544 
[April 6, 1907. 
British Letter. 
British yachtsmen are certainly very con¬ 
servative. If any proof were needed of the 
tenacity with which they cling to old-fashioned 
systems and ideas, assuredly the method of 
measuring vessels by what is known as builder s 
measurement and 1 hames measurement, would 
aflford an ample instance of their inconvertible 
conservation of ancient traditions. Of course 
yachts are not measured for racing in the \. 
R. A. classes by Thames tonnage, but in handi¬ 
cap races they are still classified according to 
tonnage measurement, although they are meas¬ 
ured for length and sad area, a state of affan s 
which is so paradoxical as to require some ex¬ 
planation. The majority of sailing matches for 
yachts above 40ft. in length in British waters 
are handicaps. That is to say, the time allow¬ 
ance is not allotted according to any rule, but 
merely according to the merits of the yachts. 
Of course this is a most pernicious system of 
racing because it affords no encouragement to 
owners to build or own fast vessels, nor even 
to maintain them in a high state of efficiency. 
If A beats B by 2111. more than her time allow¬ 
ance to-day, then A will have to allow B 2111. 
more time to-morrow, and very little note is 
taken of what may have been the reason of 
B’s defeat. I do not mean to say that the 
allowance would be increased if the result of 
the race was a mere fluke. But if B had a 
shocking bad topsail, or her helmsman was a 
duffer, or if for any such reason it is thought 
that A will probably to-morrow beat B by a 
couple of minutes more than she gave her to¬ 
day, then the handicapper will certainly be 
generous enough to give B another 2m. The 
result which will follow may be an exciting race 
by time allowance, but the system must, be 
described as nothing less than a direct premium 
upon inefficiency and bad seamanship. Races 
upon this system, which unluckily are very com¬ 
mon in England, and which are fostered by all 
the leading yacht clubs from the Royal Yacht 
Squadron downwards, are knows here as handi¬ 
cap matches.” An effort was made last season 
to abandon the system among the best yacbts 
and stick to pure class racing, and the move¬ 
ment was attended by a good deal of success. 
Next summer, too, I am glad to say, there 
will be very little handicap racing among, the 
new vessels which will sail almost exclusively 
in the new international classes. I here will, 
however, be any number of “handicap matches” 
for the older vessels which are a little out¬ 
classed, owing to their age and speed, and it is 
in these races that the curious paradox will again 
appear of the vessels being classified by one rule 
and measured by another. As an instance of 
this a handicap race is given for yachts between 
50 tons and 100 tons, Thames measurement. No 
steps are taken to measure the yachts, for 
Thames tonnage, and the owner is practically 
left to settle the “tonnage” for himself, but he 
is forced to send in, with his entry, the length 
of the vacht on the waterline and her sail area 
according to Y. R. A. rules, and these factors 
L.W.L. and S. are measured by the official 
measurer. Of course an American yachtsman 
would at once ask the question, “For the pur¬ 
poses of a mere handicap race, why is the 
tonnage wanted at all, and why are the yachts 
not classified by length?” And I am afraid the 
only answer permissible must be that the law of 
the' Medes and Persians classified the racing 
fleet by Thames tonnage, and therefore it has 
never been subject to deviation. 
We all know that it is said that the term 
“tonnage” has originated from the tun cask 
of wine, the earliest method of calculating the 
size of ships being to merely count the number 
of casks or tuns of wine carried by the vessel. 
In the year 1642 there is a record of “A rule 
to know the burden ship,” which is “to multiply 
the length of the keel by the breadth and by the 
depth of the hold and divide the product by 
100.” A book entitled “The Complete Ship¬ 
wright.” by one Bushell, written in the seven¬ 
teenth century, gives the method of ascertaining 
the tonnage of ships employed by the ship¬ 
wrights of London and on the river Thames as 
follows: “They multiply the length of the keel 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
into the breadth of the ship at the broadest 
place, taken from outside to outside, and the 
product of that by half the breadth. This second 
multiplication they divide by 94, or sometimes 
100, and according to that division, they are 
paid for so many tuns.” 
In the year 1773 what is known as builder’s 
measurement was brought into force in which 
3/5 of the breadth was subtracted from the 
length to allow for the rake of the stem and 
stern post and the rule then read: 
(L—3/S B)XBXI 4 B 
-= Builder’s Measurement. 
94 
The length was then taken along the rabbet 
of the keel from the bottom of the stern post 
to a perpendicular line dropped from the fore 
side of the stemhead. Now it is very easy to 
see that by raking the stern post “the tonnage” 
could be easily reduced because of a reduc¬ 
tion in the measured length. This rule, how¬ 
ever, continued until 1854—three years after 
the visit of the schooner America—when the 
Royal London and Royal Mersey yacht clubs 
decided to alter the way of taking the length, 
from the length along the keel to the measure- 
men from “stem to stern post on deck.” 
This change naturally raised the tonnage of 
some of the existing yachts with very raking 
stern posts as much as 20 per cent., and the re¬ 
sult was that, to make matters level, the Royal 
Thames Y. C. decided to deduct the whole of 
the beam from the length, instead of 3/5 of it, 
and in 1855 this rule came into force: 
(L-B)XBX^B 
-= Thames Measurement. 
