8 - The Enthusiastic Adoption of Yachting by the Mercantile and Professional Classes after 1870 Part One: The New Men

Summary

The love of boating is inherent, more or less, in the heart of every British boy, the more so if brought up within the sight of salt water

… careful papas and anxious mamas would do well to throw no obstacle in the way if master Harry or Tom show any predilection for yachting.

As yachting became increasingly popular among the members of the rapidly expanding middle class with surplus income to spend on leisure, so the composition and structure of yachting and yacht clubs changed, and the Corinthian style of yachting grew. The key factors in this growth were political stability and the creation of a railway network linking the cities to the coast.

Regarding political stability, the working class moved away from radicalism towards cooperation, friendly societies and trade unionism. Abroad, the Navy was establishing a Pax Britannica that lasted from the Crimean War (1853–1856) to the First World War.

With the advent of the railways, ‘the countryside seemed to shrink perceptibly, as the iron rails swiftly formed connections between the cities, linking town and country, city and coast, and bringing together the far extremities of the land’.

Who Were the New Participants in Yachting?

As Ryan has pointed out, yachting expands as the middle class expands, and it was expanding fast. We can distinguish three overlapping but distinct groups.

Firstly, there were those involved in manufacturing or the production of raw materials, such as coal. It was among these new industrialists, the manufacturers and their managers, that new yachtsmen were recruited; and if not from them, because they were too concerned and too anxious about maintaining their new found status and wealth, from their sons.

These men were, very predominantly, based in and around the cities, created by the Industrial Revolution. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Manchester, Salford (the location of Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844), Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle, Hull, Bristol and Glasgow all doubled or trebled their population. New cities grew from towns, created because they were suitable for a particular product or process like Leicester (engineering, joinery, traditional hosiery), Stokeon- Trent (pottery), Cardiff (coal export), Middlesborough and Barrow-in- Furness (ironworks), and Crewe and Swindon (railways).