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Date:31/05/2010 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mp/2010/05/31/stories/2010053150910601.htm
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MADRAS MISCELLANY Sailing into a new century S. MUTHIAH
Premises of Madras Sailing Club Celebrating its centenary this year is the Royal Madras Yacht Club. It's doing so, I'm glad to see, with a focus on sailing and not so much on entertainment. But it would have also been appropriate if it had done some looking back to mark the occasion. Meanwhile, let me do it for the Club briefly.The earliest records of sailing in Madras are in the 1850s, the popular venues being the Ennore backwaters and Red Hills, though the Adyar River and the Long Tank (Nandanam) — now no more — were also occasionally used. The Ennore backwaters were a popular weekend retreat for the sahibs, many of whom had cottages there. One who had a holiday home there was Edward, the second Lord Clive, Governor of Madras in the last years of the 18th and first years of the 19th Centuries. This house, like many others, kept changing hands, and when the Ennore Boat Club was formed in the early 1860s, the cottages here included Pottinger House, Douglas Castle, Thornhill House, Binny Lodge, Cox's Little Rocks and Dobbin's Bungalow. Pottinger's House was Governor Henry Pottinger's, but had been Edward Clive's; Pottinger preferred Ennore to Ooty to relax in.In 1867, the Madras Boat Club was formed and by the 1890s had settled on the banks of the Adyar. The club was formed at a meeting in the Strangers' Room of the Madras Club (then in what became Express Estate), where all other old Madras clubs focussing on an expatriate membership had also first met. The club, though more focussed on rowing, chose to call itself the Boat Club because it also fostered sailing activities in those early years.It was to be 1911 before the Madras Sailing Club was separately formed, with Sir Francis Spring, the ‘Father of the Madras Port', not only taking a leading role in the formation but also giving the club space in the harbour near where Springhaven Wharf was developed. Its first home was a victim of the Emden's shelling (see picture) and amongst the damage was shrapnel-caused holes in an old painting of a flotilla of the club's boats. It was still part of the club's historic possessions when I visited the club about five years ago. By then, it had a new clubhouse that had been inaugurated in 1987 — rather a contrast to the old in its modern-looks — but with traces of the past in its wood-embellished interiors.After acquiring its separate identity, the club not only spent more time training young yachtsmen, but it also began organising more regattas. The first major one was in 1924 when the Madras Sailing Club met the Royal Colombo Yacht Club. This remained an annual exchange between the two clubs till the ethnic conflict in the Island put an end to it. I'm not sure whether the security in Colombo Harbour has put paid to sailing in the Island, but if it hasn't, the centenary year of what became the Royal Madras Yacht Club might be a good time to hold the regatta again in Madras waters. Madras got the Royal prefix in 1926 from King George V; it's one of the few organisations in India that still retains this honorific.When Indian membership was inducted I'm not sure, but active Indian yachtsmen are likely to have become members of the club only after Independence. It was, however, 1966 before the club got its first Indian Commodore (President), L.M. Krishnan, who was the first member of the club to win a national title, and that was at the first Yachting Association of India championships that were held in 1960. Since then, young members of the club have been in the forefront of Indian sailing, even if they have to compete with fulltime sailors from the Services.© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu | |
