A Cultural History of Sailing and Yachting in Australian Waters, 1888-1945
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Sailing Traditions: A Cultural History of Sailing and Yachting in Australian Waters, 1888-1945 Carlin Stephen de Montfort A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Humanities Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia 2011 Contents Acknowledgements 1. Introduction 1 2. The Legend of the Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race 32 3. Sailing and Yachting in 1888 59 4. The Open Boat Legend 86 5. Sailing Boats and Deep Keelers 113 6. Federation and the Modern Australian ‗Yachtsman‘ 138 7. ‗City Sailors‘ and the Sea 166 8. The America‘s Cup: Conclusion 198 Bibliography 212 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Dr Ruth Balint and co supervisor Dr Sean Brawley for their continued support and encouragement during throughout my candidature. The completion of this thesis is based on their professional and personal support. I am deeply grateful. I would also like to acknowledge the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and School of Humanities at the University of New South Wales for the opportunity to study for this degree. I am grateful to the academic and administrative staff including Dr Paul Brown, Dr Nicholas Doumanis, Dr Mina Roces, Dr Geoff Nathan, Sally Pearson, and Lekana Kim. And I would like to thank the following PhD students for their comments and friendship, Charmaine Robson, Eureka Henrich, Eve Carroll- Dwyer, Erik Nielsen, Lindsay Yeates, and Uraiwan Keodara. Finally, I must thank all my family and friends for their love and support, particularly my partner, Lois Morgan, and My parents, David de Montfort, Rowena Sargent and Barry Sargent. I would like to remember Elaine Morgan, Peter de Montfort, Karen de Montfort, and William Lister Johnson, who could not see this thesis completed. Chapter 1 Introduction My grandfather‘s yacht, Portia has a small brass plate mounted above the round faces of the barometer and clock ‗down below‘ in the cabin. The plate testifies to the successful completion of the Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race in 1968. Portia did not do particularly well in the race and my grandfather was yet to own it. No one in my family had ever competed in the Sydney-Hobart. Yet, that brass plate was part of my childhood experiences. Some of my earliest memories are of sailing Portia on Pittwater to the north of Sydney. Below deck was safe and secure. I remember the sweaty vinyl cushions in the cabin, the comforting smell of diesel and salt water, and the smooth threadbare cotton pillowcases that never really dried out in the salt air. I also remember lying in the cabin fascinated by the mystery of the brass plate. I knew the words before I knew the meaning. They seemed distant and adventurous, and yet, over time as I came to understand them, they felt close through the boat and its history: CRUISING YACHT CLUB OF AUSTRALIA THE YACHT PORTIA COMPETED IN THE SYDNEY-HOBART YACHT RACE DEC. 1968 The Sydney-Hobart had an important place in our family traditions. We had our big raucous family Christmas on Boxing Day, and we would arrive at my grandparent‘s before the Sydney-Hobart started. If we timed it right, we could stand in the living room and watch the live broadcast of the start on the television before rushing up the hill to a lookout on Dobroyd head where we would work our way into the crowd of spectators. Sometimes we would find the hidden track down to an old gunpowder magazine, a relic of the harbour defences, and join the others who also knew the ‗secret spot‘. We would squint down the harbour, waiting for the tops of the tallest masts to first appear above Middle Head. The anticipation built as the yachts followed by helicopters pleasure boats and nearly every ferry on the harbour would come into view, turn right around South Head or a marker in the Sound, and then disappear Introduction down the coast. The kids fought over the binoculars, and the adults struck up conversations with other spectators. They threw sailing jargon into their observations, each party trying to see if the other knew ‗what they were talking about‘. Back at the house, we opened presents, ate, swam in the pool, and at some point inevitably imagined just how far down the coast the yachts would be and whether or not they had run into a ‗Southerly Buster‘. These experiences contributed to my sense of an ‗imagined community‘ of Australians who, like myself, were entranced by the romance of sailing and the sea. Benedict Anderson defined the nation as an ‗imagined political community‘ because its members who may not know one another imagined connections and shared interests that united them.1 We could see the spectators on North Head and South head, on the ferries, yachts and cruisers that surged along with the