Royal South Australian Yacht Squadron origins in 1869 as a mooring place for the province's social establishment
The Isis, South Australia's largest privately-owned yacht, belonging to industrialist Samuel Perry, moored with other Royal South Australian Yacht Club craft at Birkenhead, Port Adelaide, in 1923. The Isis was sold to W.L. Buckland of the Royal Yacht Squadron, Melbourne, in 1932 and later wrecked in Port Philip Bay.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
The Royal South Australian Yacht Squadron began life as the South Australian Yacht Club in 1869, with its first race in January 1870. Four yachts – the Curlew, Isabella, White Squall and Express, measuring between 13 and 19 feet, took part in that event.
The yacht club became a home for South Australia’s social establishment members such as Henry Dutton, a St Peter’s College graduate from the pastoralist family, whose 43-metre steam yacht Adele, built for him by Hawthorn and Co. was one of the finest pleasure yachts in Australia.
Henry Rymill, club commodore and Dutton’s godson, went with Dutton for three months every year on the Adele that was registered with the Royal Yacht Squadron at Cowes. The social prestige of the club was confirmed by royal patronage from Queen Victoria and authorised to wear the blue ensign in 1890.
While it maintained clubrooms in Adelaide city, the club’s yachts moorings were on the Birkenhead side of the inner Port River, next to the future Birkenhead bridge. A measure of yachting’s profile in 1923 were the 30,000 spectators who jammed the Port Adelaide wharves to watch the Griffith Cup race, won by Arthur Rymill and E.S. Rymill in Tortoise II. Commodore Rymill arranged for a 2/- entry fee to watch.
Although under notice from the South Australian marine board from early in the 20th Century that its yachts would need to move from the crowded inner Port River at Birkenhead to Outer Harbor, the desolate tip of LeFevre Peninsula, the squadron, led by Arthur Rymill suddenly decided to make the move in 1923.
The move to Outer Harbor, at the top of LeFevre Peninsula, divided the squadron. It sold off its premises at Port Adelaide and Semaphore used for social gatherings. From 1935 to 1968, squadron members (who had to be British gentlemen) used licensed premises in a basement in Grenfell Street, Adelaide city, mainly as a place for city businessmen lunches. Women were admitted on one night a year. This meant many social members had limited interest in Outer Harbor and at least one squadron secretary rarely went to Outer Harbor.
The yacht squadron moved to Outer Harbor in the 1920s to an area with little more than a narrow sealed road through sandhills to the village of Largs. The marine board provided original dredging of the squadron’s yachts basin in 1923 but this had to be extended five years later with the cost – like most improvements it needed – by the squadron members and the pioneering efforts of those at Outer Harbour.
The squadron at Outer Harbor began in 1923-24 with an iron shed to shelter its dinghies and lockers, plus minimal toilet and changing areas and no social rooms. Improvements came from huge volunteer efforts by those committed to yachting.
The opening of Royal South Australian Yacht Squadron’s new mooring basin at Outer Harbor in the early 1950s had 100 power and sailing craft took part in the demonstration which accompanied the ceremony with some of the past establishment pomp. The wife of state governor Willoughby Norrie cut the ribbon at the entrance, watched by state government and harbours board representatives in the official party. Commodore H.J. Kemp declared the pool open from in front of the flag bedecked clubhouse and later took the salute aboard the flagship during the sail past. Rear Commodore H.W. Rymill led power boats in Sea Hawk and vice Commodore C.P. Haselgrove, aboard Neptune Island race winner Nerida, was in charge of sailing craft.
But the post World War II years brought notable changes at Outer Harbor, including and sailing craft supplanted motor boats as the dominant group. Racing expanded considerably, inshore on summer weekends and in an increasing long-distance offshore races.
Equally importantly, in squadron politics the pressure steadily mounted to concentrate on the actual pastime of yachting rather than to have much of the activities (and resources) dominated by members who used the city clubrooms. Those members committed to yachting gradually gained sway in the club post-World War II but it wasn’t until 1968 that commodore Alan Smith led a total commitment to Outer Harbor when the club closed its Grenfell Street, Adelaide city, rooms and transferred the liquor licence and the Tom Hardy Library.