The depth shall be the distance between the top of the covering board and the bottom of the keel at the middle point of the length. The product of the length, the breadth, and the depth, divided by 200, shall be taken as the tonnage of the yacht. But the influence of this rule was not far-reaching, and confined to the New Thames Club, and (in a slightly modified form) to the Queenstown Model Yacht Club; few yachts were built under it, and these were not conspicuously successful. Nor was the reason of this very far to seek. The tax on depth induced builders to cut down freeboard, and, so far as might be, draft, while to make up for this latter deficiency the amidships draft was carried well forward and aft, and only little rake given to the post, with the result that the few boats built under this rule carried an extremely awkward sail-plan, and were abnormally slow in stays. The great general effect of the 94, or Thames Rule, has been described; but among its minor influences may be mentioned the inducement to have the utmost water-line length on a given deck or measurement length. One obvious manner of attaining this was by keeping the sternpost upright or nearly so; while the writer, in a little cutter called the 'Peg Woffington,' built for himself in 1871, took a farther advantage of the rule by putting a ram bow on her, thus getting the water-line even longer than the measurement on deck. An additional interest attaches to this yacht as being the earliest sailing yacht, so far as I have been able to ascertain, which had all her ballast outside. [Illustration: Dog-legged sternpost.] In 1873 Mr. James Reid, of Port Glasgow, just then beginning to make his mark as a yacht designer, devised what was called the 'dog-legged' sternpost, fitting one in the 10-tonner 'Merle.' This, as will be seen from the sketch, retained all the advantages of a raked sternpost, and yet gave as long a water-line length as the length on deck; but the device had but a short life, as in the spring of 1877 the Yacht Racing Association, which had been formed the previous year, decreed that the length should be measured to the fore side of the rudder stock. This regulation, made so late in the building season, somewhat unjustly threw out three yachts built under the existing rule. Unfortunately, a policy of procrastination seems to have haunted the Yacht Racing Association since its inception, as in most instances where the building rules have been changed, these changes have been decided on so close to the coming season that builders have been unfairly pushed in the designing and getting ready new vessels. I would venture to suggest to that body, and this in the interests of yacht-owners quite as much as of builders, that no rule affecting the construction of racing yachts should be considered after the end of October. [Illustration: Immersed counter of 'Quiraing,' 1877.]