PETER MUMFORD/BEKEN OF COWES

ZZ

PETER MUMFORD/BEKEN OF COWES

Z

PETER MUMFORD/BEKEN OF COWES

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2015 55

Wrapped in America’s Cup glamour this summer,

Portsmouth also has its own historic regatta, newly

revived to mark some signifi cant anniversaries

STORY PETER WILLIS

P

ortsmouth is set to become the centre of the

yachting universe this summer when the

America’s Cup World Series races take place

off Southsea beach. But the city will also be

hosting an event arguably dripping with

even more historic associations. Inaugurated

in 1827, a year after the fi rst Cowes Week, the

Portsmouth Regatta was taken over by the city’s Royal

Albert Yacht Club in 1864, and run by it until 1908.

The regatta then lapsed until last year, when the

Royal Albert, looking to mark its 150th anniversary,

joined forces with the Victory Class, celebrating 80

years, and the Portsmouth Sailing Club, founded in

1920, to relaunch it. The revived regatta was held over

the last weekend of July, led by a strong 21-boat Victory

fl eet. With other classic keelboat classes – Bembridge

One Designs and Redwings, Seaview Mermaids and

XODs – and other yachts, over 50 boats took part.

It was a strikingly different affair from the 1864

regatta, which featured professionally-crewed

50-tonners, racing for a 50-guinea gold cup, down to

wherries, the local working row-boats, for which the

prize was “a suit of clothes made by a local outfi tter”.

The Royal Albert had been founded to commemorate

POMPEY

CEREMONY

the Prince Consort, Queen Victoria’s husband who had

died three years earlier, without having ever been

admitted to the Royal Yacht Squadron across the Solent

in Cowes. Its regattas were often watched by the Queen

herself from one or other of her Royal Yachts and it

soon gained the patronage of their son the then Prince

Albert (later King Edward VII), a keen sailor.

Founder members included Giuseppi Garibaldi, the

Italian radical politician, also a member of the Royal

London YC, and HC Maudslay, owner of the 47-ton

cutter Sphinx and inventor of the ‘sphinxaker’, more

familiar now as the spinnaker.

Thanks in part to the attraction of its seafront signal

station near Southsea Castle, the RAYC absorbed

Portsmouth Motor and Speed Boat Yacht Club and

Portsmouth Corinthian YC. A later merger in 1971

linked it to the slightly younger Royal Naval Club. The

clubhouse is a splendid castellated building incorporating

a tavern patronised by Nelson, facing the Solent.

The anniversary was marked suitably by a Naval

band beating retreat outside (and a cocktail party inside),

also by the fi rst presentation of a new trophy, the

Portsmouth Regatta Cup, awarded to Clive Cokayne,

whose 1948-built Victory Zara, Z50, took two wins.

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