ALFRED MYLNE CLYDE 20-TON ONE DESIGN 52 ft GAFF CUTTER 1899/2014

Little could the Victorian and Edwardian owners of six beautiful 52 feet identical gaff cutter cruiser-racers, and their young designer Alfred Mylne, imagine that more than 125 years later one of them would still be doing exactly what they'd conceived. Believed the last remaining ‘Clyde 20-Ton One Design', TIGRIS has been lucky to be almost constantly and extensively raced and cruised throughout her long life. And many of her owners gave back, and continue to do so to ensure that this beautiful, still very practical, fast, and superbly authentic, high provenance yacht continues to give pleasure and gain admirers. A relatively recent open heart surgery refit in current ownership by Chantier du Guip concentrated on the vitally important structural elements down below, where she is effectively only a decade old.

This is a provisional set of details; more specifications to be added in coming weeks

2014 - CHANTIER DU GUIP, BREST, FRANCE
Major structural 'heart of the boat' refit including:
- Garboard planks wood keel and mast step removed
- Part rebuild of stem
- Wood frame repairs
- Lead ballast keel dropped (and re-fastened)
- New iroko wood keel
- New laminated iroko mast step
- New bronze strap floors
- New iroko garboard planks
- Partial bulwarks rebuild

2001 - AT HYS UNIVERSAL, HAMBLE, UK
Believed (TBC) restoration work including:
- Structural
- Rig
- Deck furniture

1990-1991 - MARK ROLT SHIPWRIGHT, BRISTOL, UK
Major restoratation
- Majority of planking and framing replaced
- New covering boards (for top of frame access)
- New cockpit
- New deck furniture
- New rig by Noble, Bristol

EARLY 1990s
- New laid teak on marine plywood deck

ALFRED MYLNE DESIGN NO. 41
"When the yachts made their first appearance at the opening matches of the season of 1899, their attractive appearance, symmetrical outline, and internal accommodation were the subject of general approbation, while their performances in these their first races showed that they also possessed a great turn of speed... The class, though primarily a local one, did not confine its racing to home waters, but at the close of the 'Clyde Fortnight' proceeded to Belfast Lough and Dublin Bay, and there took part in the regattas of the local clubs. The yachts have given great satisfaction and have amply fulfilled their owners' expectations. In the season of 1900, yacht racing fell flat owing to the absence of most of the larger class of racing-yachts. It was, therefore, left to the smaller classes to fill the gaps in the programme, and of these the One-Design 20-ton boats of the new class provided some of the most interesting and keenly contested matches of the season." [Folkhard, The Sailing Boat, London, 1901]

A study of yacht racing history quickly reveals that as long as the sea has remained buoyant and nobody worked out how to charge for the wind, the only really new phenomenon over three centuries is the materials yachts and their equipment are made from. Debate about the rules controlling racing yacht design and build, and their behaviour on the race course, has been a given from the start, and most hull configurations - except for true planing hulls - had been tried out by the mid-1890s.

Imagine yourself a relatively young and comfortably-off British or Irish racing yachtsman of the late 1890s. In your lifetime you have experienced yachts designed to the Thames Measurement Rule that, increasingly and scarily, through the 1880s offered advantage via narrower, deeper, and heavier hulls to the point where a yacht of 50 feet on deck could sport a beam of not much over five feet. There’s the apocryphal story of an owner arriving alongside by launch to step aboard his new ‘plank-on-edge’ cutter - and missing, falling into the water on the other side.

Then the opposite through the 1890’s: increasingly beamier and shallower bodied yachts, many with fin and lead bulb keels and, even at relatively large sizes, little or no standing headroom and accommodation. Prescient, yes, but not universally popular then among those inclined towards moderation who liked to be able to stand up straight inside their expensive yachts, and between regattas undertake some cruising in comfort.

By 1898 a cohort of northern waters yachtsmen, not all of them Clyde-based, presumably contemplating a ‘fast cruiser’ for the 1899 season of around 35 feet waterline/ 50 feet on deck for racing (remaining competitive for more than just a season) and cruising in comfort, decided to have what they collectively wanted rather than what the Length and Sail Area rating rule dictated. Led by 31-year-old Matthew Greenlees, whose leisure time was paid for by his family’s past success in the heyday of the Paisley Shawl trade, five of them commissioned a one design class from yacht designer Alfred Mylne, not long established to his own account in Glasgow after rather painfully extracting himself from his mentor, G.L. Watson.

