LADY EVELYN; an elegant cruising schooner once owned by Archibald Kennedy and named for his first wife, Lady Evelyn Stuart. Kennedy was the third Marquis of Ailsa, and is one of the most important proponents of Scottish yachting and shipbuilding. The schooner was designed and built by William Fife at Fairlie, Ayrshire in 1870. She measured 94.5′ L with a 18.5′ beam. This was the first of a fleet of yachts owned by the Marquis, whom raced in the 1870s the cutter yachts FOXHOUND, BLOODHOUND and SLEUTHHOUND, winning more than 100 prizes. He also earned his master's certificate in 1874, and was a prominent member of the Royal Yacht Squadron, through where he must have met Fowles.
It is a bright day for sailing, with cumulus clouds reaching upward as they linger over the western edge of the Isle of Wight, with the universally recognized Needles headland in view. The schooner's graceful lines hold a purer white sails aloft, and flies the Royal Yacht Squadron's White Ensign, which was also the signal of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserves. The Marquis was a prominent member of several clubs, and when his steam yacht MARCHESA was ready in 1878, he sold LADY EVELYN to Francis Pym of Hertfordshire who sailed her for more than 10 years, and then sold her to a New York owner. This is a beautiful and soothing marine narrative of a schooner in her prime, by an artist recognized as a master of his genre.
