“Moderate in Every Way”
‘We who adventure on the sea, however humbly, cannot but feel that we are more fortunate than ordinary people, and that we have something which we could not tell nor they understand.’
So said Claud Alley Worth (1869–1936), the British ophthalmologist, inventor of the Worth 4 dot test (still used today) and Worth's Ambyloscope, a pioneer in the orthoptic treatment of the squint, a master mariner, yacht designer and an established author on the subjects of ophthalmology and sailing.
I have spent a few minutes trying to think of well known people who have excelled in two disparate careers simultaneously, and I’m struggling. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known under his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll) was an Oxford mathematician and philosopher, while writing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Beyond the looking Glass. Perhaps we could list Ronald Reagan (acting and politics) and Niki Lauda (Car Racing and the Airline Industry), but their careers were more consecutive than simultaneous. Nobody I can think of, seems to trump the dual achievements of Claud Worth.
If you don’t know of Worth’s design work and perhaps are a little skeptical of his place in the pantheon of influential yacht designers, here is a quote from the master himself, Olin Stephens.
“… I tried to stick to the basics of clean, balanced lines, the avoidance of extremes in displacement and beam, and providing low wetted area to the degree permitted by adequate lateral plane. In overall geometry and keel profile I looked for guidance to the study I had made of TERNS III and IV, both designed by the British writer on deepwater cruising, Claud Worth.
“I have mentioned the influence of Claud Worth, the English doctor, writer, and designer, whose TERN IV I greatly admired. Those who know Worth’s boat and my BRILLIANT design may see this inspiration; both are shaped and built not as racing yachts but as sea boats intended to survive the worst weather and to make good passages.”(On the design of BRILLIANT in ‘All This and Sailing Too’, 1999)
(Click to enlarge)
So when one on Worth’s most important vessels LUCKY LADY (ex- TERN IV) crops up in our part of the world FOR SALE, the its worth taking note. Here is some of her history thanks to Iain McAllister.
Dr Claud Worth had been more than happy with his 53 ft cutter TERN III, built at Whitstable in 1914. Self-designed (with a level of assistance by Albert Strange still debated between Strange groupies and Worth disciples), with input from decades of such studious research into the way of a cruising yacht, by observation and the logging of thousands of seagoing miles, that one wonders how he had time to become equally prominent and influential in his day job as a Harley Street ophthalmologist.
By 1922 Worth’s wife Janet desired more comfort and space. Comfort at sea being Royal Cruising Club Vice-Commodore Claud Worth’s watchword, and, as one of his friends had once quipped, “One good TERN deserves another”, he spent a year working from 5 to 8 in the morning preparing the drawings and specifications of a larger TERN III with refinements from lessons learned. Although the structural specifications were almost identical, he took the opportunity to pocket the all sawn and doubled frames into the wood keel and bolt them through from side to side. And her floors were of galvanised mild steel rather than TERN III’s oak crooks.
The £2,750 build contract went to Philip & Son of Dartmouth who, in tandem, built a second vessel to the design: GRACIE III (now ALZAVOLA). Whilst this might have been a feather in Worth’s cap, the result was significantly late delivery of TERN IV: in the autumn of 1924 instead of the spring. Apparently GRACIE III’s owner, Yorkshire wool mill owner and merchant Walter Ramsay Kay, could shout louder, and the Devon yard hadn’t bargained on Worth being a stickler for rigid adherence to his structural and materials specifications.
So TERN IV’s highly successful shakedown cruise wasn’t until May 1925 from Cowes to Vigo, NW Spain, and back to Falmouth. Worth concluded: “TERN IV runs as steadily and safely and is as easy a sea-boat as TERN III; one could give her no higher praise than that… She is wonderfully handy and easily worked.”
A summer 1926 ‘Cruise to Atlantis’ was to be Worth’s last as ill heath caught up with him, but what an ambitious and thrilling swansong. 11 days out from Falmouth to the Azores, and on the return only 7 days, 13 hours, 40 minutes from Horta to the Lizard, running before a gale that saw TERN IV reeling off five consecutive 200-mile days.
Dorothy Una Ratcliffe at the helm of TERN IV
In second ownership by a good friend of the Worths, Dorothy Una Ratcliffe - sailor and adventurer, fabulously wealthy socialite, writer, poet, traveller, collector - voyaging continued to the manner born. From 1928 to 1937, as SEA SWALLOW, she visited the Channel Islands, northern France, Ireland, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Finland. The King’s Sailing Master, Douglas Dixon, shipped aboard for the 1932 passage to the Baltic. Impressions from these voyages in the form of prose, poetry, and even plays appeared in Dorothy Una Ratcliffe’s delightful 1937 book 'Swallow of the Sea'.
Then in 1937, in the ownership of the now late Claud Worth’s nephew, Thomas, she became TERN IV (OF BAR) again, with a home mooring on the Helford River, Cornwall, near Claud and Janet Worth’s retiral place, Bar, Mawnan Smith. The greater Falmouth area would be TERN IV’s home into the late 1960s, including riding out the Second World War in a mud berth, and, post-war, moored at St. Mawes as a bermudan yawl. No tales of great adventure emanate from this period; we presume she was loved and cared for, and her teak hull and copper bottom kept her sweet.
It would be retired merchant mariner, educator in navigation, and adventurer under sail, Roger Fothergill and his wife Joy who would lead TERN IV back to deep and blue water adventure. At some point after their 1967 purchase, she crossed the Atlantic to begin a new life of Caribbean charter with Joy as mate and chef. Dissatisfied with the bermudan rig, in around 1970 she re-crossed the Atlantic to be re-rigged in England as a gaff cutter with a sailing barge-like standing gaff and brailing mainsail. It was an arrangement that really worked for short-handed sailing, that looked completely normal under sail, but strange at rest. After TERN IV’s third Atlantic crossing in 1971, she resumed her Caribbean career with the Fothergills for a further 10 years.
After brief ownership from 1981 by Englishman Peter Baker, in 1984 TERN IV again crossed the Atlantic west to east into Portuguese ownership. Five years on she was seen and purchased, “languishing on a mooring off Faro in the Algarve… in a sorry state but sound and with a new suit of sails more or less seaworthy”, by Charles Watson, looking to start a classic charter business based in the southwest of England. By spring 1990 she was in refit at Old Mill Creek, Dartmouth by Pete Nash and John Holden, including refastening with well over 2000 silicon bronze screws, drawing of keelbolts with only one replaced, the consequential garboard replacement, and, apart from the mainmast, all new spars to give TERN IV a conventional gaff yawl rig.
By the summer of 1990 she was filming as Jack Rolfe’s “XANADU” for the BBC’s yachting soap ‘Howard’s Way’. Charles Watson and TERN IV worked together in the charter business for 11 years. When Watson settled on Madeira he decided to sell, and in 2001 her life in present ownership began in Cornwall and is ongoing in Southeast Asia where she has been extensively maintained and refitted.
LUCKY LADY / TERN IV is now for sale in Phuket, Thailand. By all reports she is in great condition, with perhaps the only optional work worth considering, being an improvement of her rig. TERN IV was originally a yawl for aesthetics and steadying at anchor, with a tiny mizzen. The present owners unstepped the mizzen and have sailed her as gaff cutter with a small gaff main. The boat previously set a fidded topmast, and this could be reinstated.
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