Such a commission would have been quite a feather in young Mylne’s cap, and there couldn’t have been a better man for the job. He’d worked with Watson through the early 1890s development of the ‘BRITANNIA Ideal’ - a seminal point of moderation in yacht design and harmony in hydrodynamics named after the Prince of Wales’s 1893 Big Class cutter - and in developing the scantlings required for yachts of lighter displacement than their predecessors that still had to carry clouds of canvas.

While Mylne prepared the drawings for Design No. 41, at late 1898 meetings the five initial owners worked out a sensible set of rules to protect the one design ideal, restricting how many sails could be purchased in a season, the number of professional crew (two, except for the ‘Clyde Fortnight’ regattas where three were allowed), and a ballot system for allocating the boats in mid build to their owners.

In order to have all five yachts ready for the start of the 1899 season, the build contracts were split between two Clyde yards, both an easy train ride from Mylne’s Glasgow city centre office for supervision: three boats to Robert McAlister & Son at Dumbarton, and two to Paul Jones & Son of Battery Park, Gourock.

The yachts were:
1899
AVALON
- Built by R. McAlister & Son, Dumbarton
- 1st Owner, Charles McIver (grandson of Cunard Line co-founder), Liverpool
NOYRA
- Built by Paul Jones & Son, Gourock
- 1st Owner, Matthew Greenlees (textile merchant), Paisley, Renfrewshire
SNARLEYOW
- Built by Paul Jones & Son
- 1st Owner, Archibald F. MacLaren (Ironfounder), Skelmorlie, Ayrshire
TIGRIS
- Built by R. McAlister & Son
- 1st Owner, Thomas G. Wotherspoon (starch manufacturer), Paisley, Renfrewshire
VAGRANT
- Built by R. McAlister & Son
- 1st owner: Joseph H. Gubbins (distiller: 'Wise’s Irish Whiskey'), Glanmire, Cork
1900
ROSEMARY
- Built by R. McAlister & Son
- 1st Owner, Benjamin W. Morris (esparto grass merchant), Glasgow

They were all launched in mid-May and those fitted out in time first came to the line on Friday 26th May 1899 at the Royal Clyde Yacht Club’s Friday to Saturday (no Sabbath racing in those days) ‘Opening Cruise and Races’ from Hunter’s Quay into the beautiful Kyles of Bute. Matthew Greenlees’s NOYRA - named in a no-holds-barred jibe at the national rating organisation, the Yacht Racing Association (YRA) - was top performer at these early flurries.

TIGRIS’s first appearance was the following weekend at the Clyde Corinthian Yacht Club’s Hunter’s Quay Regatta of Saturday 3rd June 1899, finishing a creditable 2nd to AVALON.

The Clyde 20-Tonners continued to be offered a class start on the Clyde up to the 1909 season, when the march of the International Rule ‘metric’ classes - in particular on the Clyde at this time, the 12-Metre class - was bringing about major change.

TIGRIS is the only known survivor of the class.

©2024 Iain McAllister/ Sandeman Yacht Company Ltd.

Paisley starch and cornflower manufacturer and merchant Thomas Glen Wotherspoon didn’t commission TIGRIS from R. McAlister & Son. In a mid-build, February 1899 ballot of the class sponsors, he was allocated one of the three hulls the Dumbarton yard was building to Alfred Mylne's drawings. The other two boats of the class were built at Gourock by Paul Jones & Son. It was all a very properly conceived idea.

TIGRIS was launched during week commencing 15th May 1899 and towed along with her Dumbarton-built class sisters AVALON and VAGRANT from the River Leven to the Holy Loch for fitting out.

Wotherspoon hadn’t previously been a yacht owner. He seems to have taken his pleasure afloat aboard yachts owned by members of the Coats thread making dynasty of Paisley. In fact, TIGRIS’s later start in the class may have been because Mr Wotherpoon was off on an ambitious, but truncated at Madeira, cruise to the Caribbean aboard Andrew Coats’s explorer steam auxiliary yacht PANDORA, which in an earlier life as the Royal Navy’s Philomel-class gunvessel/ survey vessel HMS NEWPORT had gained the mischievously obtained distinction of being the first ship to transit the Suez Canal.

In Wotherpoon’s ownership, TIGRIS gained 86 prizes until 1909, the last season the Clyde 20-Tonners raced as a class on the Clyde. He replaced her in 1910 with the 72 ft Fred Shepherd fast cruising yawl PELAGIA.

