FBYC History....
Jere Dennison
Two interesting stories involving FBYC burgees came to light this summer.
Tale #1: Who is Willard Ransom?
Arriving by mail in May addressed to the Fishing Bay Yacht Club was an old and slightly frayed FBYC burgee attached to a varnished wood pigstick of approximately 4 feet in length. (A pigstick was used in the olden days to hoist burgees by halyard to the truck of the mast before masts became so cluttered with instrumentation.) Accompanying the package was a letter with an intriguing message: ....
Dear Fishing Bay:
Enclosed find the last burgee of founding member, Willard W. (Will) Ransom, 1914 -2005. You throw it out I cant.
This burgee has flown from Nova Scotia to the Bahamas and in the Baltic, the Aegean, and the Caribbean.
Many are the stories
Yours,
Dave Ransom
Falls Church, Virginia
After it was turned over to me for inclusion in our artifact collection, I was determined to find out just who in the heck was Willard Ransom. No one had any recollection of this member who was supposed to be, no less, a founding member. Our historical records document all the names of the original founders, so I was confident this gentleman was not among them.
Fortunately, the letter bore the email address of his son, Dave Ransom, whom I emailed with our appreciation and a request for more information on his father. Dave replied that he could remember as a child being at the yacht club during the construction of the first clubhouse on Fishing Bay and having to avoid the stinging nettles off the beach. This is what led him to believe that his father was a founding member until I apprised him of our origins ten years earlier in Urbanna. I had consulted a mid-40s yearbook and found no reference to his father, although an early-50s version listed him as a Richmond member. From this we deduced that his father had probably joined in 1949 when the clubhouse was under construction.
What is amazing about this story is that Willard Ransom did not resign his membership until 1989 even though he and his family had relocated to Delaware in 1951 and later to New York State, never to return to the yacht club during that entire period. And he never owned a boat of any kind! None of the older members of our club to whom I talked remember Willard Ransom. Why did he retain his membership for so long in absentia?
According to his son, his father was an avid sailor preferring to charter, rather than own, his vessels. This allowed his family to sail at many exotic locations all over the world, each time prominently displaying his FBYC burgee that gained them reciprocity at most of the yacht clubs they encountered on their voyages.
Dave said that he had a lot of interesting stories to tell about their voyages, and, of course, I appealed to him for a written outline that I could use for a future history article. As a professional writer, he volunteered to write an article when he had the time. Hopefully, he will follow through with his offer. And, by the way, if any of you out there remember Willard Ransom, I would very much like to hear from you. His burgee with pigstick now hangs in the flag gallery on the second floor of the clubhouse.
Tale #2: A Revelation in a London Bar
Member Paul Howle visited the Mother Country this past summer and was eager to report that the American Bar located in the Stafford Hotel, St. James Place, London featured an FBYC burgee among its collection of sailing, auto racing, and other sports memorabilia that cover the walls and ceiling of this popular pub for American visitors.
According to Paul, it was an old burgee. We can only take a guess as to how it got there, but I will give it a go. Ralph Lynn, deceased member and founder of the British-built Jollyboat fleet at FBYC in the mid-1950s, was a true anglophile, even inflecting his voice with a polished British brogue. In 1960, and again in 1964, Ralph traveled to Britain to compete in the Jollyboat World Championships hosted by the Royal Thames Yacht Club. As a gesture of goodwill, Ralph often carried a supply of FBYC burgees to distribute. Being as fond of bars as Paul, it is not inconceivable that Ralph meandered (staggered?) into the American Bar in London during one of these regattas and presented a burgee to the bartender for display. If anyone out there has a better explanation, please let me know. I hereby nominate the American Bar as FBYCs London station where we can all go abroad to enjoy a glass of Guinness while honoring our yacht club colors and the memory of Ralph Lynn.
Postscript: Paul Howle is endeavoring to make arrangements with the American Bar to replace the older burgee with a newer version sometime this fall. Perhaps the mystery will be solved if the original burgee bears a signature and/or date. If so, you will hear about it in a future issue of the Log.
Thanks to the Schooner Virginia for its encore appearance at the 2006 Leukemia Cup Regatta and for the Virginia poster signed by Captain Nicholas Alley and crew to commemorate their visit this year. The framed poster hangs in the Austin Library upstairs in the main clubhouse.