94 
I hope your readers will forgive my troubling 
them with this little bit of ancient history, but 
I have done so in order to show the extra¬ 
ordinary conservatism displayed by British 
yachtsmen. Here we have the original Thames 
measurement, or Thames tonnage devised in 
18S5 to meet a conglomeration of old-fashioned 
and primitive ideas. Look at the very in¬ 
genuousness of it! The length is to be meas¬ 
ured from stem to stern post on deck, the 
obvious result of which must be that by a slight 
variance of the rake of the stern post, or the 
prolongation of the overhang forward, an im¬ 
mense difference is made in the tonnage of the 
yacht. Then again the tax on beam is so strong 
that a very slight addition to the breadth must 
mean an increase in the tonnage which is quite 
out of proportion, and altogether beyond rea¬ 
son. 
lYet notwithstanding these facts, this form of 
tonnage is employed to-day in England for 
classifying yachts in common parlance, in pur¬ 
chase and sale, and it is inserted in that other¬ 
wise up-to-date book, “Lloyds Yacht Register.” 
As an instance of the absurdity of this ton¬ 
nage, I have before me the measurements of two 
60ft. waterline yachts, the actual displacement or 
weight of each being approximately 56 tons. 
These two vessels, which I will call A and B, 
were built some years ago under the same rule 
which produced Queen Mab, the Watson 60- 
footer, which Mr. C. L. F. Robinson bought 
in England and raced in America. They were 
40-raters, the rule being LXS-t 6000 = rating, 
and their dimensions were length 60ft. and sail 
area 4000 sq. ft. For all intents and purposes 
they are exactly the same size. Length, weight 
of keel and material, cabin accommodations, and 
sail area being equal. Now, in form, A has 
rather a very long overhang forward, and having 
a low forward freeboard, her beam on deck 
amidships is flared out considerably, something 
like that of the yawl Ailsa. Although A has 
much greater beam amidships on deck, her 
area of waterline plane is scarcely greater than 
that of B. A also has a very raking stern post. 
The cost of each vessel was about £70 per foot 
L.W.L. when she was built. According to 
Thames measurement, A comes out 91 tons, 
while B is only 54. Therefore, if each boat 
cost £4,200, the price of A was about £46 per 
ton. whereas the price of B was £77 per ton. 
This, I venture to say, is an important deduc¬ 
tion for American yachtsmen who are fond of 
purchasing English yachts. Supposing these 
yachts were now to be sold at half their initial 1 
cost, and a stranger were to have A offered to I 
him at £23 per ton and B at £39- It j s I a ' r to 
assume that—especially when he was informed 
that both boats were old 40-raters, and that A 
was . built in 1893 and B was built in 189O'—he 
would conclude that A was a much cheaper I 
vessel. He might be pardoned for assuming 
that A was three years younger and £16 per 
ton cheaper. 
Of course I am quite well aware that no ex- 
pert would come to such a conclusion, but j| 
what I do say, is many prospective owners 
might do so, and especially an American yachts- 1 
man, who being unaccustomed to a system of 
tonnage measurement devised half a century ago, 
might naturally be unprepared for the astonish¬ 
ing fact that the price of the two 4 °' ra I ers " or 
6o-footers, offered to him at £23 per ton and 
£39 per ton, respectively, was precisely the 
same. 
Most of the British yacht building yards are 
well off for work, and the principal firms which 
are verv busy are William Fife, at Fairlie-on- 
Clyde, 'who 'is building a 754ft. cutter (15 
metres) for Mr. Kennedy, and Camper & 
Nicholson’s, of Gosport, who are building a 
yacht of this class for Sir James Pender, bife 
has a 49.2-footer (15 metres) in the course of 
construction at Robertson s Yard, Sandbank, 
and Alfred Mylne, a rising young designer, who 
was a pupil of G. L. Watson's, has a 15-metre 
yacht building at Dumbarton. The Clyde 
designers have also sent the lines of 6-metre, 
9-metre and 10-metre yachts abroad for the 
other countries which have adopted the inter¬ 
national rule. 
Quite a new departure in the modern racing 
vachts appears to be the extremely elaborate and | 
highly finished cabin fittings, combining com¬ 
fort and artistic taste, for since the introduction 
of the scantling restrictions there is no longer 
any dire necessity for a cheese-paring policy in j 
the weight of the details below deck, and in¬ 
stead of bare boards and scanty bunks, side¬ 
boards, tables and bulkheads barely complying 
with the letter of the law and requiring a de¬ 
cidedly elastic interpretation of the rule to be 
regarded as the “ordinary fittings of a yacht, ’ 
the new racers seem to be competing one with 
another to be able to show the maximum 
amount of comfort in the furniture of their 
roomy cabins. The new development will cer¬ 
tainly tend to make the modern class racers 
a popular type of boat. 
B. Hecicstall-Smith. 
Dories. 
It is a demonstration of “the survival of the 
fittest” the way the dory type of boat refuses to 
take a back seat and be forgotten like many of 
the other one-design classes. Knockabouts came 
into vogue, were popular and then evoluted into 
raceabouts. They in turn gave way to special 
classes which multiplied so fast no one could 
really grasp the full extent to which they have 
grown. Every club in every locality has its 
special class. 
But the dories ancient, tried and true are 
found all over. 
The Huguenot Y. C. years ago had a class of 
them on Long Island Sound and in Boston 
waters they are now so popular a special class, 
Class X, is given them in the yacht racing asso¬ 
ciation’s ranks, and in New York waters the ^ • 
R. A. of Gravesend Bay fathers them in what is 
called Class X. 
Motor Boats for Africa. 
The greatest African demand for motor boats 
of all descriptions comes from Zambesia, where 
there are hundreds of miles of navigable rivers, 
and where a greater part of the transportation 
is by water. The largest corporation interested 
in the means of transportation in Zambesia is 
the Campanhia de Zambesia. which has its. head 
office in Europe, at 53 R”0 do Alecrim. Lisbon, 
and its head office in Africa, at Tete, Zambesia. 
Mr. Alfred Obrist, of Chinde. at the mouth of 
the Zambesia, is also interested in river and lake: 
transportation in that region.—The Engineer. 