TIGRIS's ownership then moved south to the Mersey and the Menai Strait with Liverpool cotton broker Joseph Stowell, already a Mylne client having commissioned the Bond of Birkenhead-built Royal Mersey Restricted class boat FRÖSETTE in 1908, owned together with his son, Ernest. Stowell was a truly dedicated racing sailor, campaigning TIGRIS on handicap at the Irish Sea and Clyde regattas up to 1914.

At some point during the First World War TIGRIS was sold to R. Boije, a shipowner at Kristiansand, Norway, where yachting was not restricted. According to the recently published Mylne biography (a magnificent tome), the designer treated it as a matter of honour to broker the cutter’s return to Scotland in 1919 into the ownership of Glasgow engineering entrepreneur James Howden Hume Sr. His teenage son, future Mylne client James Howden Hume Jr., gained attention as Tigris’s skilful schoolboy helmsman during the 1919 and 1920 seasons.

Subsequent owners into the early 1930s were Capt. Nöel E. Drury, JP, a Dublin paper manufacturer (1922-1926), and back in Scotland 1926-1934 with Stuart C. Lorimer, Edinburgh - together with his brother Alexander also the first owner of the McGruer-built Gareloch One Design Class boat FINTRA (now GALATEA). In Lorimer’s ownership TIGRIS was fitted with her first auxiliary motor in 1928, a 4-cylinder American 'Red Wing' petrol engine, and she was converted to Bermudan cutter rig in 1930.

In 1934 TIGRIS moved south to Falmouth with Percy M. Holman, fourth generation leader of his family's successful Cornish mining equipment business, future president of the Rugby Football Union, and future Admiral of the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club. She joined the burgeoning south coast of England offshore racing circuit, giving a very good account for herself and well proving Mylne's 1898 concept against 'modern' but surprisingly similar new kids on the block such as Robert Clark’s ORTAC, and well known designs by old friendly foes, for example William Fife's LATIFA, and Charles Nicholson's FIREBIRD. And Holman cruised her to Sweden and Brittany. It was to Alfred Mylne that Holman would turn in 1937 for TIGRIS's newbuild replacement, the beautiful and successful 55 ft MORVA, built by Percy Mitchell at Portmellon.

Subsequent owners from c1938 into the 1990s were:
c1938-1948
Denis F. Duigan, M.C., a New Zealand-born, Sussex-based coffee and gold entrepreneur in Africa with a remarkable Second World War career.
1948-1948
Katherine Wellesley, London. A screenwriter, also under her maiden name Katherine Struesby. Wife of film producer and writer Gordon Wong Wellesley.
1948-1949
Charles D. Pledger
1949-1952
V.E. Harrison, MBE, Norwich
1952-1956
Col. E.G. Dutfield, Hindhead, Surrey and Fishbourne, Isle of Wight
1956-c1958
Edward Davies & RP Thorne, Earls Colne, Essex & Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire
1958-1963
F.M. Philips and Others, Hove & Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex

From 1963 into the 1980s, TIGRIS enjoyed a long period of ownership by engineer John J.S. Marston of Putney, London. From bases at Harwich and the Hamble River, he cruised her from Portugal to Scandinavia and points between. By the early 1990s owned by holiday park entrepreneur David C.R. Allen, TIGRIS underwent probably her first major restoration, by Mark Rolt at Bristol, was returned to gaff cutter rig, and participated through the 90s at south coast of England classic regattas.

In 2001 TIGRIS was purchased at the Universal Yard on the Hamble River, Hampshire by a Mediterranean-based synidicate led by Burr Taylor from Antibes. She has been a Mediterranean ever since, including in current ownership - a very regular and welcome sight on the classics circuit.

©2024 Iain McAllister/ Sandeman Yacht Company Ltd.

