BPC00339
Wood engraving from the Illustrated London News, 30 July 1853.
An account of this regatta is in J G Bishop’s The Brighton Chain Pier in Memoriam. On page 39 of this 1896 publication, Bishop wrote that Capt Moore, a gentleman associated with several yacht clubs, persuaded a committee of the Royal Yacht Clubs that a regatta would be a great attraction for Brighton. ‘Subscriptions came in bountifully, the whole town being strongly in favour of the project …’ The event took place on Thursday and Saturday 21 and 23 July 1853. ‘The Chain Pier was the central point of action … which was a great success in all things save one – the weather, which rendered one day (the Friday) an entire blank’. Bishop finishes the article ‘unfortunately yearly Regattas afterwards seemed to have dropped through for a time’.
The origins of this event, and the reason Bishop writes of his regret that Brighton saw no more regattas, may be to do with the beginning of the America’s Cup. Two years before the Brighton Regatta, the Solent in August 1851 saw the first race for the ‘100 Guineas Cup’, which was won by the schooner ‘America’, entered by the New York Yacht Club and watched by Queen Victoria. The race for this ‘100 Guineas Cup’ was organised by the Royal Yacht Club, but for the Americans to win made this more than just a ‘sailing race’. It was a significant victory for the ‘new world’ over the old, previously undisputed, world maritime power. The winning American yacht syndicate donated the cup to the New York Yacht Club, for it to become an enduring challenge between maritime nations. It seems unlikely that the Brighton Regatta was not influenced in some way by events in the Solent two years before.