This is attributable to three factors: advanced design, excellent construction techniques and the use of first-quality kauri timber. Perhaps you can add the ‘No. 8 fencing wire’ approach of generations of Kiwi yachtsmen who were dedicated recyclers, reluctant to throw anything of value away.
It is also easy to overlook the fact that, even in the mid-1890s, the sport of yachting was new and exciting, with the same thrill as the sports of flying and motor racing came to have just over the horizon. Of course, the America’s Cup races between the New Yorkers and the Brits had added a huge amount of zest, direction and sophistication to the sport.
Far from being isolated at the other end of the world from England, Scotland and the US New England states, where all the yachting design innovation was happening, New Zealanders had actual advantage because of the alternating seasons in the hemispheres.
Any design breakthrough in the northern hemisphere, Nat Herreshoff’s Gloriana or G.L. Watson’s Britannia for example, could be studied from magazine and press reports which took no more than a month to get here on the Royal Mail Route via San Francisco from source. So, a design unveiled in England in the April was often the inspiration for an Auckland yacht designed and launched in November.
By November in the summer of 1895 the 2½- and 5-rater racing hype had captured the imagination of Auckland’s sporting public. Wharves and vantage points were crowded with spectators during these Bailey-Logan clashes at the various Auckland Yacht Club races, the Anniversary Regatta and the regattas at Ponsonby and Judges Bay. Ferries followed the races, crammed with enthusiasts, and bookies were on board laying odds. The order books of the Baileys and the Logans began to overflow.
As we saw a couple of issues ago, the 1895-6 season was a Logan benefit with the 2½-raters Mahaki and Mizpah from Logan Bros and Rarere from their father’s yard, with the spoon-bowed Zinita from the Bailey brothers still an improver, being constantly tweaked in hull and rig. The Baileys now built a proper 2½-rater, Thelma, but she was a shallow-draft boat for Dunedin, while the pretty but uncompetitive little Mabel for W. Swinnerton of Auckland made little impact on the racing. Seager Bros produced a steel 2½-rater, Huia, but they were too busy to develope her properly.
The two outstanding yachts of the new season were the Logan Bros 5- rater Moana (II) for Willie and Fred Wilson of the New Zealand Herald and the C. & W. Bailey 5-rater Ida for their good customers, merchants Jagger Bros and W. Frater Jr.
Logan Bros launched the new Moana on November 14, 1895. She had the Britannia ‘spoon bow’ and the powerful forward sections that went with it. She was a truly modern yacht, with a shape that was still essentially very competitive until the 1950s. Five weeks later, on December 21, the Baileys launched Ida. Ida reverted to the Herreshoff Gloriana style with a straight, heavily-raked stem and cut away forefoot, perhaps because of what the Jaggers perceived to be the failure of last year’s spoon-bowed Zinita, a yacht that lived up to her promise only when bought by C.P. Murdoch in December 1896.
Ida was a fine yacht but was upstaged by the hugely successful Moana until later in her life when C.P. Murdoch bought her and got her performing as he had done with Zinita. Reg Masefield’s steel cutter Thetis was improving, as indeed she should have done.
So, there were now three new thoroughly modern 5-raters on the Waitemata for the 1895-96 season. Anticipation ran high on the Auckland waterfront for their first clash at the Judge’s Bay Regatta on January 25, 1896. On the day, there were excellent conditions with a steady SW breeze. The entrants in the “Yachts 7-rating and under race” were Thetis, Ida, Moana, Halcyon, Aorere and Rangatira.
Charles Bailey Jr, probably the best helmsman on the harbour, sailed Ida, W.R. ‘Willie’ Wilson sailed Moana and Reg Masefield Thetis. The reaching conditions suited Thetis which took an early lead and was never headed. Moana lost several minutes when she lost her throat halyards while Ida had the same thing happen later in the race. The result, Thetis 1, Ida 2, Moana 3.
C. & W. Bailey had built Rangatira for A.W. Chatfield and launched her in December 1894. She was a conservative, handsome clipper-bowed 38-footer, rating at just 4.2, so no challenge to the yachts built to rate at 5. Like Rangatira, Halycon was not built to compete with the new breed of raters. She was a big cruiser built in Auckland by Alex Watson for himself and launched in December 1895. She took part in many races with
a rating of around 7.
Their next 5-rater contest was six days later in the Auckland Anniversary Regatta on January 29 in light winds. Moana led for most of the race and finished first, ahead of Ida by 12½ minutes. Thetis got to the start late and finished well back. Moana was reckoned to be “the best boat of the season in her class” and maintained that reputation ever after.
Indeed, Ida was fated to be always under the shadow of Moana. What successes she did have were thanks to handicappers, typically three minutes over Moana. Despite intense Bailey modifications and occasional flashes, she was
a disappointment to her owners. Indeed, in October 1897 the Jaggers switched allegiance from the Baileys and had Logan Bros build them the 60ft 10-rater/40ft Linear Rater Thelma.
It took another two years for them to sell Ida during which she was laid up or leased out.
By the end of the 1895-6 season, Mahaki was still firmly in charge of the 2½-raters and Moana of the 5-raters.
For the 1896-7 season Logan Bros produced two 2½-raters/30-foot Linear Raters, first in September 1896 Thistle, a yawl rigged clipper-bowed 2½-rater for Capt. James Kennedy of Putiki Bay, but she raced rarely. Their principal offering that November was Windward for dentist H.F. Windsor. The aggressive yachtsman C.P. Murdoch now owned Zinita and had tweaked her to give the new Logan boats a run for their money. Another steel 2½-rater, Isafrael, was built by Tom Bach, but rarely raced.
No new 5-raters/36-foot Linear Raters were built in Auckland this season except for Uira, built by C. & W. Bailey for Melbourne, and shipped on the Tarawera in October 1896, accompanied by Charles Jr. Her significance is that she was the first yacht built in New Zealand for export since Robert Logan’s Akarana in 1888 and was the first of a flood of Bailey- and Logan-built raters, both new and secondhand, that were exported to Australia over the next 10 years. Those years of building rigidly to the northern hemisphere rating rules were paying off.
The 1897-8 season was the usual Bailey v. Logan head-to-head clash. Logan Bros’ new 30-footer was Kotiri for Percy Dufaur, while the Bailey brothers came out with Meteor for Harry Pittar, another Auckland dentist, a man with a great entrepreneurial streak. Both yachts rated exactly 30 feet, both had English sails and their conception and birth were the prime topics of discussion around the waterfront. The New Zealand Herald reported, “feeling is running high regarding the sailing qualities of Kotiri and Meteor…a good amount of money is ventured on both boats.” They clashed for the first time in the Ponsonby Regatta of December 6, 1897, when Meteor won and Kotiri was third.
A match race for £25 a side was arranged for the following weekend. Hundreds of pounds in bets were placed with the bookies. Kotiri was sailed by Jock Logan and Meteor by John Kissling. In a race that stopped the city and was dissected over and again in the press for the next 20 years, Meteor won by 54 seconds. The Herald said it had been the greatest “go” ever seen on the harbour.
Logan Bros made frantic alterations to Kotiri, but to no avail. The Baileys’ Meteor was unstoppable. She won hands down again in the January 1898 Auckland Anniversary Regatta, trouncing the Logans’ Kotiri, Windward and Mahaki. Pittar announced a few days later that he was taking her to Sydney. By early April Meteor had cleaned up every 30-footer racing in Sydney.
This is a fine piece of writing. I hope there might be a follow up of the still existing boats. It may well have been covered elsewhere but can you really have too much, especially if Harold writes it. Anyway – well done.