There's a time in the late evening on Mediterranean waterfronts when sensible people have secured their tables for dinner and comfortably taken them up, but dedicated boatnuts of classic enthusiasms will wander the waterfront with increasingly ample space to see what gems of sailing history they might be contemplating.
Recently a group of Galwegians, with maritime addict Pierce Purcell Senr in their midst, were doubling the Valetta waterfront in Malta and struck pure gold. Not always easy - the problem is that with the purest classics, there's no vulgar display of the yacht's name. On the contrary, it will be under the elegant counter, and the more classic the yacht, the more hidden and discreetly small its name will be.
ST TROPEZ NEAR MISS
Thus in the late Spring of 2001, while wandering the St Tropez waterfront as one does, I almost fell in while trying to discern the name of Hallowe'en under the unmistakably Fife counter of the ultra-classic 70ft Bermuda cutter that took line honours in the 1926 Fastnet Race. This was before the Royal Irish YC syndicate had taken her over, and I best knew her in her mid-life existence as Walter J Wheeler's yawl Cotton Blossom IV. But either way, she was something special.
Hallowe'en during the 1950s as Cotton Blossom IV. Owner Walter J Wheeler had a workshop of professional size and standards, and with design input from Rod Stephens, he made the 1926 Fife-designed cutter Hallowe'en into a very American-looking yawl
Hallowe'en back to being Hallowe'en under Royal Irish YC ownership, and restored to cutter rig. Photo: W M Nixon
So too was the 53 ton 78ft LOA ketch Pierce Purcell quickly noticed in Valetta. Her name of Adria was not too difficult to spot, but the inscribed date of 1934 obviously suggested extra significance. Adria was originally built as a schooner in 1933 by the renowned yard of Abeking & Rasmussen in Hamburg, to the designs of Berlin-based naval architect Artur Tiller.
The first glimpse of Adria in Valetta. Photo: Pierce Purcell Senr.
Adria's counter stern. Why would it be thought a helpful idea to emphasise the date? Photo: Pierce Purcell Senr.
JOSEPH GOEBBELS ENTERS THE STORY
Her first owner was Hitler's especially evil henchman Joseph Goebbels, who got there first on fellow sailing enthusiasts in Hitler's clique by naming the new yacht Swastika, the symbol of Nazism.
Goebbels hadn't wasted time, as the Nazis had only taken full power in 1933. But with Artur Tilller re-located from northern Germany to Berlin in 1920, he had ready access to the leading German yacht designer of the day, and Tiller in turn was on the inside track in dealing with Abeking & Rasmussen.
It takes a bit of swallowing, and then some, to acknowledge that the top villains of Nazi Germany had a taste for sailing. Thus Reichmarschall Hermann Goering - a much-decorated aerial warfare ace in World War I, and a complete Hitler-supporting monster by World War II - had a good eye for a decent-looking yacht, and was an above-average helmsman.
NAZIS ON STRANGFORD LOUGH
As for Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler's Foreign Minister, he had some sailing experience. When he was in London he spent much time in the elevated circles of the politically-powerful Londonderry set of movers and shakers around the Marquess & Marchioness of Londonderry, who incidentally pronounced it as London-dree, thereby almost obliterating the place's ancient Irish name.
Herself invited Ribbentrop to spend a summer weekend in 1936 at Mountstewart, their place on Strangford Lough. They had two River Class yachts – His and Hers - moored nearby. There was a class race on the Saturday, and the German went into it crewing for herself on Uladh. Ribbentropp knew enough about sailing to know that on every beat, Himself was determinedly trying to T-bone Her Ladyship's boat as a mark of disapproval of her guest. But fortunately he didn't succeed, and World War II was staved off until 1939.
The Alfred Mylne-designed River Class in Strangford Lough. No 10 (Uladh) was the boat in which Hitler's Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop felt in danger. When owner Lady Londonderry sold the boat in 1954, the class said she'd broken the rules, both for price ceiling and vetting of the new owner. Her Ladyship replied that as she'd had the boat built in 1923 and the class rules for the River Class had been drawn up in 1921-22 before she was in any way involved, the rules didn't apply to her. In due course, the class accepted the new owner. Photo: W M Nixon
PEOPLE'S BOATS?
Meanwhile back in Germany, Goering's enthusiasm for sailing was such that he wanted the sport to be readily available to all servicemen and the more deserving (in Nazi eyes) members of the public, and Abeking & Rasmussen led to the way in series producing the cruiser-racer class of 50 Square Metre yachts.
In the 1930s, Abeking & Rasmussen series-built these 50 Square Metre yachts to Henry Rasmussen's designs for military and public ownership. Post-World War II, they brought the same expertise to building the Raymond Hunt-designed Concordia yawls for the American market.
