A Shorter Binneyink History

Presents:

 1000 years of Sailing

This article was originally written for a local Sailing Club magazine in March 2000...

As we enter the 21^st Century, I felt it was a good time to pause and reflect on the history of sailing and wallow in the last 1,000 years of maritime achievement. I would like to assure all my readers that no jokes were harmed (or even bothered) in the writing of this article.

Coracle Singers – The Dawn of Sailing

Mankind had learned to sail a long time before the first dawn of 1000AD. The Polynesians, having invented the tourist trade, were desperate for a method of ferrying holidaymakers to their beautiful islands. A local brainbox invented a method of boat building, which he called ‘Grass Reinforced Polynesia’ (GRP - which is still used today) and having hung his knickers on a pole to dry developed the first Roll-on, Roll off, Roll Over (RO, RO, RO your boat…) ferry or ‘Kon-Tiki’. The Egyptians then improved on the concept by developing the RA boat made of papyrus and slave labour. The ancient Greeks also keen to promote tourism alongside known-world domination invented primitive navigation (which is still used today by some sailors we can think of) and thereby discovered the flotilla holiday. But sailing really arrived in the UK along with the Romans who operated the first cross-channel ferry service. Its success and longevity was largely due to duty-free wine sales and the fact that they had longer swords than the locals did. Up until that time, the Celts had only managed to invent the coracle: a small shapeless dinghy that was totally unseaworthy, difficult to control and capsized at the first leeward mark – not unlike the modern Laser. After the Romans declined and fell, the Saxons ran the ferry franchise before a hostile take-over bid from the Vikings forced all passenger services between Britain and Europe to be routed via Copenhagen. As the first new millennium dawned, Norsemen acting like sailors on shore leave, raping, pillaging and singing incomprehensible sea-shanties ran Britain. We still haven’t forgiven them for the sea-shanties.

A Viking Holiday

As we all know the Scandinavians brought their local drink ‘lager’ with them. This menacing substance increased duty-free sales and plunged the mediaeval World into the dark ages. Just before we plunged, a local Norseman ‘King Canute’ (pronounced ‘Knut’ - known as Hazel-Knut because of his long brown hair), after a Friday night lager frenzy, had a bet with a few locals that he could sunbathe on Brighton beach without getting his feet wet. Of course the tide came in, but Knut had inadvertently discovered tide-tables (and wet socks). Historians have argued that a cousin of Knut actually sailed all the way to South America (where he was known as Brazil-Knut), but there is no evidence to support this conjecture. But let’s not allow the facts to get in the way of a bad pun.

Norman Wisdom

The French, ever ready to nick someone else’s idea, were next up and over the channel. They arrived at Battle in Sussex to be met by a distant ancestor of Len Marsh telling them where to park their boats. Taking um-bridge (as well as um-town and the whole of the um-south-coast) at an Englishmen telling them what to do, they promptly challenged us to a regatta and (for the only time in 2,000 years) actually won! While this was good news for pretentious wine buffs, it was bad news for school children everywhere as French lessons were added to the national curriculum.

During their over-long stay in our country, the Normans built a ruined abbey at Dorchester-On-Thames, close to the A IV, 0,VII, IV main-woad and laid the foundations (but not much else) for our future sailing club.

A Pile of Ships

While Britons settled down to learn irregular French verbs for 300 years or so, massive advances in boat building were occurring all over Europe. In renaissance Italy, Leanardo da Vinci invented the aircraft carrier but was forced to abandon the project for obvious reasons. The Spanish, ever keen to initiate fishing disputes, were busy loading big cannons onto all their boats. This made them the badger’s nadger’s in a fight, but not much good at catching fish. So they discovered ‘discovering things’ and went off on voyage’s of discovery. The Austrians developed the World’s first Navy, which admittedly was of little use to a land-locked country but they had nice uniforms. The Swiss invented the sailing knife and fitted it with 2 stainless steel blades, a keel hauler, a splice (for the mainbrace) and a gadget for getting sea-scouts out of horses hooves. A German scientist, Adolph Von Galvanize, invented a process for rust proofing metal and thus gave us the tin-bath (or Mirror, as we know it today). By the end of the fifteenth century, maritime industries were ready for the sixteenth century to dawn. For Britain, it was to be the golden age of sinking foreigners everywhere.

