I can never allow that steaming, under any conditions, can give the same pleasure as sailing—nor a hundredth part of it. If you are in a hurry, steam by all means—steam, steam, steam, pile on the coal, blacken sea and sky with your filthy smoke, and get into your port; but that is the pleasure of locomotion, not of yachting. Even as regards locomotion, there are occasions when a fine sailing vessel will go by a steamer as if she were standing still.
Years ago I sailed from Plymouth to Lisbon in four days, and from Lisbon to Cowes in four days, and passed all the steamers on the way! Atque haec olim meminisse juvabit. These are the happy moments, like forty minutes across a grass country, that fond memory brings back to us, and which Time's effacing fingers will never touch. Can steam at its best afford such delight as this? No; of course not. But, although this is my opinion of the relative pleasure of sailing and steaming, it is not by any means the general one; the race of steam versus canvas has been run, and alas! steam has won easily, hands down. I say alas! for I think that, from every point of view, yachting has suffered from the general employment of steam.
One of the objects of the Royal Yacht Squadron, when it was originally founded, was to encourage seamanship, and, as steam was supposed to destroy seamanship, steamers were not admitted into the Club; and the Royal Yacht Squadron was right. Steam does destroy seamanship; a steamship hand is certainly not half a sailor. Now more than half the tonnage of the Club is in steamers. I think it is a pity, and they are such steamers too! 800 tons, 1,000 tons, 1,500 tons. I do not see where they are to stop; but, I believe that in this, as in most things, we have run into excess. I cannot believe that the largest steam yacht afloat, with all the luxury and cost that upholsterers and cabinet-makers can devise, will ever give a man who is fond of the sea and seafaring matters a tithe of the gratification that a 100-ton sailing vessel will afford; one is a floating hotel, the other is a floating cottage. I prefer the cottage.
The worry of maintaining discipline in a crew of forty or fifty men, amongst whom there is sure to be one or two black sheep, the smoke, the smell of oil, the vibration, the noise, even the monotony, destroy pleasure. Personally, the game seems to me not worth the candle.
Thirty or forty years ago, yachting men with their sixty or hundred tonners went on year after year, fitting out, and cruising about the coast, as part of their yearly life. When their vessel was wearing out, they would sell her, and buy or build another; they seldom parted with her for any other reason. Now a man builds a floating palace or hotel at a fabulous cost; but as a general rule in about two years he wants to sell her and to retire from yachting life.
A sailing vessel and a steamer are different articles; you get attached to a sailing vessel as you do to anything animate, to your horse, or your dog; but I defy anyone to get attached to a smoky, oily steamer. There is an individuality about the sailing vessel; none about the steamer.
When the seven wise men of Greece delivered the oracular dictum that there were only two beautiful things in the world, women and roses, and only two good things, women and wine, they spoke according to their limited experience—they had never seen the new type of racing yacht under sail. Of course the perfection of animate beauty is represented by women, but certainly inanimate nature can show nothing more beautiful than 'Britannia,' 'Navahoe,' 'Valkyrie,' 'Satanita,' their sails well filled, the sun shining on them, streaking along twelve or thirteen knots an hour, apparently without an effort, scarcely raising a ripple. And then a yacht is so exceedingly feminine in her ways. One day everything goes right with her—she will not only do all she is asked to do, but a great deal more than her greatest admirers ever thought she could do: the next day everything goes wrong with her—she will not do anything she is asked, and indeed will not do what her admirers know she can do without an effort.
Some women—I speak it with all respect—bear being 'squeezed' and 'pinched,' they almost seem to like it, at any rate they don't cry out; whereas others will cry out immediately and vigorously. So will yachts.
The more you squeeze one vessel, the more you pinch her, the more she seems to enjoy it. Squeeze another, pinch her into the wind, and she lies down and calls out at once. The difference between vessels in this respect is quite funny, and essentially feminine.
Curiously enough, extremes meet; that is to say, if the pendulum of taste or fashion goes very much over to one side, it is sure to go over just as far on the other. Sailing yachts of 100, 200, 300 tons have gone out of fashion, and leviathan steamers of 800, 1,000, 1,500 tons have taken their place; but at the same time that a taste for immense steamers has driven moderate-sized sailing vessels out of the field, a taste for small boats, 5-raters, 3-raters, ½-raters—I don't quite understand their rating—has sprung up, and promises almost to supplant the big steamers themselves.