instead of jib and foresail, belonging to the late Mr. Sam Nightingale, of Lacon’s Brewery. She was originally about twelve tons, but by improvements and additions, when Mr. Nightingale died in the eighties, was eighteen tons. For many years she was the fastest yacht in the Norfolk and Suffolk Yacht Club, and though she was occasionally beaten on fluky days she never lost possession of the challenge cup for long. Fred Baldry, who steered her with extraordinary skill, is, I believe, still alive, and lives on Cobholm Island, Yarmouth.
The Red Rover was not only successful on the rivers and Broads, but in the Yarmouth Roads. I was on her when she was beating the famous Thames twenty-tonner Vanessa, when the Red Rover carried away her bowsprit (a new stick) as she was beating on the sands to dodge the tide, and I remember how we were hooted all the way up Gorleston Harbour when Mr. William Hall’s steam launch towed us in.
I believe that when the little ten-ton Buttercup (unbeaten at her best) came down and gave the poor old Red Rover the worst dressing down she had ever experienced it broke Mr. Nightingale’s heart. He died soon after, and he left a direction in his will that the Red Rover should be broken up and burnt. It would, I think, have been a kinder and better direction to have left the yacht to Fred Baldry, who had steered her to victory so often.
Although I have described her as a river yacht, she was purely a racing machine, and used to be accompanied (in the home waters at all events) by a wherry, with all spare spars and sails, on which everything unnecessary for sailing was stowed before the starting gun was fired.
Once a year she carried a picnic party over Breydon Water, on which occasion, I believe, Mrs. Nightingale was invariably seasick going over to Breydon. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Nightingale ever used her for
pleasure except on that one annual excursion up to Reedham.
Well, well! There are no Red Rovers now, and no Fred Baldrys coming on. But there are plenty of stinking black tugs and filthy coal barges embellishing the lovely Norfolk waters. I do not wonder that Colonel Leathes, mentioned in the last quoted letter, has taken his yacht off the public waters and confined her to the beautiful wooded reaches of Fritton Mere.
The Otter was a rival of the Red Rover in the early days of the latter yacht, and was a clumsy, rather ugly, ketch-rigged craft belonging to Sir Arthur Preston. Major Leathes’ (now Colonel Leathes) boat was a yawl named the Waveney Queen, and the Colonel tells me that he carried away his mast twice, each time because he would “carry on” too long.
I can’t ascertain who was the “new owner” of Ablett Percival and Jack—and if I could I suppose it wouldn’t do to name
him, in view of FitzGerald’s stringent criticism of him. Subsequently Jack Newson went on the Mars, the sea-going craft belonging to the late J. J. Colman, m.p., but this was later than 1875.