His Majesty King Edward VII

King Edward was the commanding figure at the Royal Yacht Squadron in the final years of the nineteenth Century, serving as Commodore for twenty years until he became King in 1901 and, for the rest of his life, as Admiral.

His first official connection with the Club was in 1863 when he succeeded Prince Albert as Patron.  In 1865 he was elected by acclamation and became an active member.  He owned a small cutter and two steam yachts before his first racing yacht in 1876, when he won the Town Cup in his 205 ton schooner Hildegarde.  He also won the Queen’s Cup as owner of Formosa in 1880.  He then bought in 1882 the famous schooner Aline and campaigned her until Britannia arrived, and she was sold in 1895.

King Edward then commissioned from G L Watson the great racing yacht Britannia in 1893.  Built on the Clyde, she raced in the Big Class from 1893 and was converted to compete on handicap with the J Class in 1931 with a Bermudan rig.  By this time her performance to windward was less competitive.  Her last race was in Cowes in 1935 and during her racing career she had won 231 races and taken another 129 flags.

King Edward was greatly provoked by the aggressive competition on the water of his nephew, the German Kaiser, William II, who built a succession of yachts called Meteor, initially with English crews.  At one stage King Edward was sufficiently infuriated to sell Britannia but he later bought her back.  He even came to blows with his nephew on the Squadron steps after a race ashore in their respective tenders.  The King expressed his views about the Kaiser in a letter to Prince Louis of Battenberg, Earl Mountbatten’s father, in these terms: “I have tried to get on with him and shall nominally do my best till the end- but trust him – never.  He is utterly false and the bitterest foe that England possesses!”  Throughout his time as King until 1910, he felt the Kaiser was actively leading Germany to war.  In spite of these frictions with his nephew, it was during Edward’s reign that Cowes Week reached the height of its glamour with its elegant yachts and yachtsmen, together with their ladies.