The First Hundred Years: Clearwater Yacht Club, 1911-2011

CYC Gets Organized

In the midst of this rapidly changing social scene, Clearwater Yacht Club was born.

It all started at a New Year’s Eve party held in the imposing winter home of Col. Lowe Emerson on the Bay at the foot of Rogers Street. The year was 1910. William Howard Taft was President…Colonel Emerson, a carriage manufacturer from Ohio, had gathered his monied northern friends for more than a glass of wine with which to toast the new year in; the Colonel thought it was high time that Clearwater had some social life and he proposed to start it. For years, wealthy families from the north had been coming to Clearwater for the winter, chiefly because they were sailing enthusiasts, the owners of luxurious cutters, sloops and schooners that could take advantage of Clearwater’s deep, clean bay as well as the Gulf, outside (Ransom and Tracy, 1961: 1). Like current club members, the founders of this organization were interested in both socializing and competitive sailing. Unlike today’s members who take pride in the friendly inclusive atmosphere of the club, their criteria for membership were much more exclusive. These members of the “sailing gentry” had a rather narrow view of the kinds of folks with whom they wanted to socialize and against whom they wanted to compete. The 1911 articles of incorporation (Appendix A) state “all white males over the age of twenty one years are eligible for membership.” While membership was not restricted by this definition to the wealthy, upper class winter residents of the area, in reality it is members of this group of “gentry” who gathered together to form the club in 1911. This original group left few records other than the articles of incorporation. They never built a clubhouse—instead meeting

Postcard of the Clearwater Public Library—built in 1916. Courtesy of Heritage Village Archives and Library.

in each other’s homes and aboard their yachts (Ransom and Tracy, 1961). This first, ultra-exclusive incarnation of the club did not last long. As Ransom and Tracy note in their fiftieth anniversary booklet: “Although Colonel Emerson could not have realized it, the world was changing, the day of the ultra-exclusive men’s boating club was dying. World War I was just around the corner with its tremendous impact on American life; the tycoon in his

20 The First Hundred Years: Clearwater Yacht Club, 1911-2011