![[Royal Western Yacht Club of England ensign]](../images/g/gb~yrwec.gif)
Last modified: 2018-05-23 by rob raeside
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The Royal Western Yacht Club of England uses a plain blue ensign,
undefaced. Blue ensign granted 1 January 1843.
David Prothero, 7 June 2014
Established 1827 as Port of Plymouth Royal Clarence Regatta Club,
patron was Duke of Clarence, Lord High Admiral.
1833. Changed name to
Western Yacht Club.
15 May 1834. Admiralty Warrant for “Distinguishing
Ensign. - White with a red cross, a crown in the centre, surrounded with a
wreath of roses, intertwined with oak leaves, and a union at the head of the
ensign.” The title ‘royal’ was added inadvertently. A letter of 21 July 1909
from Buckingham Palace to the Home Office indicated that “the Royal Title should
not be restored, but re-created with date 15 May 1834”.
December 1837.
White Ensign defaced crown and lion. ‘Of England’ added to title, “to
distinguish club from Irish club similarly designated”. I guess that the
defacement was changed because, at any sort of distance, the previous one would
have been indistinguishable from the Western of Ireland’s ‘White with a red
cross, a crown in the centre, surrounded with a wreath of shamrock’.
22
August 1842. Admiralty Warrant for plain Blue Ensign. Crown on blue burgee.
From 1909 Rule Book. Each yacht, though held by same owner, requires
separate Admiralty Warrant.
Privileges of club:
1. Free of Port
Charges in France, Holland, Belgium, Russia, Denmark, Prussia, Egypt, Syria,
Canada, Hanover, Greece, Portugal, Norway, Sweden and Spain.
2. United
Kingdom; free of duty in bond warehouse.
3. Use of government buoys, when
not in use, with permission of Naval Authority.
4. Blue Ensign.
5. Free
of Coasting Licence for moving property in yachts.
6. Spars from HM Dockyard
on application to Admiral-Superintendent
[National Archives HO
144/1060/188875]
David Prothero, 14 November 2014
![[Royal Western Yacht Club of England ensign]](../images/g/gb~yrwec-b.gif)
image
located by
The Dumpy Book of Ships and the Sea (1957)
shows the burgee blue with a crown.
James Dignan, 12 February 2008
The RWYC website is at http://rwyc.org and the
burgee can be seen at
http://rwyc.org/club-2/club-history. Do we know whether it's a specific
crown or not? They also seem to have had other ensigns before. I wonder
if there were burgees to match.
Peter Hans van den
Muijzenberg, 7 April 2018
This is a moot point, and there are a couple factors to consider. Did, for
example, the original application for an Admiralty Warrant contain an
illustration, because if it did the crown in question was almost certainly the
then current Imperial State Crown, and if so, does this mean that the club
should continue to use such a crown even though the official type was changed in
1902 (to the Tudor Crown) and 1952 (to the St Edward’s Crown)?
The
current situation seems to be that the several yacht clubs who feature a crown
on their badges use the current official pattern regardless of the date of any
appropriate warrant (although they are not legally obliged to do so), and there
are no official objections (at least ones we are aware of) to the practice.
Christopher Southworth, 8 April 2018
