Eastbayri.com

George M. Sylvia has been a sailor since he was a kid and has worked for the daily newspaper in Providence for many years. Now he has combined these talents in writing a 350-page book titled “Boat House on the Shore.” The “boat house” is the Bristol Yacht Club.

The book was recently distributed to the club’s 325 members and is now on sale to the public. Not only does it trace the colorful ups and downs of the club through its 135-year existence, but it brings into play many pieces of nautical life on the bay long forgotten.

For example, few realize that a group of six Brown University students lit the spark that set the club in motion in 1877 as the Neptune Boat Club. The students’ initial interest was coming together in a religious experience at the former Trinity Church in Bristol. Five generations and several club houses and hurricanes later, the institution today is regarded as one of the best in New England.

The movers and shakers in the club’s early days — the Herreshoffs, Rockwells, Nicholsons, Haffenreffers, DeWolfs, Ingrahams, Van Wickles, Trotters, Wardwells and many others — are given their due in Mr. Sylvia’s book. By 1897 they had erected a large clubhouse on the east side of Bristol Harbor designed by Wallis E. Howe and were operating a busy social and racing schedule.

The new clubhouse was located on the pier of Connery’s Wharf at the foot of Constitution Street. It was a great step forward, but it had its limits — an exposed anchorage and the steady expansion of the neighboring textile mill.

A big plus for the club was its draw among enthusiastic racing sailors from around the Bay. The Bristol Regatta was always a well-run, popular workout and easily accessible from all points on the bay. It usually drew a record number of entries.

The impact made by “Blithewold” creator Augustus Van Wickle on the boating scene in Bristol is well-described by Mr. Sylvia. Van Wickle served as commodore of the club in its early days and brought with him many of the summer colonists of Bristol Ferry and their yachts, changing the tenor of life from the young men’s rowing club into the realm of a yachting organization. As World War I and the Great Depression came along, the social scene changed and the club’s membership reduced, but the die had been cast for a first-class club in the center of Narragansett Bay.

Succeeding club officers struggled with keeping the club alive on the Thames Street waterfront, where competing forces often prevailed. Hurricanes, a big issue on the east side of the harbor, wiped out the landmark 1897 clubhouse at the foot of Constitution Street on Sept. 21, 1938 and threatened its replacement 16 years later.

Comic relief

An amusing interlude in this stressful period came when Norman Herreshoff, architect of the replacement clubhouse, along with three cronies, sawed down the club’s 70-foot flagstaff early on a Sunday morning in May 1939. The pole had survived the hurricane of the previous year, but it was not in Herreshoff’s architectural plan. Therefore, it had to go.

Two weeks later all hands were fined $100 each in Fifth District Court. The image of the court scene with Judge William T. O’Donnell, Police Chief Anthony J. Ferrara, defense attorney Edward L. Leahy and defendants Herreshoff, Remieres, French and Ferriter remained in local memories for decades. Thanks to Mr. Sylvia’s book this crazy but true story is now in print forever — grist for a Gilbert & Sullivan musical.

Another issue at the Thames Street site was the dumping of huge amounts of industrial waste water directly into the club’s anchorage by the neighboring Collins & Aikman Corporation.

The town’s sewage disposal plant could not handle the mill’s volume and the result was a large pool of colored water swirling into the mooring field. This writer recalls it as coffee-colored effluent which had the strength to repel barnacles from his boat’s hull.

Mr. Sylvia’s account of these issues is accurate and in good detail and illustrates well the challenges of running a multi-purpose club in tight quarters on the waterfront.

Moving to bigger digs

Then-Commodore Robert R. Miller ended the struggle when he fostered a move to a larger location on the west side of Bristol Harbor. The issue crystallized in late 1953 when a poll of BYC members showed strong support for moving out of the east side to an area with more space.

Miller led the charge aimed at a large lot just south of the Bristol Yacht Yard, off Poppasquash Road. He was looking at an estate once owned by the Kortright family and now part of a boatyard. Mr. Sylvia describes the transition in detail, noting that on June 7, 1954 members of the Bristol County Lodge of Elks approved purchase by their club of the BYC clubhouse at Constitution Street for $15,500. This transaction took place July 30, 1954, just a month and a day before Hurricane Carol swept up the coast and into Narragansett Bay.

Miller’s negotiations to buy the three-acre lot and its large but decaying mansion moved slowly because of difficulties in clearing the property’s title. He was successful, however, and the club was able to take ownership of the desired property after an auction on Nov. 22, 1954.

