A substantial yacht’s tiller from the schooner Petrel R.Y.S., circa 1852

88 A substantial yacht's tiller from the schooner Petrel R.Y.S., circa 1852

Length: 107in (272cm.)

This mahogany tiller has a square section rudder head with three inset brass S-shaped banners flanked by a carved castle roundel, the top banner inscribed ‘Petrel R.Y.S.’. The shaft is carved throughout with finely observed ropework and terminates in a brass cuff and Turk's head knot. English, circa 1852. In the long and glamorous history of the Royal Yacht Squadron, there were several yachts named Petrel, but only one whose size would require a tiller as large and handsome as this example. Designed and built by George & Thomas Inman Bros. at Lymington in 1852, this Petrel was a big schooner registered at 110 tons gross (57 net) and measuring 70 feet in length. She was owned by R.Y.S. member Philip Perceval from 1858 to 1866 and then again from 1867 to 1869. (Incidentally, his son, who became Sir Philip Hunloke, was generally regarded as one of the 20th century’s greatest helmsman; he won a bronze medal for Great Britain at the 1908 Olympics, was King George V’s Sailing Master on Royal Yacht Britannia from 1920 and commodore of the R. Y. S. from 1943 until 1947.) Petrel was extended to 84 feet in 1866. Her next owner, Lord Richard Grosvenor of 76 Brook Street, Mayfair. Despite being elected to the R. Y.S., Cowes, in May 1870, it would seem he kept Petrel primarily for cruising from Dartmouth, as there is no record of her taking part in any racing activity.

Lord Richard de Aquila Grosvenor, 1st Baron

Stalbridge (1837 – 1912), was the second surviving son of Richard Grosvenor, 2nd Marquess of Westminster, educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge and, during an adventurous youth, toured the western United States and was present at the sack of the Summer Palace in Peking in 1860. Elected a Liberal M.P. in 1861, he became a Privy Counsellor in 1872 and was made Vice-Chamberlain of the Royal Household by Mr. Gladstone, a post he held until the government fell in 1874. Back in office in 1880, he served as Chief Whip until 1885, but then quarrelled with Gladstone

over Irish Home Rule and resigned his seat the next year. After standing down from Parliament in 1886, he was created Baron Stalbridge and became leader of the Liberal Unionists in the House of Lords. He became a director of the London & North Western Railway in 1870 and promoted its business so energetically that he became its Chairman in 1891; he was also an early exponent of Channel [Railway] Tunnel. He was twice married and died in his London home in May 1912, a little over a year after his second wife.

Petrel was finally bought by George Marvin of West Cowes at the end of the 1892 Season. After flying Marvin’s colours for barely a year, however, she was broken up in 1894, possibly deemed not worth refitting due to her age.