Cowes Becomes Yachting's Capital – the Squadron's Early Years

We left an informal grouping of yacht-owning aristocrats at the end of the last chapter who had agreed to meet twice a year, once in London and once in Cowes. Two questions merit answering. Firstly, why meet at Cowes, and, secondly, how did this informal group become the most prestigious yacht club in the United Kingdom, if not the world? In the final section, I will examine the America's Cup, first raced for in 1851, and its subsequent history.

I described in Chapter 3 how, during the second half of the eighteenth century, inland spa towns had gradually lost favour to seaside resorts, as doctors began lauding the merits of seawater, seawater bathing and sea air. Besides, inland resorts were becoming ‘invaded’ by members of the ‘lower classes’, seeking to join in the promenades, the dances and the meetings. Royalty and the Aristocracy moved their socialising away from the inland spas to coastal spas.

Already, before the turn of the century, grand properties were being built along the Solent Coast around Cowes and along the Medina River. The swelling of its summer population was reported on by the Hampshire Courier and the Hampshire Telegraph, ‘two papers which may be regarded as the archives for the first period of English yachting, of the fine company which gave an increasing prosperity to Cowes before the nineteenth century had run into its teens’.

Travel to the Island was improved by the introduction of the paddle steamer, Prince Cobourgh, on the Southampton–Cowes run from 1820.