- Teak topsides planking (1991)
- Honduras pine (1991) and iroko (2014) underbody planking
- Oak double sawn frames
- Stainess steel web floors (1991)
- 2 x Oak timbers between sawn frames
- Bronze strap floors (2014)
- Substantial bilge stringers
- Bronze diagonal strapping at mast (2014)
- Iroko wood keel and stem (2014)
- Lead ballast keel
- Stainless steel keelbolts (2014)
- Teak laid deck on marine plywood (early 1990s)
- Teak and mahogany superstructures

SUMMARY
TIGRIS’s deck arrangement and rig authentically honour the original, with running rigging and sheeting tension achieved via rough and fine tackles. It is beautifully uncluttered by any non-authentic paraphenalia.
- Teak laid deck
- Teak and mahogany carpentry

FROM AFT

AFT DECK
- Bronze mooring fairleads at taffrail port and starboard
- Bronze central mooring bollard
- Bronze mainsheet traveller
- 4 x Mainsheet padeyes
- Mainsheet tackles with ash blocks
- Bronze mainsheet cleats port and starboard
- Flush lazarette hatches port and starboard
- Bronze mushroom vent

COCKPIT
- Teak coaming, capped; fared forward to companionway house
- Teak lined well sides
- Laid teak sole on marine plywood
- Engine throttle control aft
- Fore and aft seating is deck continuation
- Teak fore and aft benches; lockers under
- Steering compass on plinth port forward
- Bridge deck

COMPANIONWAY HOUSE
- Bronze ports, port and starboard
- Sliding hatch and washboard

MID AND SIDE DECKS
- Pad eyes, blocks and tackle for running backstays
- Bronze and teak cleats
- Bronze and lignum vitae bullseye fairleads
- Butterfly skylights over saloon and Galley/ WC
- Deck prisms port and starboard over Galley and WC

MAST POSITION
- Bronze upstand cleats/ pins port and starboard
- Metal pinrails near galvanised chainplates port and starboard

FOREDECK
- Raised forehatch with portlight
- Bowsprit bitts and other hardware

GROUND TACKLE
- 45 lb Galvanised CQR type anchor
- 20 m of 10 mm Galvanised anchor chain
- 30 m Warp

DOWN 6 x STEPS TO SOLE

AFT
- Quarter berth to port
- Stowage under
- Navigation area to starboard
- Nav displays, clock and barometer
- Semi bulkheads port and starboard with grab columns
- Deckhead lights port and starboard

SALOON
- Settees port and starboard
- Stowage under and outboard
- Deckhead lights port and starboard
- Engine box on raised sole
- 2 x Hinged hooks port and starboard
- Doors forward starboard (WC) and port (galley and forepeak)

WC COMPARTMENT
- Jabsco Parr manual sea toilet
- Inset sink unit outboard
- Half skylight in deckhead

GALLEY
- OXO 2 x burner gimballed gas hob
- Half skylight in deckhead

FOREPEAK
- Gear and sails stowage
- 2 x Deck prisms

RIG
Coniferous species spars
- Pole mast
- Single spreader set with deck lights
- Spiderband goodeneck with pins
- Boom
- Gaff
- Bowsprit
- Chain bobstay with dolphin striker
- Spinnaker pole
- Topsail spars
- Stainless steel standing rigging (believed 2017)
- Galavanised bottle screws
- Spectra running backstays

SAILS
(Details TBC)
- Mainsail with one reef (Hood)
- Jib headed topsail
- Jackyard topsail
- Staysail (Hood)
- Jib (Ratsey & Lapthorn)
- Jib topsail
- Asymmetric spinnaker

CANVASWORK
- Mainsail boom cover
- Covers for all hatches and companionway house

MECHANICAL
- Lombardini LDW 2204M 60 hp diesel
- 4 x Silent bloc engine mounts
- Hydraulic gearbox
- Stainless steel shaft
- 3-Bladed fixed propeller

ELECTRICAL
- 220 V system only to battery charger
- Tecsup Premium 12 V 15 A battery charger
- 2 x 180Ah Lead acid batteries for 12 DC
- Can be linked for engine starting
- Ship's fuse/ switch panel

TANKAGE
- Stainless steel 200 L fuel tank under cockpit
- PVC Portable water tanks (capacity TBC)

NAVIGATION
- C&P Steering compass
- Raymarine RC435i chart plotter
- Portable chart plotter
- Clock and barometer

COMMUNICATIONS
- Husiun Compact VHF Radio
- ICOM IC-M35 handheld VHF

- Battery operated navigation lights
- Whale gusher manual bilge pump
- Rule-matic 2000 12 V semi-submersible bilge pump
- Cockpit draining system (TBC)
- Liferaft (info TBC)
- 2 x Horseshoe lifebuoys
- Lifejackets (TBC)
- 2 x Rocket flares (TBC)
- Hand held flares (TBC)
- McMurdo 9S Smart Find EPIRB
- (battery is in service until 2025)

- Wood boarding ladder

Sailing : James Robinson Taylor
On board : Patrica Lascabannes