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The Schooner Nighthawk
By Jere Dennison
Our club began life, not as the Fishing Bay Yacht Club, but as the Urbanna Sailing Association in 1939 under the loom of imminent hostilities in Europe and Asia. Within a year, the Association incorporated as the Urbanna Yacht Club. The club had an enrollment of 35 sailing yachts and 63 members, had rented quarters in Urbanna, and had joined the Chesapeake Bay Yacht Racing Association. Within three years, an active racing program was severely curtailed by the outbreak of World War II, and many of our members joined the armed services, representing practically every branch of America’s fighting forces.
Remarkably, two boats enrolled in the club’s yacht squadron were active duty participants in the war effort. Both the schooner “Nighthawk” and “Windflower,” under the ensign of the United States Coast Guard, made gallant records under sail in hunting down the submarine wolf packs which were destroying Allied shipping off the Virginia capes. The “Nighthawk” was commanded by J. Rucker Ryland, who resigned from the office of Commodore to accept his charge, and his second in command was Joseph L. Kelly, Jr., who resigned as Secretary to put to sea. As explained in Richard “Jud” Henderson’s book, Chesapeake Sails – A History of Yachting on the Bay: “Many of the Bay’s larger sailing yachts were donated to the U.S. Coast Guard for antisubmarine patrol. Known as the Coastal Picket Patrol or Corsair Fleet, these yachts conscripted into wartime service were mostly able sailing vessels that could stay at sea for long periods of time. They could not be detected by submarines from the turning of a screw. On the other hand, the sailing yachts, fitted with sonar and radiophones, could detect and report U-boats; they discouraged the German subs from surfacing near shore to use their deck guns or charge their batteries.”
Pictured here is the schooner “Nighthawk” shown on race committee duty for the cruising division during UYC’s Virginia Sailing Regatta in 1944 off Urbanna. The story of the Virginia Sailing Regatta will follow in a future issue.
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