When the Irish Sea Offshore Racing Association (ISORA) was in its rapid expansion stage in the 1970s, one of its most active clubs was Holyhead SC, the sea-going base for many from Merseyside, including leading Liverpool medics and Irish Sea offshore racing fanatics Dickie Richardson and Alan Stead.
Yet although at any ISORA conference, the two “demon doctors” could bring to the negotiation table their personal memberships of the Royal Mersey at Birkenhead across the river from Liverpool (founded in 1844) and the even older Royal Dee YC in Cheshire (founded 1815), they felt frustrated.
The late Dickie Richardson in 1972, when he was founding Chairman of the Irish Sea Offshore Racing Association, having co-ordinated its emergence from the Northwest Offshore Association.
AT A ROYAL DISADVANTAGE
For in dealing with the Irish royal yacht clubs, and the Royal Ocean Racing Club, they felt like second-division sailing men through the fact that although a Royal Holyhead Yacht Club had been founded in 1854 and acquired the royal warrant in 1858, it had somehow expired within twenty years. Thus they’d to fight their corner as the ordinary Holyhead Sailing Club, founded originally in 1905 as the Porth-y-Felin SC.
ORIGINAL ROYAL HOLYHEAD “JUST FADED AWAY”
Admittedly when back in Merseyside, both Richardson and Stead personally felt most at home at the notably friendly Tranmere Sailing Club. But they had no doubt that an ancient Royal warrant for Holyhead would be a useful negotiating aid in pushing support for their offshore programme development, and the improvement of Holyhead sailing generally. Yet when they and various officials looked into the idea in depth, it was found that all official documents crucial to the foundation and royal warrant of the Royal Holyhead Yacht Club seemed to have long since disappeared, with no at all mention of the club after 1875.
With its majestic new extra-long breakwater, it had been hoped in the mid-19th Century that Holyhead could support a royal yacht club
As it happens, the proliferation of Royal yacht clubs in the Merseyside/North Wales area in the 19th Century was remarkable, reflecting the fact that the mighty trading and passenger port city of Liverpool was, for two or three decades, the richest per capita city in the world. The Royal Welsh YC – now charmingly housed in rooms within the walls of Caernarvon Castle – came into being in 1847. But perhaps more crucially for any continuing life of the Royal Holyhead, the Royal Anglesey at Beaumaris on the more picturesque side of Anglesey set up shop in 1885, while claiming its earliest known origins went way back to 1802.
EXTRA-LONG BREAKWATER
Thus although Holyhead with its handsome new extra-long breakwater (1.7 miles long and built from 1848 onwards) seemed to have features in common with what was then Kingstown across in Ireland, Kingstown faced northeast from a sheltered weather shore, whereas the small and otherwise remote town of Holyhead faced west, exposed to the prevailing winds.
The Royal Anglesey Yacht Club’s Fife Class ODs racing off Beaumaris on the sheltered side of Anglesey against the impressive backdrop of Snowdonia. Photo: Ian Bradley
Even the fact that Holyhead’s location was sometimes used as a sort of mid-point venue to stage match races between each season’s hottest new boats from the Clyde and the Solent wasn’t enough to give the place a gloss of glamour. It took the more egalitarian outlook of the early 20th Century to find that what had come to be seen as a very utilitarian ferry port and harbour of refuge really did have potential as a recreational sailing centre. But at the time no-one thought of reviving the old Royal Holyhead, as it was assumed that all aspirations for such clubs were locally met by the Royal Anglesey and the Royal Welsh.
Today’s Holyhead Sailing Club has evolved from the Porth-y-Felin SC, founded in 1905
Holyhead in northwest Anglesey, Beaumaris on southeast coast
Yet since then, there have always been devotees – names not revealed for now - who felt that Holyhead sailing deserved the revival of its royal status, somewhat heatedly making the point that when they sailed across to supposedly republican Dun Laoghaire, they find themselves welcomed into the Royal Irish or the Royal St George Yacht Clubs, they know that the Royal Alfred YC is still somewhere quietly ticking away, and if they are driven into Dublin, they find themselves going past the premises of the Royal Dublin Society and on into stately streets and city squares where you can happen upon the Royal Irish Academy, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, the Royal Hibernian Academy, the Royal Institute of the Architects and Ireland, and enough other similarly august organisations that thrust a sort of republican royalty down the throats of any visitors from towns less royally furnished.
Cruiser-racing within the breakwater at Holyhead. Although there’s no doubting it’s primarily a ferry port, there’s plenty of room for everyone.
HEIGHT OF EXCITEMENT IN RAC SERVICE VAN?
“Back in Holyhead” fumed one, “we have the RNLI and the Royal British Legion, but that’s just not the same. And for sure we have Royal Air Force Valley just up the road, but somehow that doesn’t seem to count in the same way either. In fact, we’re so royalty-depleted that there’s real excitement when the RAC service van drives through the town. So we’ve been working for years behind the scenes and in various document searches to see if we can revive the Royal Holyhead Yacht Club just like your Royal Western of Ireland YC was revived across in Kilrush”.
A noble aspiration. And finally, there’s good news. The restoration of a very old semi-derelict house in an un-named location in North Wales has revealed a cache of documents which may validate the existence of the Royal Holyhead Yacht Club. It’s early days yet, but fifty years have passed since Dickie Richardson and Alan Stead first aired the idea. So we can wait a year or two until the stencils for Royal Holyhead YC can be applied to the transom, though the ensigns and burgees are ready for take-off.