Once the club took control of the site, member-volunteers stepped into action cleaning up the grounds and stripping the mansion of its broken parts. As was the case with the building of a new clubhouse half a century earlier, the movers and the shakers of the 1950s did an outstanding job. These included Miller, Stanley Livingston, Jack Tiplady, Charles B. Rockwell, Hovey and Clarke Freeman, C. Paul Bruno, Frank J. Murphy, Seth Paull, Russ Southwick and others.

Meanwhile, the club revived its stalled junior and senior sailing programs, that have since helped thousands learn to sail and enjoy the water.

On Sunday afternoon, June 26, 1955, Miller stepped up to the podium and a “jubilant crowd” on the front lawn of the new clubhouse gave their leader a “warm ovation.” It was Dedication Day and a special visitor, world-traveler Capt. Irving Johnson aboard his 96-foot brigantine Yankee, addressed the crowd with his memories of Bristol Harbor where he started a sailing career that included six voyages around the world.

Renaissance begins

The crowd certainly had something to cheer about. The club had moved to a site with a broad, deep-water anchorage, clean water, a calmer exposure and the frame of a building that could be nicely developed. People were happy over the change and were ready to take on Commodore Miller’s verbal challenge: “Up to now we’ve been taking things apart, but now it is up to you to help us put them together again and make them tick.”

Bristol Harbor had begun a renaissance. In place of the dozen or so pleasure boats moored there in 1954, the fleet steadily expanded to 500 boats on moorings and more on the town’s finger piers. Estimates on annual income to the Town of Bristol in fees from this source today are in the $150,000 range.

Multiple expansions and refinements of the club’s facilities followed in the decades hence. The book reports these in good detail, giving credit to the many leaders who have come forward in the past half century to do their part in creating a first-class club.

Mr. Sylvia has sprinkled his book with vignettes of life on the bay and the harbor that flesh out the year-to-year activities of his club. One of these is the issue of a breakwater in Bristol Harbor, under discussion for nearly 50 years but allowed to die quietly when its cost to the town reached $4 million.

Another is the rare photo taken during the construction of the Hog Island lighthouse, which replaced a series of lightships in the quirky waters between Portsmouth and Bristol.

Dedication day of the Mt. Hope Bridge on Nov. 6, 1929 is described in an excerpt from the Phoenix and with photos from the Providence Journal, including fair young Rita Callan cutting the ribbon.

Other interesting items include the expedition to Rome, Italy by Fred Thurber, Theodore Goodwin and Thomas Fleming Day, in the 25-foot yawl Sea Bird in 1908. Nineteen stormy days on the Atlantic, which ended on the island of Corvo in the Azores, was enough for the trio. Nonetheless, they boarded a steamer and finished the trip to the Tiber in good style.

The influence of World Wars I and II on the local waterfront is reported in interesting detail, including the PT boats built at the nearby Herreshoff plant and those based at Melville and used in training up and down the bay. A 1916 photo of a German submarine in Newport Harbor with its crew on deck adds substance to the description of the war years.

The thrilling account of the Bristol to Montauk (and return) Races sponsored by the club tells of some harrowing moments in the broad triangle between Brenton Reef, Block Island and the eastern tip of Long Island.

About the book

In the foreword of the book, B.Y.C. Commodore Bob Hamel writes: “Throughout its history, the Bristol Yacht Club has relied on the membership’s strong bonds of friendship, a common interest in boating and a love of local waters to overcome any discord or catastrophe. Today, the Bristol Yacht Club is a united thriving institution.

“Therefore we are grateful for the efforts of one of our members to preserve the club’s long, rich history. Over the past decade, thousands of hours have been spent rummaging through the club’s and the town’s records, old books and newspapers and conducting scores of interviews with members and historians to produce ‘Boat House on the Shore,’ a comprehensive history of the Bristol Yacht Club.”

Mr. Sylvia gives Bob Hamel much credit for seeing the book through to completion. “He was the driving force. It was his mission to save this history before it was lost. It was a nine-year project and Bob Hamel kept with me until it was finished.”

To all those volunteers George Sylvia has mentioned in his book: “Three Cheers.” And three cheers to George Sylvia for volunteering his time to put this historically important volume together.

Copies of this book are available through B.Y.C. Steward Chris Healey for $30 per copy. He can be contacted at 401/253-2922 or Steward@Bristolyc.com.