Evelyn George Martin (1881-1945)
As a young man EGM owned a whole string of sailing boats: a 4-ton cutter called Swallow was followed by a restricted one-rater, Swallow II, which was almost unbeaten in 1900. The same year he bought a 10-ton fishing cutter, Hope, which he owned until 1905 when he acquired a 35-ton cutter, Chance. After Chance came Chance II, an 86-ton auxiliary ketch, which was replaced towards the end of the First World War by a 37-ton yawl, Conquest.
In these later yachts EGM made some remarkable cruises for his day. After joining the Royal Cruising Club in 1905 he won its Challenge Cup two years running (1907-1908). He also owned two 6-metres at different times. In one of them, Bunty, he won the European Cup at Kiel in 1912, beating the Germans in the final race. He always remembered the total silence with which he was greeted by the spectators when, flying his winning flag, he sailed up Kiel Harbour and past the German High Seas Fleet.
At the start of the First World War he joined the RNVR as a Sub Llieutenant and served in the Auxiliary Patrol, which had been formed from civilian vessels fitted out to combat U-boats around the British coastline. In November 1914 he was promoted to Lieutenant and given command of a motor yacht called Mayfair. When this was sunk in April 1915 he joined the monitor, Prince Rupert, as its First Lieutenant. In 1917 he was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and posted to the Rescue Tug Service at Plymouth. For his wartime services with tugs he was awarded the OBE.
In 1920 he became Commodore of the Royal South Western Yacht Club (which eventually merged with the Royal Western in 1961). In 1921, after unsuccessfully standing for Rear Commodore, he resigned from the Royal Cruising Club. ‘Although it is impossible to be sure of the main reason for his resignation,’ the RCC’s history comments, ‘it is surely more than a passing coincidence that, soon afterwards, he became a founder member and first Commodore of the Ocean Racing Club’.
In 1923 EGM combined his love of working boats with that of sailing for pleasure by purchasing the 44-ton Jolie Brise, a Le Harve pilot cutter, from her French owner after he was given a half model of her by a pilot friend working out of the port. In 1925 EGM won the first Fastnet Race in Jolie Brise and the Ocean Racing Club was founded. EGM was Elected the Club’s first Commodore.
In 1926 Jolie Brise competed in the Bermuda Race. Later that year EGM was awarded the Blue Water Medal for the cruise from Falmouth which included the Bermuda Race. From 1935 he was Admiral of the Ocean Racing Club.
In World War II EGM commanded The Rescue Tug Base at Campbeltown.