A question of balance

‘There are three things that are too wonderful for me, yea four which I know not: the way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid’ -- Agur, in the Proverbs of Solomon

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.

This is how Dickens described the period of the French Revolution but it could have easily described the period between World War I and World War II. It was also a period that saw the development of two designers, one of whom designed cruising boats, the other racing models, whose design careers were inextricably linked. The designer of cruising boats was an ophthalmic surgeon, that of model racing yachts an Engineer Rear Admiral in the Royal Navy. The ophthalmic surgeon was Harrison Butler who designed a fair number of cruising yachts as a pastime and who still has a loyal following of enthusiastic owners today. The Admiral was Alfred Turner, he of the metacentric shelf theory of hull balance who served at Jutland and also designed many successful model racing yachts, mainly to the heavy end of the International A Class rule but also some to the Six Metre rule and others.

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