ANOTHER VOICE
Sailing from Monte in the wake of the bouncing Czech
PAUL JOHNSON
Lord Beaverbrook, too, was critical of yachts, or `yats' as he called them, though for different reasons. He had had an unfor- tunate experience taking delivery of a 'steam yat' on the American East Coast, which hit an obstruction after it had cruised less than a dozen miles. He was on the bridge, standing next to the captain at the time. 'What was that noise, Captain Bro- gan?' I don't know, my Lord. I will find out."Well, it sounded like a twenty-thou- sand bucks noise to me.' And so,' he added, 'it proved. Everything which goes wrong with a yat costs you twenty thousand bucks, at least.' This cautionary tale con- cluded with a warning: 'My advice to you, young man, is not to be in a hurry, when the time comes, to buy yourself an expen- sive steam yat.'
So far I have found no difficulty in fol- lowing Beaverbrook's advice. Yet I must admit that, of all the glittering baubles vast wealth can buy, the only one which tempts me in the least is a yacht. Why? It is the sense of freedom — the idea that you can get on a boat you call home, with your fam- ily and friends, and tell the man on the bridge to take you anywhere in the world. Size and luxury, and therefore expense, are essential. There is no surer formula for a holiday disaster than embarking on a small yacht. It brings instantly to mind Dr John- son's condemnation of the sailor's life: 'Like being in a prison, with the chance of being drowned too.'
Close quarters on a reeking boat where all is uncongenial work, greasy meals and buffeting by the elements is a solvent of friendship and an aggravator of any family discord going. The disadvantages are well conveyed in the Somerville and Ross story, The House of Fahy, in which Bernard Shute, to entertain his friends, hires a grue- some schooner called the Eileen Oge, and comes a cropper. Come to think of it, the two authors tell an even more off-putting tale about Lord Derryclare's unfortunate pleasure vessel, Sheila, with its 'narrow, hog-backed deck' and strong whiff of pot- lack, which contrives to foul its anchor in the bay at Eyries, 'a collection of dismal, slated cabins, grouped around a public house, like a company of shabby little hens round a bedraggled cock'.
Spaciousness, then, is of the essence, the swift and faultless service which belongs to a well-found ship, a first-class chef, stabilis- ers, air-conditioning, a big pool, phones, television, faxes and, not least, the pop of champagne corks as the waves lap softly against the stern and cast intricate light- patterns against the awning above. Maxwell's Lady Ghislaine has a gymnasium and a discotheque. I would turn the gym into a library and the disco into a gallery for paintings. Associations with Cap'n Bob would not bother me; quite the contrary — a little bit of notoriety is part of the fun of owning one of these exotic toys. I'd enjoy telling guests: 'We've had the guard-rail mended but this is the place where the pre- vious owner walked the plank.' Nor would I mind a touch of haunting. If the high seas can accommodate the Flying Dutchman, why not the ghostly Czech too, condemned to bounce for ever across the billows? But the name of the boat would have to go. I'd be inclined to substitute the Lady Maggie.
The trouble with owning such a yacht now is that much of the romance disap-
peared along with the brass-and-mahogany fittings, the barefoot sailors pummicing the gleaming white decks, the flap of canvas, even the smuts of coal-smoke. The 19th century was the classic period, beginning with Byron's Bolivar, built in Genoa to the designs of an English naval architect — the same who conceived Shelley's ill-fated Don Juan. The Bolivar was built for speed, and his lordship would sit on the poop-deck penning Sardanapalus or Marino Faliero while the Ligurian coast slipped by. Even more notable was Lord Cardigan's magnifi- cent Dryad, which accompanied him to the Crimean War and, anchored off Balaclava, served as his regimental headquarters. After leading the Charge of the Light Brigade and reporting to a furious Lord Raglan, the C-in-C, he returned to the Dryad, had a bath, drank a bottle of cham- pagne, ate dinner prepared by his French chef, and went to bed in his state-room. The Dryad was also the setting for Cardi- gan's second honeymoon, when the death of Lady Cardigan ('My dear, the old — iS dead, let's get married at once!') allowed him to make an honest woman of his mis- tress, Miss Horsey de Horsey. In those days and for long after, the Admiralty ran a succession of big steam yachts, the perk of the First Lord. In the golden, elegiac summers before the Great War, letters and memoirs tell of unforget- table cruises in HMS Enchantress, with Churchill as host, and such luminaries as `Squiff, 'Margot', `LG' and 'FE' enjoying the Mediterranean sunshine, with a 'grey- hound of the sea' in attendance. But that was the Indian summer of romantic yacht- ing. After the first world war there was not quite the same sense of easeful certitude. Edward VIII brought the Mediterranean cruise into disrepute in 1936 by his disas- trous expedition with Mrs Simpson, and in the post-1945 world a succession of grotesques — King Farouk, Lady Docker, Aristotle Onassis — used their yachts to plumb stygian depths of vulgarity. So what? If the romance has gone, there is still a lot to be said for joining one's vessel at Monte, just as the sun goes down over the Massif des Maures. 'Evening, Captain, how soon can we sail?' Half an hour, Sir."Right. We should make Ajaccio by dawn. After that: we shall see. Positano, perhaps. Or Amalfi. 'Aye, aye, Sir.' There's nothing like an expensive yat for bringing out the Walter Mitty.
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