Small Craft

Late 19th & Early 20th Century British Yachting

The Sailors: Amateur British & Irish Yachtsmen Before World War One


Herbert L. Reiach (M.I.N.A.), 1873–July 1921


From "A Brief History of Yachting Monthly" (no longer available on YM's site)

The son of an inspector of Scottish fisheries, Herbert Reiach was educated in Edinburgh and worked as a naval architect at Leith, Liverpool and Camper & Nicholsons, in Gosport, Hampshire, with his great friend Charles Nicholson. He was an avid sportsman, working as an editor for The Field in the late 1890's before striking out on his own with The Yachting Monthly (Illustrated) in 1904.

As late as June of 1921 Reiach owned Velsa which had been Arnold Bennett's craft in the early years of the 20th century (see From the Log of the Velsa, 1914). Reiach sold Velsa to Maj. J. Proctor Humphris.

Reiach died at sea aboard his yacht in July 1921, aged 48, and Arthur Briscoe's tribute in the August issue said: "We have all lost a friend and adviser... from the owner of the largest steam yacht to the tyro in his tingled odd-medod. Racers, cruisers, dinghies, canoes, home-built dug-outs or palatial steam palaces, he had a place for them all. But perhaps it was the cruiser, and the small Corinthian cruiser at that, which was nearest his heart".