fleet in a sea of wash and imagine the infinite number of people tuning in to the race on live television in any part of Australia. The Sydney-Hobart was described by commentators as a ‗national tradition‘ and an ‗Australian icon‘, drawing attention to this shared ritual. We celebrated the skills and bravery of Australian sailors and the romance of ‗our‘ coastline. The Sydney-Hobart was also an important part of the way that we imagined Australian sailing and yachting and the small brass plate in Portia’s cabin stood as a timeless testament to these traditions. It was a physical link to these abstract concepts of self and nation. This thesis has forced me to reconsider what sailing has meant to my family, my sailing friends and me and to investigate both public and private meanings of the pastime. I became interested in the history of the Sydney-Hobart at around the same time as I ‗discovered‘ Australian history during my undergraduate studies. Having been previously interested in grand narratives of European politics, wars, and economics, Australian social and cultural history was a revelation. It was ‗close to home‘ and personal. I read legends of Australian sailing penned by yachting journalists such as Lou d‘Alpuget and Bob Ross in Yachting in Australia and The Sailing Australians.2 These books presented Australian sailing and Australian sailors in a national context providing stories of skilled successful sailors, particularly in strong winds and heavy weather that buffeted the Australian coast. The Bluewater 1 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition, Verso, London, 1991, pp. 5-7, 9-36. 2 Lou d‘Alpuget, Yachting in Australia: Yesterday Today and Tomorrow, Hutchinson Group, Richmond, Victoria, 1980; Bob Ross, The Sailing Australians, Rigby, Adelaide, 1973. 2 Introduction Bushmen by Bruce Stannard provided my sailing with a romantic legacy with its black and white photographs from a ‗golden age‘ of open boat sailing in Sydney.3 I wanted to tell the stories of a successful maritime tradition in a serious scholarly forum. But I didn‘t write about the Sydney-Hobart. I wrote about various aspects of Australian history in my essays and exams and wrote about the history of the open boats for my honours thesis. Interesting but unresolved questions about sailing, yachting, class, legends, and Australian identity were brought up through this preliminary research.4 When I began this PhD, a history of the Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race was the obvious choice. It was a succinct topic with clear parameters. The event was clearly an Australian icon, yet it had received little scholarly attention. It promised to provide me with the maritime story of ‗being Australian‘ that I longed to tell.5 I set out to write the sea into Australian history, to tell the stories of those brave Australians who race to Hobart and their kin who follow them in spirit, and to better understand my own experience and identity of being an Australian sailor. At the same time, I was aware of the limitations of the legend and the constructions of this image. As Richard White observed in the introduction of Inventing Australia, ‗there is no ―real‖ Australia waiting to be uncovered‘. Instead, all versions of Australia are intellectual constructs ‗neat, tidy, comprehensible – and necessarily false‘. He maintained that instead of investigating whether they were true or false, we should consider their function, their creation, and whose interests they serve.6 The closer I looked for answers, the clearer the problems of the Sydney- Hobart became. There was no ‗real‘ Sydney-Hobart other than an annual ocean race. Furthermore, considering the power behind the tradition required a broader scope than I anticipated. The race was one part of a larger sailing culture in Australian history that has drawn on rich and complicated maritime traditions. It opened up questions about the origins of sailing and yachting in Australia: how did the Sydney-Hobart become an Australian icon; what did it reveal about the sea in Australian culture; and 3 Bruce Stannard, The Bluewater Bushmen: The Colourful Story of Australia’s Best and Boldest Boatmen, Angus and Robinson, Sydney, 1981. 4 Carlin de Montfort, The Sentimental Boat: The Legend of Sydney‘s Open Boats, unpublished honours thesis, University of Sydney, Department of History, 2004.. 5 Catriona Elder, Being Australian: Narratives of National Identity, Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, 2007. 6 Richard White, Inventing Australia: Images and Identity 1688-1980, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1981, p. viii. 3 Introduction what meanings were attached to sailing and yachting before the race was established? Only after a long process of considering the traditions of the sea and sailing in Australian culture could the Sydney-Hobart be properly explained.