Montague Guest was a member from 1863-1909, dying while a guest of the King at Sandringham.
Known as the‘Emperor of Cowes’ he served as Honorary Librarian, amassing a great deal of information about the Club’s past in order to write its first history, ‘Memorials of the Royal Yacht Squadron’.
He was a very active member of the Wine Committee and was also responsible for introducing garden entertainments during Cowes Week.
Montague was born in London in March 1830, the third child and second son of Sir (Josiah) John Guest, first baronet (1785-1852) , and his second wile, Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Bertie (1812 - 1895), the eldest child of the late ninth Earl of Lindsey.
The family's wealth came through Montague's grandfather Thomas Guest, one time manager and part owner of the Dowlais lronworks, who had married Jemima Revel Philips of Shifnal in Shropshire. The Guest family also hailed from Shropshire but they moved to south Wales and had helped instigate a furnace at Merthyr Tudful [sic: Welsh] in the 1760s.
Aided over successive decades by the Napoleonic wars and the international development of the railways the Dowlais works became the largest iron factory in the world. By 1830 Wales and particularly Monmouthshire accounted for nearly 45 per cent of Britain's total pig iron production, much of it concentrated at Dowlais and the other three major ironworks clustered, and competing within the Merthyr area.
From the mid 1830s to the late 1840s the Dowlais Ironworks at its peak boasted eighteen blast furnaces against an average
three for other ironworks across the country and which by 1845, were producing over a hundred tons weekly. The site covered forty acres expanding ultimately into the Guest's back garden and the workforce numbered at its peak more than seven thousand. A second works, the Ifor works (the Welsh spelling of Guest's eldest son's name), was built in 1839 at a cost of £47,000. As the railway network expanded at home and abroad so the renamed Dowlais Iron Company seized opportunities for new contracts both within Britain and further afield, notably in Germany, Russia, and America. In 1844, for example, an order was placed for an unprecedented 50,000 tons of track for the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Throughout the 1830-40s the Guests lived in Dowlais House but in 1846 purchased Canford Manor near Wimborne in Dorset at a price of £350,000. With the help of the architect Sir Charles Barry they turned Canford into their main home, although Dowlais House was retained.
Guest was created a baronet on 14 August 1838; their eldest son, Sir Ivor Bertie Guest (RYS 1864-1893), was elevated to the peerage and created the 1st Baron Wimborne in 1880; his eldest son, Ivor Churchill Guest, became Viscount in 1918.
Ivor Bertie Guest was Montague's elder brother, while Ivor Churchill Guest, Frederick Edward Guest, Henry Guest and Oscar Guest were his nephews.
After Eton, Montague entered Parliament as a Liberal member for Youghal in the 1869 by-election, a seat which he held until 1874, and thence represented Wareham from 1880 to 1885. He joined the Squadron's List in 1862, also being a member of White's amongst his London clubs.
He died unmarried on 9 November 1909 while a guest of the King at Sandringham.