Before saying farewell to the 'Alouette,' it is as well to remember
that, notwithstanding her small amount of beam, she was a grand
sea-boat. On one occasion she sailed from Southampton to Algiers and
made a very good passage, considering that she had to face some very
heavy weather on her journey. It has become the custom to run down the
seaworthiness of the yachts built under the old rule, but the number
of examples that could be produced, if time and space permitted, of
what the old 5-tonner would go through, and that at her ease and
without any fuss, would more than astonish many who now, in the faith
they bestow on the boat with three beams to her length, forget the
comfort and safety in which they were carried about by the old boats
of five to six beams to their length. The 'Alouette' was wrecked at
Algiers in 1890. She broke adrift from her moorings during a gale of
wind, and was smashed up into matchwood. Nothing was saved from her.
The season of 1876 was one especially to be remembered among those
interested in the now established 5-ton class, as it witnessed the
advent of three grand additions to the greatly increased fleet sailing
in that class. Each yacht was from the well-thought-out drawing of a
master-hand, and each was the representative of the three several
schools of yacht-design, the 'Freda' being the work of the late Mr.
Dan Hatcher of Belvidere, Northam, near Southampton; the 'Camellia'
the offspring of Mr. William Fife, jun., of Fairlie, on the Clyde;
while the 'Vril' was built from the design of Mr. G. L. Watson, of
Glasgow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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