By 1850, Robert Stephenson had been involved in a third of the country's railway system, and had prematurely aged and become ill with chronic nephritis, then known as Bright's Disease, a condition he shared with Isambard Brunel, for much the same reasons.
Stephenson found that he attracted the unwelcome attention of inventors and promoters; if he was too ill be at Great George Street they found him at home in Gloucester Square. In part to defend himself from these intrusions, in 1850 he commissioned a 100-ton yacht, calling her Titania. Finding he that he had no unwanted visitors when aboard, he referred to her as "the house that has no knocker"; when he went aboard, he seemed to grow younger and would behave as an excited schoolboy.
Titania missed the 1851 Royal Squadron Cup race, which America won and started the America's Cup challenge, but lost to America in a private race a few days later.
A second yacht, also Titania but 90 feet (27 m) long and 184 tons, was built in 1852 after the first was destroyed by fire.