Models of Yachts and Leisure Craft
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of models of yachts and leisure craft. A yacht is a vessel used for racing or cruising and can be powered by sails, steam engine or by a motor. They can be very large and able to sail long distances over many weeks or they can be small vessels used for an afternoon’s racing on inshore waters. There are 65 models of yachts in the collection. Four of them show yachts built before 1850, including the early elegant racing steam yacht Menai (1830) and forty models date from the second half of the nineteenth century, reflecting both the huge popularity of yachting and the rise in incomes that enabled wealthy families to indulge their interest in the sea. There are twenty-one models dating from 1900 onwards, including the graceful sailing yacht Sunshine (1901). Thirty-six of the models show steam powered yachts, the largest being the huge Livadia (1880), built for Czar Alexander III of Russia, while twenty show sailing yachts. The small yacht Verve (1881) was designed by George Lennox Watson, one of the foremost yacht designers of the nineteenth century and, like many other models in the collection, was commissioned by a wealthy Clydeside industrialist.
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