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Classic Choice

The Cruise of the Kate Empson Middleton

The Cruise of the Kate is an absolute classic, charting the extraordinary voyage of one of the great pioneers of yacht cruising. The trip was undertaken by Empson Edward Middleton in 1867 and was an ambitious voyage around Britain in a 22ft (6.7m) canoe yawl, the Kate. Middleton had to learn to sail in order to make this voyage but, with typical Victorian chutzpah, he did this is no time flat and then succeeded in sailing around Britain via the Caledonian Canal.

could happily have been renamed the voyage of a personality disorder. How Middleton managed to get around with the mighty chip he had on his shoulder is anyone’s guess. He was actually on a sabbatical from his earnest work as an author. He had nearly given himself a into rhyming couplets. Given the perspective of time, there’s little question this is a ghastly work and, unsurprisingly, it was not an easy one to sell to publishers. Middleton was already getting an inkling that the world was perhaps set against him. Suffering from nervous exhaustion, Middleton decided to sail around England. Just to make life that bit more tricky, he decided that to sleep on his yacht offshore would simply have been beyond the pale. As a result, his trip around the English coast becomes a seemingly endless battle with the tide. Without the advantage of an engine, he spends a hellish amount of time rowing, mostly against the tide, and also a good deal of time lost, often yelling at fishermen demanding his whereabouts. The fact he made it is a truly impressive feat, yet to read the book makes you realise that it was not just during the voyage that he rowed against the tide; his whole life was like that.