On your left is the legacy of the Atlantic Yacht Club. Founded in 1866 by a breakaway group of rebels from the Brooklyn Yacht Club, they started humbly. Their first clubhouse was literally a moored barge in Gowanus Creek. From there, they rapidly built a reputation for corinthian sailing, meaning they raced purely for the love of the sport rather than for professional prize money.
They soon upgraded to a waterfront farm in an area that member James Weir, a highly successful Scottish florist, renamed Bay Ridge. Weir was a dedicated yachtsman whose love for the sea framed his end. He tragically dropped dead of a heart attack while sailing off Shelter Island in 1906.
By 1898, the club moved to a spectacular clubhouse in Seagate, driven by the prominent financier George Jay Gould. Take a glance at your screen to see what this grand, temple-faced beauty looked like back in the day. While officially credited to Frank Tallman Cornell, many attribute the design to Stanford White. White was a regular here, bringing an undercurrent of scandal to the ultra-wealthy crowd. His extravagant lifestyle and affair with Evelyn Nesbit ended violently when he was notoriously murdered by a jealous husband named Harry Thaw.
This club hosted titans like J.P. Morgan and Sir Thomas Lipton. In fact, behind the scenes of the famous 1905 Kaiser's Cup transatlantic race lay a delicate diplomatic crisis. When the race was proposed, Lipton eagerly offered a silver cup as the prize. Shortly after, a representative for German Emperor Wilhelm II offered an imperial cup. Commodore Robert E. Tod, caught between a beloved club regular and a volatile world leader, had to use intense diplomacy to convince Lipton to gracefully withdraw his offer so as not to offend the Emperor.
It was not all high society and silver cups, though. The waters directly surrounding the clubhouse hid a deadly menace known as the Potato Patch. This one-mile stretch of twisting currents and jagged rocks earned a dark reputation. The treacherous tides ruined a 1910 club swim meet when competitors found it impossible to cross the churning water. In 1914, two men vanished completely when their canoe was pulled into the disturbance. The most heartbreaking tragedy happened in October 1912 when two schoolboys playfully rowed an abandoned boat into the violent seas of the Patch. The boat was instantly smashed. One boy washed ashore unconscious and survived, but the other, Clinton Fox, and his dog were swept into the twisting waves and never seen again.
The club also had legendary staff, most notably Charlie the launchman. Famous for his handlebar mustache, Charlie ferried members to their yachts in an old naphtha launch, a small boat powered by a highly flammable vapor engine, which ironically caught fire quite often itself. When he eventually passed away, his loss was felt so deeply that yacht clubs all across the bay flew their flags at half-mast in his honor.
That magnificent Seagate clubhouse burned to the ground in a devastating 1933 fire, delivering a massive blow during the Great Depression. The club soldiered on, and today, it operates right here on Gravesend Bay, carrying the torch of its wild maritime past.
Catch your breath here, and we will see you at the next landmark.