Block and Tackle

Good Queen Bess ascended to the throne by boat up the Thames and knew a good thing when she saw it. Realising the tax advantages of piracy she set about building the finest Navy the World had ever seen (until Bryan Visser started buying boats for his family). She recruited a bunch of Fireball sailors such as Frobisher, Drake (of the Orchid Drakes) and Raleigh (a descendant of the bikings – geddit?), to man her fleet and take back the European fishing zones. From the Baltic to the Caribbean there wasn’t a foreigner afloat with dry socks. Ships loaded down with Gold and the inevitable duty-frees flooded into South Coast ports on the flood tide. Maritime trade had arrived in a big way. We exchanged cannon balls and chain shot for exotic herbs, spices, silks and hard cash. The Bank of England was never to look back. Britain at last got all the cross-channel ferry concessions and the option to remain outside of the European Community for 400 years. But still sailing was mainly done for profit and violence rather than fun. All that was about to change.

Double Dutch

By the turn of the seventeenth century Britain had become so rich through Maritime bullying that the peasants, serfs and Millwall supporters wanted a piece of the action. As a result, most sailing activity ceased and a civil war started. About halfway through, Oliver Cromwell realised that if they didn’t start pirating again soon, there wouldn’t be any booty to fight over. So they stopped fighting among themselves and started punishing foreigners again – which is as it should be. Meanwhile, the Dutch (who had given us tulips, uncles and paying our own bills) took advantage of the temporary lull in having the conkers shot off them by the British Navy to invent Yachting. For magazines like ‘Yachts & Yachting’ (previously called ‘Galleons and Galleoning’) it was a pivotal moment in the history of sailing.

Yachts came about because boat-builders suddenly realised that there was a lot of loose money sloshing around. It became fashionable to be seen prancing about on your own boat in a set of Henri-Lloyd doublet and hose. The true stroke of genius, however, was to add a Royal Charter to the proceedings by presenting the newly elected Charles II with his own yacht. This boat “Mary” (so called because Chuck 2 sailed like a girl!) started the ball rolling in a big way. Pretty soon, Royalty was to be seen losing regattas all over Europe – a tradition still in force today. Once their Majesties were in, anyone who wanted to oblige noblesses had to follow suit. Shortly afterwards, the discovery of double-glazing at a service station on ye olde M1 lead to the twin institutions of ‘The Cowes Royal Yacht Squadron’ and ‘Gin Palaces’. Boating for pleasure and a hole in the wallet had truly arrived.

The Queen Mary…off Portland Bill

While boats for profit and violence got bigger and meaner, boats for pleasure got smaller and lighter. Pretty soon dinghies were promoted from being yacht tenders to racing boats for the financially disadvantaged. After all, not everyone could afford ‘Musto’ oilies. In America (discovered for Europeans as a joke by C. Columbus in 1492) during the depression, one-design class racing was proliferated to cheer everybody up. Dinghy racing was slow to gain popularity in this country because it only involved beating foreigners, not sinking them. However after the Second World War (won by the allies after discovering Leanardo’s aircraft carrier designs) the British began building hundreds of small boats out of timber. This was mainly because all the metal had been used during the war to build Spitfires. Boats like the Cadet, Daring, Enterprise, Albacore, Fireball and Solo appeared. Pretty soon they began running out of good names for boats and came up with silly ones like: Mirror, Wayfarer, Titanic and of course Laser. Dinghy clubs sprang up like a rash all over the country as people were let off church on a Sunday. Small boating for pleasure and a small hole in the wallet had arrived.

Fantastic Plastic

Regrettably, dinghy building was not immune from the ravages of technology. Some idiot, somewhere (I can’t be bothered to look it up), discovered that if you folded several sheets of newspaper together and cut carefully you wound up with a string of funny looking people called polymers (after the Polynesians). Plastic was born and along with it came the Laser, the Dart, the RS200 and Formica worktops. Plastic had several advantages over wood: It didn’t leak, it was easier to mould, it was low maintenance and it was uglier. The Laser Class was formed. Not since the heady days of the Coracle has capsizing been so popular.

Nowadays, we have very expensive plastic boats being driven all over the World to compete in International events. The Olympics has a whole sailing regatta to itself and professional sailors to boot, who still uphold the ancient maritime traditions of carrying off hoards of gold and prizes from the high seas. It may not be as dashing as Errol Flynn swinging from his gilberts aboard a plucky English 75-gunner, but it’s certainly a lot safer. As we enter the 21^st Century small boating and a large hole in the wallet are definitely here to stay.

So as you poodle around the DSC lake of a weekend, spare a thought (if the mainsheet’s not caught around the boom) for the proud maritime heritage that made sailing what it is today. And remember those immortal words of Lord Nelson, hoisted as a signal above the proud British fleet as it tossed off Copenhagen, before the battle of Trafalgar: “England expects every man to keep his socks dry.” I think we all know what he meant.