HENRY GRUBER AND NORDWIND
Several of the larger Kriegsmarine yachts were to the designs of Henry Gruber, recent returned home to Germany from serving his time with the Sparkman & Stephens yacht design office in New York, and readily joining the Nazi Party in order to ensure a steady stream of quality work, including the much-admired 88ft yawl Nordwind.
She took line honours in the 1939 Fastnet Race with a record that held out until 1963 when the 90ft Gitana IV edged it, and then again in 1971 when (on a slightly different but comparable course) Ted Turner scorched round The Rock with the 12 Metre American Eagle to make a new record.
Henry Gruber's most famous design, the 88ft Fastnet Race Course Record Holder Nordwind of 1939, continues to sail in style
Nordwind's Fastnet Record in process of being broken. Jack McKeown's S&S 34 Korsar skippered by John Bourke (RStGYC) in the early stages of the 1971 Fastnet Race, with Ted Turner's American Eagle thundering through, on her way to line honours and a new Fastnet Record. Photo: W M Nixon
GESTAPO UNIFORMS
Back in 1939, however, all was far from sweetness and light in Plymouth at the Fastnet Race's conclusion, with war clearly only a matter of days away. The black mood was in no way lessened by the full crew of Nordwind turning up at the post-race dinner to accept the line honours prize, for as top German international athletes they were fully kitted out in scary Hugo Boss-designed Gestapo-type dress uniforms in military syle, and the Nazi salute was much in evidence.
Thus after World War II the victorious allies sought reparations from the Germans, including the many Nazi-controlled yachts. But it's said that members of the armed forces who happened to be amateur sailors couldn't be bothered waiting for officialdom and its Windfall Scheme, and liberated the 50 Square Metres and others on private enterprise business.
Army Padres and Medics apparently were pace-setters in the perilous business of sailing these fine yachts back home unaccompanied through the minefields of the North Sea. But larger craft like Nordwind, which had only just managed to get back to Germany in 1939 after the Fastnet before war totally clamped down, had to go through official channels.
SWASTIKA LITTLE USED
The irony of it all is that Joseph Goebbels' schooner Swastika, which had led to way in showing how to quickly prove the top Nazis with the real yachting style, had been little used. Her crazed owner consumed nearly all his energies and time with developing his off-the-wall theories, and delivering hundreds of speeches lasting many hours to thousands of people.
The schooner Swastika was impounded before hostilities had officially ceased, and then eventually re-emerged as Adria II, sailing in the Mediterranean. She has been through two name changes since, but has now reverted to Adria, though it's unlikely she'll go all the way and ever be Swastika again.
Born again. Adria emerging from the shed at La Ciotat after her restoration in 2013
However, she was changed to a ketch in 1957, and then in 2013 was restored – though still as a ketch - at La Ciotat close east of Marseille, with the fact that the project was completed in just nine months speaking volumes for Abeking & Rasmussen's quality of workmanship back in 1933-34.
THE STORY OF ARTUR TILLER
The undeniable talent of Henry Gruber as a yacht designer tends to overshadow other skilled German naval architects who were at their peak in the 20th Century, but the story of Artur Tiller, designer of Swastika/Adria, deserves an airing, particularly as at one stage he was making a new life in Argentina. This suggests a question within the story, but we don't have the answer to it yet, and publish the official version translated literally from German without further comment:
ARTUR TILLER was one of the most famous German naval architects of his time. He was born 1884 in Anklam (northern Germany) and after many years of service as chief engineer at the Heidtmann Boatwharf in Hamburg, and Engelbrecht (Naglo) in Zeuthen, he established his own yacht design business in Berlin in 1920. He became in 1924 a member of the Berliner Segler-Club (BSC), and many of his designs at that time have been realized at Buchholz wharf (located on the ground of the BSC).
He has designed yachts of all types, mostly cruising yachts but also racing yachts, dinghies, sailing canoes and many powerboats of all seizes. His biggest design was a 80m LWL schoolship for the government of Argentina. In Argentina he resided several years.
Man of some mystery. Leading German yacht designer Artur Tiller – "In Argentina he resided several years".
Artur Tiller was also author of many well known books and manuals on yacht design and boatbuilding, like the famous books "Yachtbau", "Handbuch des Segelsports" and "Kanubau und Segeln" as well as many articles in the german sailing magazine "Die Yacht".
His lectures on the Schiffbautechnischen Gesellschaft Berlin e.g. "35 Jahre deutscher Segeljachtbau" are excellent, while his designs of many model sailing yachts are also famous. Artur Tiller died in Berlin in 1957 at age 73, leaving us around 300 most beautiful yacht-designs.
Sailing sleuth. Galway's Pierce Purcell was supposedly retiring from the marine business and everything to do with it some years ago, but to date he has had more farewell tours than Frank Sinatra. Photo: W M Nixon
