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35-515: USS Christabel (SP-162) was a civilian steam yacht that was built in Glasgow in 1893 for a Scottish industrialist. She had an American owner by 1910, served as a United States Navy patrol ship in the latter part of the First World War , and afterward was returned to US civilian service. The US Navy bought her in 1917, had her fitted out as a warship, and used her on patrol duty in

70-557: A "steam auxiliary", capable of covering long distances between coaling stations under her fully rigged sail area of 9200 square yards, but with enough fuel to steam for up to 20 days if necessary (she could carry 80 tons of coal). Their trip was made famous by a book written and published by his wife Annie Brassey - A Voyage in the Sunbeam, our Home on the Ocean for Eleven Months . Within a few years other yachts were built for owners with

105-625: A German U-boat. For this act, he was awarded the Medal of Honor. Officer of the Deck Lieutenant JG Howard Rutherford Shaw was awarded the Navy Cross for "promptly heading for the submarine with the intent to ram, with the result that it was possible to drop depth charges at the right time and place, damaging the submarine so severely that she was obliged to intern at Santander, Spain , for the remainder of

140-804: A good hard hitter was pretty successful". He was also, says S&B, a "crack" shot and a "mighty hunter" who acquired the name of the "British Nimrod". In the contemporary scorecards, he is generally shown as "T A Smith, Esq." whereas his father was usually recorded as "A Smith, Esq." From 1806 to 1816, Smith was Master of the Quorn Hunt in Leicestershire , then from 1816 to 1824 of the Burton hounds in Lincolnshire . He established his pack at Penton , near Andover , Hampshire, in 1826. In 1834 he bought many of Sir Thomas Burghley's hounds and in 1842

175-435: A low, smooth freeboard. Main propulsion usually came from one or two steam engines, later of compound type, or in even later, very large yachts, triple expansion or turbines . Steam yachts usually carried rigging for sails, originally as an auxiliary propulsion system, but later more for show and naval tradition. Private steam yachts were capable of long seagoing voyages, but their owners' needs and habits saw most stay near to

210-413: A similar sense of adventure, famously Lancashire Witch for Sir Thomas George Fermor-Hesketh, 7th Baronet and Wanderer for Charles Joseph Lambert. These sailing yachts, with steam auxiliary power, were more expensive to build and run, but gave the owners the freedom to roam the world without necessarily planning their routes via the network of coaling stations in existence at this time. In addition

245-406: Is a class of steam yacht in the luxury category. In 1876-77, British politician Thomas Brassey took his wife and children on a world cruise in their newly built yacht, the 532 ton Sunbeam . Brassey preferred sail as the primary source of motive power, but knew from years of experience the advantages of steam power, when wind and tide made progress difficult. Sunbeam was, therefore, designed as

280-509: Is closer to the original meaning of the word "yacht", coming from the Dutch term Jacht , describing a small, fast commercial vessel. The distinction between a commercial steam yacht and a coastal trading vessel is not a clear one, but the latter term usually implies a mainly cargo-carrying ship. Steam yachts were often run by packet companies operating regular, timetabled services between islands or coastal towns. Steam yachts were widely used in

315-635: The Quest are all examples of commercial vessels that went on to become steam yachts used during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration . It was common for expedition leaders to be members of a yacht club , so many of these ships were registered to a civilian club and flew a club burgee (and a blue ensign in the case of British steam yachts). Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance and Roald Amundsen's Fram are unusual cases of vessels being purpose-built as icebreaking private steam yachts. Endurance

350-724: The First World War , the SY Hildegarde was renamed as the Managem . On 15 January 1917 she was requisitioned by the Admiralty and armed with a 12 pdr naval gun. Notably she was stationed off Atlit in Israel and used to relay espionage messages from operatives onshore (and briefly used by the Jewish "Nili" espionage group). Thomas Assheton Smith II Thomas Assheton Smith (the younger) (2 August 1776 – 9 September 1858)

385-494: The North Atlantic . She served with honor as a section patrol craft , surviving an attack on a German U-boat . After the war she was briefly a training ship , before being decommissioned and sold in 1919. D and W Henderson built Christabel in its Meadowside shipyard in Glasgow , Scotland . She was yard number 370, and was launched on 10 August 1893. Her registered length was 150.0 ft (45.7 m), her beam

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420-561: The naval trawler was more suited to these kinds of tasks. Steam yachts often used the ship prefix SY , but some were alternatively described as screw schooner , if they carried schooner rig. A fine example of the screw schooner is the 125 year old British Amazon , built at Southampton in 1885 from designs by the renowned Dixon Kemp and still in use in the USA after crossing the Atlantic in 2009, although diesel-propelled since 1937. She

