Footnotes

Provenance
With the Walker Galleries, Harrogate, no. 2919.
Private collection, UK (purchased from the above on 21 March 2006).

Designed and built by Camper & Nicholson at Gosport in 1928, Astra was a beautiful Bermudian-rigged composite cutter of 91½ tons gross (83 net) and measured 115 feet in length with a 20 foot beam. Originally built for Sir A. Mortimer Singer, the naturalised British son of the inventor of the sewing machine, she was owned for most of the 1930s by Mr. Hugh Paul who enjoyed much success with her during the so-called 'golden years' before the death of King George V after the 1935 season.

Candida, rated at '23 metres', was also designed by Charles Nicholson and built by Camper & Nicholson at Gosport for Mr. H.A. Andreae, the wealthy merchant banker, in 1929. A magnificent Bermudian-rigged cutter of 95½ tons gross (174 Thames), she measured 117 feet in length overall with a 20½ foot beam and was completed principally as a response to a slight change in the International Rules in 1928. A highly successful boat, she too was a frequent sight at Cowes during the early 1930s although towards the middle of that decade, she was re-rigged as a ketch, fitted with an oil engine and converted for cruising. By 1939 she had been re-rigged again, this time as a yawl, and renamed Norlanda, the name she still sported after the Second World War.

Velsheda, another contemporary thoroughbred from the same yard and designer, was built for Mr. W.L. Stephenson, the Chairman of Woolworth's (U.K.) in 1933. Extremely fast, she was one of the legendary J-class yachts and even beat the King's Britannia on one celebrated occasion. Apart from her glittering career in the 1930s, during which she won many trophies for her owner, she now shares the distinction – along with Shamrock V and Endeavour I – of being one of the three remaining J-class boats which have survived until the present day and she is still racing competitively.