To the Secretary and Members of the Royal Cork Yacht Club This Print of the Cutter Yacht Cygnet (W. Smith Esqre.) is respectfully dedicated by BRIERLY, Sir Oswald Walters (1817-1894) - 1860

London & Plymouth: Edmund Fry & Son, Edmund Fry Junr, 1860. Lithograph, coloured by hand, by Brierly, printed by Day & Haghe. A lively view of the Irish cutter yacht Cygnet, lithographed by Brierly himself. The Royal Cork Yacht Club, founded in 1720, is the oldest yacht club in the world, and gained royal patronage in 1831 from William IV. Their regattas started in 1828 and were held with great success throughout the 19th century (in 1894 the Prince of Wales won his class in his yacht `Britannia). The present view shows a club member's vessel in a stiff breeze with the club burgee flying from the mast top. Sir Oswald Brierly, after an adventurous early life when he emigrated to New South Wales and took part in a number of exploring expeditions, returned to Britain in 1851. He recorded the French and English fleets' operations in the Baltic during the war with Russia, and developed a close artistic association with the British Royal family. Upon the death of Schetky in 1874 he was appointed marine painter to Queen Victoria, and at the same time was made marine painter to the Royal Yacht Squadron. He was eventually knighted in 1885.