Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
also driven, when necessary, by a steam-powered screw propeller.
She was designed by St Clare Byrne for Thomas Brassey, Liberal MP
for Hastings. This keen amateur yachtsman was the heir of railway
pioneer Thomas Brassey senior, who amassed a large fortune from
constructing lines in four continents and eventually worked himself
to death in 1870.
The younger Thomas was thirty-six when he came into his in-
heritance and had already decided to devote himself to matters
maritime. The sea was his passion. In parliament he specialised in
legislation concerning the royal and merchant navies, currently un-
dergoing such immense changes. He had inherited his father's pas-
sion for hard work; his biographers described him as 'a rich man of
pamphlets and articles poured from his pen, culminating in the five
volume
British Navy,
published 1882-3. He became first civil lord of
the Admiralty in 1880. He attracted honours and titles and at the
time of his death in 1918 he was first Earl Brassey of Bulkeley and
Viscount Hythe.
He exemplified the Victorian 'work hard, play hard' ideal, for he
followed his hobby of yachting with as much enthusiasm as he de-
voted to his chosen profession. As soon as he had graduated at Ox-
ford he was elected to the Royal Yacht Squadron, the sailing world's
eólite corps. He later became the first private yachtsman to sit the
Board of Trade examination and be granted a master's ticket. And
in 1876-7 he notched up another first when he completed a voyage
round the world in
Sunbeam
.
Just how and when the idea occurred we do not know. Was
Sun-
beam
designed with a round the world voyage in mind? Or did Bras-
sey suddenly decide that she was an ideal craft for the first ever
circumnavigation for pleasure? The owner himself insisted that his
wife was the prime mover in the venture: 'The voyage would not
have been undertaken, and assuredly it would never have been com-
