Lot 65: David Brackman , 1932-2008 Britannia Racing in the Clyde oil on canvas

signed and dated l.l.: DAVID BRACKMAN 02 oil on canvas

76 by 112cm., 30 by 44in.

Commissioned by the present owner in 2002.

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN
I remember a blustering day off the Great Nore when a venerbale sea-ancient and I, side by side, watched Britannia in the 'Big Class' around the Mouse-OUze Nore Thames Course. The storm scud was flying over the estuary, elusive spume hissed across short broken golden water, the Royal racing flag strained as its halyard, streaming out stiff as a board in a hardening wind. It was Britannia's day - her chosen weather.
-Yachting writer John Irving

The present work shows Britannia (K1) racing at her brithplace; she was launched in 1893 having been built at the MacGregor yard at the Meadowside works in Partick by David and William Henderson for Queen Victoria's son Edward, Prince of Wales. She was designed by George Lennox Watson, arguably the most successful designer of the age. She was built, so the story goes, as competition for the Earl of Dunraven's America's Cup yacht Valkyrie II. The future King Edward VII is quoted as saying,

"Look you here, Dunraven, if you say you set on this American adventure of yours, I've a good mind to build something that will give your ship a chance to try herself before you sail away."

Watson was a visionary designer; in a lecture at the Glasgow Exhibition of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering he declared,
"We have not exhausted the possibilities of form yet, and when we do arrive at perfection of shape we can set-to then and look out for better material. The frames and beams, then, of my ideal ship shall be of aluminium, the plating below the waterline of manganese bronze and topsides of aluminium while I think it will be well to deck her, too, with that lightest of metals as good yellow pine will soon be seen only in museums."

The result was undoubtedly one of the most elegant, graceful and successful yachts ever to set sail. Made of American elm and pine pinch on steel frames, she measured 121.5 feet long, had a 23.3 foot beam with a displacement of 154 tons and an original canvas spread of some 10000 square feet. Between 1893 and 1935 she won 231 races from 635 starts. She was at her best in heavy airs, and with the forward bouyancy of Watson's carefully designed bow, she skimmed over, rather than ploughed through, the waves. One contemporary commentator stated,
"a better balanced and better built vessel never crossed the line".