Volante, 1851

A John Harvey design

Designed and built in 1851 by John Harvey, M.I.N.A.. Wivenhoe, Eng., for J. L. Craigie, the Volante was of 48 tons B. O. M. Length overall, 68 feet 4 inches; length on waterline, 61 feet 6 inches; beam, 14 feet 9 inches; depth, 10 feet; draft, 10 feet. Volante was contemporary with and sailed against the yacht America. She was of the then modern design, with finer bow and full run as compared with the old "cod’s head-mackerel tail” type. The midship section was of “peg-top” shape.

British builders, notably Wanhill of Poole, were fully alive to the possibilities of evasion offered in the method of measuring length. Sternposts were given an excessive rake, and in some cases, while not raked so heavily, were set well inboard from the after end of the waterline. To meet this evasion, in 1854 the Royal Mersey and the Royal London yacht clubs measured the length on deck from the fore part of the stem to the after part of the sternpost; but this caused new trouble in another direction, as the tonnage of many existing yachts was greatly increased and the classes disorganized. To remedy this condition the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1855 adopted the same measurement for length, but increased the deduction to the entire breadth, thus establishing the "Thames Measurement" or T. M. This unit was retained in Lloyd’s Register of (British) Yachts, and often used to a certain extent in estimating the cost of building of the average cruising yacht as so much per ton, T. M.

The keel was very short to lessen the length for tonnage; under the B.O.M. rule, L was taken along rabbet of keel, hence her "first" tonnage of 40. With the length measured on the deck under the Royal Mersey Yacht Club rule of 1854 details here) the tonnage increased to 60, decreasing under "Thames measurement", where the breadth was subtracted from L, to 55 tons. Anecdotally, a few years later under the ownership of M. Lenneluc-Sanson of Bordeaux her tonnage was measured as 44.25 for official registry purposes, with L equal to "length at waterline between parpendiclars."

, under the "Thames Rule" of 1854 (identical to the Royal Mersey Yacht Club rule, but with the breadth being subtracted

• Length overall, 68 feet 4 inches
• Waterline length, 61 feet 6 inches
• Beam, 14 feet 9 inches;
• Depth, 10 feet 0 inches
• Draft. 10 feet 0 inches
• Displacement, 48 tons B.O.M.
• Sail area, 3,221 square feet

John Harvey, 1825-1901

Born into a shipbuilding family, John Harvey's career spanned a period of advancing designs, often spurred on by the rating rules. He was referred to as as the "the link between the old and the new" (William P. Stephens Yacht design.)

His Volante, which he designed and built in the family yard, raced against the schooner America and could perhaps have won. In 1862 his father retired and John Harvey took over the business, building in a traditional manner; he never truly adopted either external ballast, nor composite building, but persisted in wood, sometimes using double planking. His yawl Jullanar of 1875 was probably his most radical design.

In the mid 1870s, he joined Dixon Kemp in lobbying Lloyd's Register to produce a new volume dedicated to yachting. Lloyd's Register of Yachts was first published in 1878 By 1881, the Harvey and Prior Yard (an association that started in 1875) was failing, and John Harvey moved to New York. He was responsible for a few will known yachts - including the Oriva and Bedouin, he worked for some time with John Gardner, but moved back to England in 1898; destitute, he was supported by a fund set up by George Watson to assist him. He died in 1901.