FBYC History....
Jere Dennison
Your Historian recently received an inquiry from our Chaplain, Doug Anderson, who has conducted our Blessing of the Fleet ceremonies on Opening Day since the retirement of long-time Chaplain Bill Egelhoff three years ago. Two of the questions posed were when the Blessing of the Fleet tradition began at our Club and whether there were any humorous anecdotes associated with this service in the past. This caused me first to question my assumption that the Blessing of the Fleet was a tradition that had been in place since the inception of the Club in Urbanna, a fact that I was not able to substantiate. This prodded me to wade through all of our old musty scrapbooks, Logs, archived records, etc. looking for confirmation. Unfortunately I could find no mention of the tradition until I came upon a Richmond Times-Dispatch article titled “First Race Set Today by FBYC” dated April 10, 1959 which is excerpted as follows:
...the annual blessing of the fleet, one of the most impressive ceremonies of the year at the club.
The Rev. Charles Kovel, rector of Christ Church School will bless the boats at 1 pm.
Of course, this does not give us a definitive answer, but it does suggest that the service may have been conducted on Opening Day for a period of years, even many years. Regretfully there is probably no one alive today who can shed further light on this question. The image here is a picture taken by a T-D photographer of our 1960 Blessing of the Fleet. It also hangs upstairs of our clubhouse, and it may be the only historical photo of this event from the past.
I did have one humorous anecdote to report, but ironically the joke was on me! I was a young Commodore in 1975, and Brent Halsey was our Rear Commodore. One of the responsibilities of the Rear back then was to arrange for the Reverend to be at the club to conduct the ceremony on Opening Day. Back then it was the Reverend Jerry Bunting from nearby Christ Church.
Well, the appointed time arrived on Opening Day. The crowd was in place. Mr. Roberts, the club manager, was there with shotgun in hand and someone stood ready to hoist the colors on the flagpole on the Fishing Bay pier. We waited and waited, perhaps for a half hour or so, but it seemed like an eternity to me. The crowd became restless. Brent excused himself to place a call from the clubhouse to Christ Church to see what was delaying the good Reverend.
I watched as Brent returned from the clubhouse with a somber look on his face. "Well, when is Jerry going to arrive?," I stammered hopefully but expecting this was not going to end well. Brent retorted, "He's not coming" and something to the effect that the Reverend had failed to put it on his schedule. "Well," I said, what are we going to do?" Brent just looked at me and said, "You are going to have to do the service!"
Yikes...my knees started knocking...I am not known for my public speaking, nor my ability to carry a tune for the hymns which Jerry Bunting normally led. Thankfully, the twin brothers Wayland and Laurie Rennie, both with church choir memberships and resonant vocal chords came to the rescue for the hymns. I still had to recite the prayers and conduct the service, and my guess is that very few of the attendees were able to understand my unintelligible murmurings. At least the service was contained in a printed hand-out for all to follow.
Afterwards, I vowed devoutly to God that this would be the first, last, and only time I would ever try to impersonate a 'man of the cloth.' And the more important issue that lingered that season was whether our fleet could be truly blessed by one of the unconsecrated flock!