The yacht scene made me groan over the recollections of days and occupations exactly the same.

To wander round the world in a hundred tons schooner would be my highest realisation of human felicity." Even the name of the book must have appealed to Froude.

For more than almost any other man of letters he loved the sea.

Yachting was his passion.

He pursued it in youth despite of qualms, and in later life they disappeared.