455-456: The whaling trade. The light, fast design of a steam yacht was ideal for chasing whales, and the lack of a large amount of cargo space did not matter as whaling produced few bulky products. Commercial steam yachts were rarely as ornate or luxurious as their private counterparts, with simpler, more rugged lines and usually a more practical sailing rig. Steam yachts used in the whaling trade often had reinforced hulls to allow them to operate amongst

490-613: The coast. Inland seas such as the Baltic and the Mediterranean were popular areas for using steam yachts. Statistics show that Clydeside was the premier building area for steam yachts in the United Kingdom: 43 shipbuilding yards on Clydeside built 190 steam yachts between 1830 and 1935. Scotts Shipbuilding & Engineering Co Ltd of Greenock Scotland built 23 steam yachts between 1876 and 1904. The auxiliary steam yacht

525-589: The entrepreneur Thomas Assheton Smith (II) (1776–1858), (his first of three Fire Queen s) by Robert Napier, Govan, Glasgow and launched on 27 July 1844, Napier Yard No 5, engine No 88. She was bought by the British Admiralty in July 1847 for £5,000 for use as a tender; there is an illustration (incorrectly captioned) of her in that role. She was sold on 4 August 1883 for £1,100 by the Admiralty to Castle

560-543: The first of what would become eight steam yachts , which were among the first vessels of their kind. Assheton Smith contributed to their design, in particular seeking an efficient hull design to maximise speed. On 29 October 1827, Smith married Matilda Webber (d. 1859) of Berkshire. They had no children. During his ownership of the Tedworth estate, the house was rebuilt in ornate classical style. Smith died at Vaynol Park , Bangor, Caernarvonshire on 9 September 1858 and

595-433: The ice of frozen waters. This meant that several whaling-yachts crossed the definition from commercial to private yacht in later life when they were bought for polar exploration work. Since these expeditions were, by and large, privately funded the ships used became, by definition, private steam yachts and many were registered with the 'SY' prefix used for such craft. The Aurora , Morning , Nimrod , Terra Nova and

630-743: The oldest steam yachts, and one of the few still surviving today, is the Kheideval Yacht, Mahroussa , which was built in 1865 and was maintained in seaworthy condition by the Egyptian government. The Hildegarde and Hiawatha were steam yachts chartered by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (United Kingdom) - Directorate of Fisheries, now known as the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) between 1912 and 1914 to carry out fishery investigations. Before

665-598: The remainder of the war Christabel served on escort and patrol duty off western France , and took part in at least two actions against German U-boats. One of these was the action of 21 May 1918 when she was credited with sinking a U-boat off Spain. However, later it was found that the U-boat was only damaged but had to be interned by Spain a few days later. After returning to the United States in December 1918, she

700-613: The seat until 1837. He was High Sheriff of Wiltshire in 1838. Smith was a hard hitting right-handed batsman and made 45 known appearances in first-class matches up to the 1820 season . His career spanned the Napoleonic Wars which had a detrimental effect on the game and so reduced his opportunities for playing. Smith played for the Gentlemen in the inaugural and second Gentlemen v Players matches in 1806. According to Scores & Biographies (S&B), Smith "being

735-401: The shipbreakers. Fire Queen was replaced by the Admiralty by the former Steam yacht Candace , launched on 23 September 1881 by Ramage & Ferguson, Leith, bought by the Admiralty in 1882 and then duly renamed Fire Queen . In the First World War vessels such as these and several requisitioned private yachts were used on anti- U-boat patrols and for minesweeping . It became clear that

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770-495: The steam yacht experience; one example was built by the fairground equipment engineer Frederick Savage. The term "steam yacht" encompasses vessels of several distinct uses, but of similar design. A luxury yacht in the modern sense is a vessel owned privately and used for pleasure or non-commercial purposes. Steam yachts of this type came to prominence from the 1840s to the early-20th century in Europe . The first British royal yacht

805-619: The war." Christabel was decommissioned 19 May 1919 and sold on 30 June to the Savannah Bar Pilots Association, of Savannah, Georgia . Steam yacht The English steamboat entrepreneur George Dodd (1783–1827) used the term "steam yacht" to describe the steamer Thames , ex Duke of Argyle . Her service on the river had first been advertised on 22 June 1815 as "Thames Steam Yacht", intended to emphasise how luxurious these vessels were. The first two private steam yachts known were: Thomas Assheton Smith II

840-750: The whole pack of the Duke of Grafton . He hunted his hounds four days a week and sometimes had two packs out on the same day. In 1830, after the death of his father, he moved his stable and kennels to Tedworth House , also in Hampshire. Assheton Smith spent summers at his Vaynol Park estate in North Wales, on the shore of the Menai Strait and close to the family's slate quarries at Dinorwic . He had several sailing yachts built, then in 1829 engaged Scottish engineer and shipbuilder Robert Napier to build

