being built using composite construction, and the Clyde shipyards were producing more
in the country. Robert Steele & Co of Greenock and Alexander Stephen & Co of Glasgow were the most composite-built tea clippers than anywhere else
prolific of the Clyde builders. Yet instead of choosing one of these two, or even one of the more minor yards, the second-generation Scottish ship owner John Willis chose
a firm that had been in business for less than a year and had launched only a single vessel – a steamship. The firm was Scott & Linton. Hercules Linton (b1836 at
Inverbervie, north-east Scotland) was the son of Alexander Linton, later a surveyor for Lloyd’s Register of Shipping. Although no clipper ship is credited to
Hercules except with the requirement of a ship for the China tea trade. He was apprenticed from 1 January 1855-1860 to the Cutty Sark, he would have been familiar
Aberdeen shipbuilders Alexander Hall & Sons. During his time there, the firm built eight vessels for the China trade. In 1862 Linton joined the Liverpool Underwriters’
Registry for Iron Vessels (a rival to Lloyd’s Register) as a surveyor on the east coast, an area stretching from Hull to Kirkaldy. It included the busy shipyards of Sunderland
where a number of composite ships for the tea trade were built, although it is not known if Linton actually surveyed them.
private design work. He drew up the plans for at least one iron screw steamer, the 130ft (40m) As well as surveying, Linton found time for some Lady Alice
Kenlismonths later, he entered into partnership with William Dundas Scott-Moncrieff, a talented and energetic , launched in 1867 by Swan of Maryhill. Three
GIANT
SLAYER
Built for German royalty, the Sonderklasse yacht Tilly XV
has found a new prince to give her a fairy tale ending
WORDS NIGEL SHARP
Letters
In his article on Cutty Sark (last month), Eric Kentley notes
that witches were unable to cross water and ponders why the
fi gurehead represents Nannie, the witch in Burns’ poem.
In 1830, James Fenimore Cooper published his The
Water-Witch; or The Skimmer of the Sea. As a result of that
story, Water Witch became a popular name for sailing ships
and yachts.
The book describes the Water-Witch’s fi gurehead as having
“a female form ... the fi gure rested lightly on the ball of one
foot, while the other was suspended in an easy attitude... The
drapery was fl uttering, scanty, and of a light sea-green tint...
The face [portrayed] a superhuman expression. The locks were
dishevelled, wild, and rich.... while a smile so strangely meaning
and malign played about the mouth... What is that the minx holds
so impudently above her head? It seems [to be] an open book,
with letters of red written on its pages.”
Did the builders decide to give the new clipper a fi gurehead
that had the same pose as that of the fi ctional Water Witch? It
must have struck somebody that the
reference to the scanty drapery etc put
them in mind of the closer-to-home witch in
Tam o’Shanter. It was but a short step to
replace the book with the horse’s mane.
Martin Black, by email
Due to class rules, Uncle Sam, the fast
Sonderklasse that Kaiser Wilhelm bought
in 1902, was almost always was sailed
“hors concours”, because the class rules
meant that crew, design and build all had
to be from the same country (CB May 2019).
This rule was put in place on request of
the Kaiser at the forming of the class (on
the initiative of Englishman Cecil Quentin,
who wanted to promote international
sailing in smaller boats). The Kaiser
wanted his people on the sea because he
thought that was the future for Germany to play an important role
in the world, and at the same time develop and promote the
design and building of sailing yachts in Germany. Important prizes
were another way to stimulate the upper classes to take part in
sailing, as was membership of the Imperial Yacht Club in Kiel.
One of the reasons that the Kaiser’s boats were named Samoa
was to show that Germany played an important role as coloniser,
because it had conquered the Samoa Islands before the French
and the Britons. The Samoa Cup was so named as such for the
same reason. Uncle Sam, however, was renamed Niagara after the
Kaiser bought her.
Another fast Sonderklasse that swept the fl eet in 1911 was
Bibelot, ordered by an HP Whitney and owned and sailed by Bob
Emmons, a highly respected yachtsman from that era.
Bibelot was designed and built by
NG Herreshoff and was, after fi ve clear
wins, similarly bought by the Kaiser
together with two sailing friends, and
donated to the Imperial Yachting Club
as a study boat for novice sailors and
for the German yacht building industry.
The German press of those days
were of the opinion that the Americans
had won (the three American boats
had a complete podium in 1911) because
the American boats had much longer
overhangs and did not pound as much as the German boats. The
American boats took the next wave early and were on two waves
at once, while the German boats had to climb between the waves.
This counted for much in winds Force 5-6.
Bibelot was crashed on the rocks in 1938 (not 1931) and
demolished: the wooden hull was burned and the lead was used in
the German war eff ort.
You may fi nd this all in Klaus Kramer’s book Sailing for the
Kaiser, with the subtitle “The international Sonder Class”,
unfortunately only available in German.
The lines of Bibelot can be seen online in the recently opened
MIT Collections, where the complete Herreshoff archive is now
available (CB passim).
Dees Wilmsen Bremweg, Venlo
The witch that
crossed the water
More on the Kaiser and his Sonderklasse