Page:The history of yachting.djvu/182

 66 requested the Commissioners to "bargain for the cloth and order the putting of them in hand." On the following day Commissioner Pett repeated the order from the Chatham dockyard as follows: "New sails and four tons of musket shot required for ballast for the king's new yacht."

A whole new suit of sails within two months after launching! This appears decidedly modern, especially when we remember that up to the last quarter of the nineteenth century a racing-yacht's sails were supposed to last three seasons. It is only indeed of late years that racing-yachts have had a new suit of sails each season; although, for the America's Cup contests, yachts during the last decade have been provided with almost as many spare racing-sails as a Newport belle is provided with frocks.

The fleet had another addition this year in the Bezan, a small yacht; length of keel, 34 feet; breadth, 14 feet; depth, 7 feet; draught, 3 feet 6 inches; she came from Holland and was given to the King by the Dutch, but exactly by whom, is not recorded.

June 13th, Pepys relates that "with my Lord Sandwich visited the Deptford dockyard and went aboard the Dutch yacht, by and by we came to Greenwich and thinking to have gone on the King's yacht, the King was in her, so we passed by, and at Woolwich went on shore, I home and with wine enough in my head."

At this time it appears that the King was providing himself with pleasure-craft for all occasions,