The original idea of the club would seem to have been merely an association of those yacht-owners who frequented Cowes during the summer, and it was to be maintained by a couple of annual meetings—one in the spring at the Thatched House, the other at a dinner at the hotel at East Cowes. There was at first no club-house, and the subscription was only two guineas. The qualification for any future candidate was the possession of a yacht of a certain tonnage, the payment of an entrance fee of three guineas, and the occupation of such a social position as should commend him to the members of the club, who would consider the matter at a general meeting. The original title was the Yacht Club, and the rules relating to yachting were few and simple. Every member, upon payment of his three guineas to the secretary and treasurer, was entitled to two copies of the signal-book, “and will be expected to provide himself with a set of flags according to the regulations contained therein.” That same signal-book was the subject of a great deal of anxious consideration during the next few years. The club paid Mr. Finlaison £45 for printing the first copies, which they soon found to be based upon a wrong system, and appointed a committee to consider the matter, who called in “the well-known skill and experience of Sir Home Popham, K.C.B.,” to assist them in devising a new set. A few years later these also were found wanting “as clumsy and inconvenient,” by reason of the number of flags employed, when the Yacht Club adopted the code “composed by Mr. Brownrigg, midshipman of H.M.S. _Glasgow_, it being thought that two flags, two pennants, and an ensign are all that can be required.” Members were requested to register the name, rig, tonnage, and port of registry, of their vessels with the secretary, and the club adopted as a distinguishing ensign “a white flag with the Union in the corner, with a plain white burgee at the masthead.” Lord Uxbridge, afterwards the first Marquis of Anglesey, of Waterloo fame, was one of the original founders of the club. He was very proud of the whiteness of the decks of his famous cutter, the _Pearl_, and when he gave a passage to Lord Adolphus FitzClarence, who wore carefully varnished boots which left marks on the deck after a shower, he told off one of his hands to follow the offender with a swab and remove the mark of each footstep. The first Commodore of the club was the Hon. Charles Pelham, so popular in later years as Lord Yarborough, and as the owner of the two famous yachts called the _Falcon_. Lord Yarborough’s memory was so revered among his club-mates that when his son came up for election, nearly half a century later, all the formalities of the ballot were dispensed with, and he was elected with acclamation.