875-589: The yacht masters were not totally reliant on the quality of the steaming coal available to them, that could at times be questionable. When not in steam, the funnel on the auxiliary yacht would be lowered and the propeller feathered to reduce drag. Those of the second class of steam yacht were built for commercial use, but gained the 'yacht' title due to their size and design similarity with the private vessels and because they were not constructed to be mainly cargo- or passenger-carrying vessels, but as versatile, low- draft ships capable of working local coastal routes. This

910-711: Was Victoria & Albert of 1843. Nominally the first steam yacht in the United States was Cornelius Vanderbilt 's North Star , launched in 1854; however, this was actually a full-size steamship fitted out for the personal use of Vanderbilt and his family, and left no legacy on steam yacht design. The first true steam yachts known to have been built in the United States, Leonard Jerome ' s Clara Clarita and R. F. Loper ' s Wave , were completed in 1864. Steam yachts were commissioned by wealthy individuals and often heads of state as extravagant symbols of wealth and/or power. They were usually built with similar hull-lines to clipper ships , with an ornate bow structure and

945-515: Was Irving T. Bush . The US Navy bought Christabel from Bush on 30 April 1917, commissioned her at New York Navy Yard 31 May 1917 and assigned her to US Patrol Squadrons Operating in European Waters. She fitted out was a warship and placed in commission a month later. Her main armament was two heavy 3-inch (76 mm) guns. On 9 June 1917 she left New York City to cross the Atlantic, and early in July she reached Brest, France . For

980-602: Was 22.0 ft (6.7 m) and her depth was 12.5 ft (3.8 m). Her tonnages were 248  GRT and 103  NRT . She had a three-cylinder triple expansion steam engine that was rated at 53 NHP . Christabel ' s first owner was Arthur Kennard of the Falkirk Iron Works, who registered her in Glasgow. By 1910 her owner was Walton Ferguson and she was registered in New York . By 1917 her owner

1015-622: Was an English landowner and all-round sportsman who was notable for being one of the outstanding amateur cricketers of the early 19th century. He was a Tory politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1821 to 1837. He was also known for his pioneering work on the design of steam yachts in conjunction with the Scottish marine engineer Robert Napier. Smith was born in Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square, Westminster , London. He

1050-528: Was based at New London, Connecticut , and served with reserve anti-submarine squadrons as an anti-submarine training ship. As an officer on board the Christabel , Ensign Daniel Augustus Joseph Sullivan was awarded the Medal of Honor for "extraordinary heroism" during combat action on 21 May 1918. He exhibited "extraordinary heroism" in securing live depth charges that had come loose during combat with

1085-470: Was educated at Eton between 1783 and 1794, eventually playing for the school's cricket team. He went on to Christ Church, Oxford where he joined the Bullingdon Club and was a prominent member of its team in 1796. Smith was elected Member of Parliament representing Andover in 1821 and held the seat until 1831; at the 1832 general election he was elected MP for Caernarvonshire and held

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1120-798: Was excluded from the Royal Yacht Club for his advocacy of the steam yacht, eight of which he commissioned between 1830 and 1851, beginning with the Menai . In cooperation with the Scottish engineer Robert Napier , whose Govan, Glasgow yard built a number of them, Smith did much to improve the hull design of steam yachts. After 1856, when the Royal Yacht Squadron (the Club became Squadron in 1833) removed their edict, steam yacht building began to multiply. In England around 1901, some steam-powered fairground swings attempted to recreate

1155-522: Was originally built for conducting tourist cruises of the Arctic, bringing her close to the definition of a yacht in the modern sense. The Royal Navy used small numbers of steam yacht-type vessels from the Victorian era onwards to transport men and equipment in harbour, act as coastal escorts for larger ships and for training and exercises. A good example of this was the iron p.s. Fire Queen built for

1190-685: Was photographed on Columbus Day 2009 on a mooring near the Herreshoff Marine Museum in Bristol, Rhode Island . Aurora built by Alexander Stephen & Sons Ltd, Glasgow in 1876 (a former whaling-yacht turned Antarctic exploration vessel) is a notable example of the class, as are the Victorian era yachts used by European monarchs , such as the HMY Victoria and Albert III and the SMY Hohenzollern . One of

1225-599: Was the second son of Elizabeth ( née Wynn) Smith and Thomas Assheton Smith I (1752–1828), who made his fortune in the Welsh slate industry and was a noted patron of cricket in the early years of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) from the 1787 English cricket season . He had five sisters and an elder brother, John, who was expelled from the family after marrying a servant, paving the way for Thomas to become his father's heir. His younger brother, William, saw action at Trafalgar on HMS  Temeraire but drowned in 1806. Smith

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