Dating the beginning of the sailing narrative is inherently problematic since people have sailed for pleasure since there were boats to sail, so a fisherman, the captain of a commercial vessel, or a harbour pilot might well sail for pleasure on high days or holidays, and they had no reason to record their experiences in a permanent form.

Leisure use of yachts is recorded from ancient times. W. M. Nixon goes back to 600 BC and the Roman poet Catullus, ‘proud owner of a 30ft seagoing yacht, planked in pitch-pine on oak frames … with a somewhat cumbersome lug-sail’, he sailed from his home water of the Adriatic to Greek ports, and ‘on his most ambitious cruise, of all, the Black Sea’.

An early example of the use of yachts for royal leisure is shown by Harold, king of Norway, presenting a ‘king's ship’ to the English king, Athelstan (924–939); and King Edgar (944–975) enjoyed ‘sommer progreses and [his] yerely chiefe pastimes were the sailing round about this whole isle of Albion’. ‘When King Robert Bruce of Scotland lived in his castle at Cardross near Dumbarton “his chief amusement was to go upon the river [Clyde] and down to the sea in a ship which he kept for his pleasure. In 1326 six men were paid 2s for crossing in his yacht to Arran.”’

Brian Lavery in The Island Nation tells how ‘A fifteenth century manuscript in the British Library shows three people in a small boat partly covered with an awning, playing musical instruments and drinking from a jar’. I point out the continuous association of sailing and drinking at various points in this book; and also the link with music, and often singing, especially after ‘a few jars’, as seems to have been the case on this occasion.

Representations of the Sea

We need to pay attention to the various ‘meanings’ of the sea, since these inform leisure sailing and define the various types of pleasure and purpose to be gained from it.