Today we are going to take on the subject of what is an expedition yacht versus
a traditional yacht as it's called in some publications or a white yacht as we
generally refer to them in the industry. White yachts being built normally by yacht companies
that only build yachts. We're going to get into the distinction of who the expedition
yacht builders are and what type of yachts they are versus the white yachts and what
those attributes are. So, as a as a distinction right off the bat I want to say that any yacht
video or yacht description that you've seen that refers to a yacht as being "sumptuous" is probably
not an expedition yacht. It's probably a yacht that is happiest in a marina. These boats live
more than 90 percent of their life in a marina. Probably a lot of them, 98 or 99 percent don't
go out in weather and they don't go very far from a gas tank, electric line, or a cable tv hookup.
The word "sumptuous" just in case you're wondering because it gets bandied about a lot comes
from the french word "somptueuse" or and also from the latin word sumptuosus, which means expenditure
and it boils down to simply being something that is produced at great cost; it's very expensive.
Apparently that is one of the benchmarks for luxury yachts - that they have to be very
expensive. It doesn't really speak to their capabilities at all .So i'm going to get into
that. I'm just going to review the history of seabourne expeditions here a little bit,
if you'll indulge me and then we'll get into specific examples of vessels.
So let's first establish a criteria of cruising versus expedition cruising on a boat is basically
messing about locally whereas an expedition is a voyage undertaken usually by a group of people
with a purpose especially that of exploration or scientific research. To that we could add-
searching for sunken treasure or a particular wreck, or finding the perfect place to heli-ski
or like these adventurers looking for an ice wall climb on a nice iceberg - which turned
out to be a little trickier than it looked.And in terms of a vessel whether it's Huck Finn
and his friend Jim floating on a raft down the Mississippi or Thor Hyerdahl crossing the Pacific
Ocean on the balsa raft Kon Tiki, or the Vikings setting off to conquer new lands all across the
globe - choosing the right vessel for the voyage and for the mission is essential. Now here's
an interesting circumnavigation route. In fact this is the route of the first circumnavigation.
The year was 1519. Ferdinand Magellan left spain with five of these ships and 260 men.
To put things in perspective, Magellan's flagship was 65 feet long. That is approximately the same
length as the Hinckley tender aboard the late Paul Allen's expedition yacht Octopus. Although
he dressed for success, Magellan was killed in a fight with islanders in the Philippines two
years after leaving on his voyage. And in fact, the first man to circumnavigate the globe was a
Malaysian interpreter who he had on board the ships. Of the 260 men who left on the voyage,
only 18 made it back to Spain and when they arrived on a single ship they were described as
looking starved and filthy. This is not the kind of outcome that we would want on an expedition.
Fast forward 300 years and Charles Darwin planned this circumnavigation for scientific research
purposes and today's yachtsmen should take note of his preparations and his choice of vessel.
It's very interesting. HMS Beagle was built as one of a series of a hundred vessels by the Royal Navy
in the Cherokee Class She was a 10 gun brigantine sloop. We'll do another quick size check.
The HMS Beagle was 88 feet long with a 23 foot beam, approximately the same
size as this zippy little Riva 88. the Riva offers eight berths for passengers while the Beagle
offered 74 berths. The Rva's 2,600 horsepower will take you 340 nautical miles on a tank, whereas
the wind power available to the Beagle will take you 40 000 nautical miles around the earth. Upon
delivery, he immediately took her to the Devonport Shipyard for an extensive rebuilding and refitting
for his mission. This is the same Devonport shipyard that today builds state-of-the-art Royal
Navy warships and also mega yachts for designers such as Andrew Winch. It's worth noting that in
Darwin's general arrangement for this vessel that the captain's cabin has its own private dining
facilities and library and you'll also possibly be able to see here in this graphic that there is a
ship's hospital, a sick bay, and there's also a spirit room - a sort of a wine cellar and
liquor locker. The vessel was fitted out with modern contrivances such as lightning rods,
which didn't exist on ships until then, it also had 22 chronometers and a mercury-free
barometer that had recently been patented. To help ensure that he and his men did not suffer the
sort of fates that Magellan's did, this vessel was fitted with a six-pound boat corronade cannon on a
turntable on the foc'sle, two brass six-pound guns before the main mast and aft of it another four
brass guns. Darwin had an additional seven tons of sheathing added to the battle-ready hull and
this hull was strong enough so that they could take care of any below the water line service
wherever they could find a suitable beach. Fast forward nearly 100 years to the year 1912, which
was the year that the Titanic had its unfortunate run in with an iceberg in the North Atlantic.
That same year the Norwegians launched what is likely to have been the first arctic expedition
yacht. It was named Polaris. It was 144 feet. Again, for comparison, this is about the same size
as Marcato, which is a Canadian built expedition vessel that also went into the ice. So the Polaris
did expedition charters and hunting party charters up into the ice and it was built for that purpose
very ruggedly. It had a 350 horsepower steam engine that delivered 10 knots. 10 luxury
passenger cabins with electric lights . It had double framing and the hull was up to 30 inches
thick. The bow was reinforced to a thickness of 52 inches. They carried two cooks on board and had a
dining salon and a smoking room for the pleasure of the guests. At her launch she was heralded as
the strongest wooden ship that had ever been. In 1914, the Polaris was brought to England, renamed
the Endurance, and enlisted as the lead vessel for Ernest Shackleton's third Antarctic expedition.
His objective was to cross the Antarctic from sea to sea via the pole. Some of the arctic vessels
designed during that time were bowl-bottomed which meant that if the ice closed in against them
the ship would be squeezed up and out and not be the subject to the pressure of the ice compressing
around her The Endurance, on the other hand, was designed with inherent strength in her hull
in order to resist collision with ice flows and break through pack ice by ramming and crushing.
She was not really intended to be frozen into the pack ice after becoming entrapped. The endurance
was slowly crushed before any shore parties could come to their rescue. The crew escaped by camping
on the sea ice until it disintegrated and then they took to lifeboats to reach Elephant Island
and then ultimately the South Georgia Island which was 720 nautical miles away. Fortunately,
they all survived and lessons were learned. And now we fast forward to the end of the 20th century
when a generation of yachtsmen became explorers and expedition yachtsmen and they did this by
converting commercial vessels and there's a series of commercial vessels that are legendary that
were built in the 1960s 70s and 80s primarily. They're still in service today. You see them
all around the world. They're highly sought after as charter vessels and they hold their value very
well in the brokerage market also. So in Part 2 of our series we're going to look into this
generation of yachtsmen as explorers and expedition yacht owners. So if that's of interest,
please hit the button there for Part 2 in our series of expedition versus white yachts.