COWES
We now come to one of the most important places in the Island, a place that holds up its double head for second to none in the way of dignity and fashion, though it began life as two small castles built by Henry VIII. at the Medina’s mouth to protect the harbour of Newport.
The two great Cows that in loud thunder roar,
This on the eastern, that the western shore,
Where Newport enters stately Wight.
“I knew when there was not above three or four houses at Cowes,” says Sir John Oglander, who yet had counted three hundred ships at anchor there; “and I was and am persuaded that if our wars and troubles had not unfortunately happened, it would have grown as famous as Newport.” Another scourge of the Island in his time was the activity of lawyers to stir up strife, whereas the first attorney who ventured himself here had been ignominiously charivaried out of this Arcadian scene by order of the Governor. But it might be, he admits, that lawyers were no more to blame than the absence of ships of war, once such good customers for the Islanders’ produce. “Now peace and law hath beggared us all, so that within my memory many of the gentlemen and almost all the yeomanry are undone.” One observes the distinction drawn by this rule of thumb economist between the ruinous effects of civil war and the profitable accidents of helping to ruin another country.
It is easy to understand how Cowes came to be the Tilbury and Gravesend of Newport, then by and by to supplant it as the Island’s chief port. In the days of small vessels, such a harbour as Newport offers was roomy and accessible enough, while it had the advantage of being more out of the way of hostile attack. London, Glasgow, Newcastle, Exeter, Bristol are only a few examples of great ports lying some way up navigable rivers; then on the larger scale of the world, one at once thinks of Calcutta, Canton, Montreal, New Orleans, Rosario, and so on. Some of these inland havens have kept their commercial position only by pains and cost hardly worth while to save half-a-dozen miles of water carriage; so, as ships grew too big for the tiny wharves of Newport, they would unload at the mouth of the river that makes the one good harbour on the Island. Thus Cowes grew apace; and a century ago it bid fair to be at least the second Wight town, till Ryde took a sudden start in prosperity. Like Ryde and Yarmouth it throve by victualling the great war fleets and convoys that often lay wind-bound in the Solent. But Cowes got a special string to its bow in the ship-building industry rooted here, then another in its position as headquarters of Solent yachting; and royal favour went to bring it into fashion. There was a time when it aspired to be a mere Margate or Sandown, in honour of which a Georgian poet named Jones is moved to predict—
No more to foreign baths shall Britain roam
But plunge at Cowes and find rich health at home!
To tell the truth, Cowes hardly shines in this capacity. Its bathing is not everywhere safe in the currents of the Solent; and to pick out a sandy oasis on the rough beach one must go eastward towards Gurnard Bay. Nowadays, indeed, the place is so spoilt by the patronage of European royalties and American millionaires, that it does not much care to lay itself out for the holiday-making bourgeois and his olive branches. The straggling town, divided by the Medina, has no particular charm unless that of a marine flavour. It is far from being so picturesque as Ventnor, or so imposing as Ryde; and apart from the artificial beauties of the parks enclosing it, its surroundings are commonplace beside those of Newport. Its main interest is on the sea-face looking over the shallow waters of the Solent, beside which East Cowes huddles along a narrow main street, that winds up and down, in and out, here and there, making a quaint show of houses old and new, half and half, dwellings mixed with shops, an unusual proportion of them providing refreshments, when they do not display such wares as ship’s lanterns, and other sea-fittings from cordage to carronades. The central point is the steamboat pier opposite the station; then further west comes the Victoria Pier with its pavilion, on a scale that shows how little Cowes cares to cater for your common Saturday to Monday visitor.
Cowes makes the Mecca of the yachtsman, as St Andrews of the golfer. It is the most famous station of those idle craft that in our day diverge into two different forms—the steam vessels, models of comfort and elegance, even luxury, some of them fitted for making pleasure-cruises all over the world; and the mere sailing boats, that seem utterly useless but as racing machines to skim like butterflies over some quiet sea, with their decks as often as not half under water—“a sort of metal torpedo with two or three balloons fixed on to it.” This is a pastime as expensive as the turf, and sometimes as unsatisfactory to the amateurs who seek social glory thereby. Not all the gentlemen who swagger about in blue jackets here are so much at home on the ocean wave as for the nonce they would fain appear. Not all those big and smart craft so much admired in the roads of Cowes are very familiar with the breeze or the billow of the open sea. The sailing masters and crews of some of them must have a good easy time of it; and one suspects they prefer being in the service of a fine-weather sailor, whose purse is his main qualification for seamanship, to taking orders from some old salt who knows the ropes as well as they do. We remember Jack Brag and his skipper Bung. But there are yachtsmen of another school, whose blood has the salt in it that goes so far to make England what it is, men who, without having the means to own idle vessels, dearly love playing the mariner in good earnest, and can spend no happier holiday than in working some small craft with their own hands, taking rough and smooth as it comes, getting health and pleasure out of return for a month or so to something like the old Viking life, and all its tingling charm of a struggle with the forces of nature. Sailors of this stamp can here buy or hire craft of all kinds, but perhaps more cheaply at other ports on the Solent, for it is not only at regatta-time that Cowes has a name for high charges.
The Solent with its almost landlocked waters, its many creeks, and its havens of refuge never more than a few miles off, makes a good cruising-ground for small craft such as can be sailed by the owner with the help of one or two hands working for love or money. Yet there are special difficulties here in the broken shore-line, the shifting banks, the shallows, and the treacherous currents, that call for some nautical ability, and even local experience to interpret the many buoys and beacons marking the channels of a watery labyrinth. The chief danger, apart from an occasional rough sea and squalls to be looked out for through openings in the land, is the violence of the tides, that encounter one another from each end of the Solent, so as to produce the peculiar result of a double high water—the ebb, after an hour or so, being driven back up to Southampton by a fresh flow.
There are, of course, various yacht clubs that take the Solent for their province; but the admiral of them all is the “Squadron,” one of the most exclusive clubs in the world, whose members have the much coveted right to fly St George’s white pennant on their yachts, and other privileges. Its membership is the port for which some of the most sumptuous yachts are fitted out. Many a millionaire would give a large slice of his fortune for admission to this body; but ill-gotten gold that buys titles, social advantages, and lordly yachts, is not an Open Sesame here; and there are aspirants who know, like Spenser, what it is in this matter “to have thy Prince’s grace and want his peers’.” Princely, royal or imperial patronage is seldom wanting for the regatta at the beginning of August, with which, passing on to the coast from Goodwood, the fashionable world disperses itself for the season in the blaze of fireworks that marks the end of “Cowes week.” During this week, Cowes becomes the focus of “smart” society, money and champagne flying over it like sea spray, and all its accommodation crammed; indeed, it would have no room for half its visitors, if not a few of them did not bring their own quarters in the shape of the innumerable yachts that by day are radiant with rainbow bunting, and by night illuminate the waters of the