Firstly, the working men of the colony had their open boats that grew out of small fishing and workboat types. These craft became regulated to provide racing for quite large money stakes, not only for the participants but also for the colonial menfolk who thirsted for any opportunity to gamble. In Auckland these men developed the Open Sailing Boat classes derived from watermen’s boats and the Mullet Boat classes, derived from centreboard fishing smacks. These men represented the largest proportion of the people sailing for pleasure on the water.
Secondly, there were the more moneyed classes who had the bigger keelboats, used not only for racing but also for cruising, especially out of Auckland. By the 1890s the clubs they formed adopted the Corinthianism of the like clubs of the United Kingdom and those of the northeastern United States, which lauded amateurism and deplored the cash side of racing to win.
Auckland was not unique in having a preponderance of working-class men on the water. For much the same post-colonial reasons, the rise of a class of working-class men with the means to buy or build the boats and the time to sail them, Sydney Harbour had the same flourishing of yachting along the identical patterns. Sydney’s Open Boats, or ‘skiffs’ as they became known, were as outstanding in their sail-carrying and drama as they were the darlings of the betting fraternity.
The keelboats were not neglected by the ‘Establishment’ yacht clubs. As
I have shown in earlier articles, by 1899, Australian yachtsmen had become enamoured of the raters designed and beautifully built in Auckland by the Logans and the Baileys, especially after many of them visited Auckland for the Intercolonial One Rater Championship races coupled with the Native Regatta of December 1898/January 1899.
Exported Auckland-built yachts came to dominate Sydney keelboat racing by the turn of the century. Petrel was an outstanding example of this brief trade, closed only when the new Australian Commonwealth Government put punishing tariffs on imported yachts after 1901.
Petrel and Heather were a pair of yachts, near clones of one another, that Logan Bros built for export to Sydney over the winter months of 1900. They were built as ‘30ft Linear Raters’, closely echoing the lines of the Logan Bros’ Aoma (October 1899), and were followed by Culwulla (November 1891). These four yachts dominated racing in their class in Sydney for several years, as did the bigger raters Bona from Chas Bailey Jr (1899) and Rawhiti from Logan Bros (1905), sailed on her own bottom to Sydney to avoid the tariffs.
Aoma, Petrel, Heather and Culwulla, as well as Logan Bros’ radical fin and bulb racer Sunbeam (December 1900) plus two more 30ft Linear Raters, Janet and Cooya from Chas Bailey Jr, were intended to provide close racing in the International 30ft Linear Rater Championship to be held on Sydney Harbour in February 1901 as part of a major regatta to mark the establishment of the Commonwealth on January 1, 1901.
Logan Bros built Petrel for Sydney Mackenzie Dempster of the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club (RPAYC). Dempster was a prominent real estate agent at Randwick but was a highly competent seaman. As a lad he had served his apprenticeship under Capt. James Peters on the full rigged ship Duchess of Edinburgh. Petrel arrived in Sydney on SS Waihora in October 1900. Her Ratsey and Lapthorn sails arrived in Auckland from England on the SS Rakaia soon after and had to be sent on to Sydney. Dempster began racing her with the RPAYC and also the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron (RSYS) as soon as she was rigged. He moored her in Neutral Bay.
Naturally, Petrel and her three sister ships had a very similar performance, but Dempster’s sailing skills resulted in a high level of success. In one of her first races on December 1, 1900 she had a win from the new English-import Magic and Heather third. In a ‘Commonwealth Regatta’ on January 4, 1901, Petrel won with Heather second, Magic third.
For the Intercolonial 30ft Linear Rater Championship at the Sydney Regatta which had sparked the Sydneysiders’ interest in ordering the Auckland yachts, the entrants were Sunbeam (NZ), White Wings (Victoria), Cooya, Aoma, Magic, Heather, Fleet Wings, Petrel and Janet (NSW), six of the nine Auckland-built. The race was cancelled because of the death of Queen Victoria on January 22, 1901.
Dempster became Commodore of the RPAYC in 1905 and won the club’s Championship with Petrel that year and again in 1906, with Petrel now regarded as an ‘8 metre’ under the new Metre Rule. In December 1906 Dempster sold Petrel to Charles Trebeck who carried on her duelling with her clones Aoma, Heather and Culwulla (later renamed Yeulba) until March 1914 when he sold her to Percy Douglas of Hobart. Petrel “spreadeagled the opposition” in the First Class race at the Hobart Regatta in 1915. Afterwards, Douglas used her only for cruising, selling her to E. H. Webster during the war.
In March 1919 the Argus of Melbourne reported that Commodore W. Smith of the Victorian Yacht Racing Association, sailing out of Geelong, had bought Petrel and she had her first race on Port Phillip. In April 1920 she was joined by Heather (later briefly renamed Ranee) bought from Sydney followed by Culwulla (now Yeulba), purchased by Lord Foster, the Governor-General of Victoria, providing a boom in the Melbourne A Class.
In January 1927 Smith sold Petrel to Stan Gamble of the Royal St Kilda Yacht Club. By then she had won 165 firsts in Sydney, Hobart and Melbourne waters. Around 1934, Gamble ‘modernised’ her with a raised sheerline and a Marconi rig. She frequently won races against tough opposition like the Charlie Peel 9-metre Acrospire IV and the Fife Eun-na-mara (ex Awanui and Culwulla III). As in New Zealand, the top keelboats were laid up after Pearl Harbour as the crews enlisted.
Petrel spent many of the postwar years in Geelong owned by local solicitor Eustace Wilson, as the crack boat of the Royal Geelong Yacht Club. Her later years are somewhat obscure, but Sydney movie production designer Laurence Eastwood came across her in a deplorable state in Berrys Bay, Sydney Harbour in 2016. He bought her the following year “for a nominal sum” and moved her to a Pittwater mooring.
She lay there for five years while Laurence had a shed for her built on his property at Paradise Avenue nearby.
Next month, a description of her restoration to date. Lots of lessons here!
