# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Watson, George Lennox

​WATSON, GEORGE LENNOX (1851–1904), naval architect, born at Glasgow on 30 Oct. 1851, was eldest son of Thomas Watson, M.D., by his wife Ellen, daughter of Timothy Burstall, an engineer. Educated at the High School and then at the Collegiate School, Glasgow, he was apprenticed in 1867 to Robert Napier & Sons, shipbuilders and marine engineers of Govan. In 1871 he found employment with A. and J. Inglis, shipbuilders, of Pointhouse, near Glasgow, making with a member of the firm experiments in yacht-designing, and in 1872 he started business in Glasgow as a naval architect. Exact methods of yacht-modelling were only then being introduced, and Watson was the first to apply to the designing of yachts the laws governing the resistance of bodies moving in water which William John Macquorn Rankine [q. v.] and William Froude [q. v.] had formulated. During a career of over thirty years he designed many of the most successful yachts that have sailed in British waters.
Early successes were the 5-ton cutter Clotilde (1873), which beat Fife's Pearl; the 10-ton cutter Madge (1875), which had great success in American waters; the Vril (1876); the 68-ton cutter Marjorie (1883); and the Vanduara (1880), which was the fastest vessel of her class, beating the Formosa, the property of Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, on several occasions. When Dixon Kemp's new rule of measurement for racing purposes in 1887 required the building of a broader and lighter type of vessel, Watson was equally successful. The Yarana (1888), the Creole (1890). and the Queen Mab (1892) were all notable prize-winners, and a record success was achieved by the Britannia, which Watson built for King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, in 1893. Between 1893-7 it won 147 prizes, 122 of them first prizes, out of 219 starts, the total value of the prizes amounting to 9973l. The Bona (1900), the Kariad (1900, at first named The Distant Shore), and the Sybarita (1901) were large vessels notable for their sea-worthiness; a race between the two latter in the Clyde in 1901 during a storm which compelled the accompanying steam yachts to put back proved one of the most remarkable yachting contests on record.
Between 1887 and 1901 Watson was prominently before the public as the designer of the British challenger's yacht in the contest in American waters between Great Britain and America. Watson designed J. Bell & Brothers' Thistle (1887), Lord Dunraven's Valkyrie II (1893), and Valkyrie III (1895), and Sir Thomas Lipton's Shamrock II (1901). Though these vessels failed to regain the cup for Great Britain they were yachts of the highest class. The American yachts which defeated them had little success whenever they visited British waters.
Watson, in addition to racing craft, also designed passenger, cargo, and mail steamers, and many of the largest steam yachts of the day. Amongst the latter were the Lysistrata (2089 tons), built for James Gordon Bennett; the Atmah (1746 tons), built for Baron Edmond de Rothschild; the Alberta (1322 tons), built for the King of the Belgians; the Zarnitza (1086 tons), built for the Tsar of Russia, and other yaohts built for foreign owners.
Watson contributed to 'Yachting' (2 vols. 1895, Badminton Library) and published in 1881 a series of lectures, 'Progress in Yachting and Yacht-building,' deUvered at the Glasgow naval and marine engineering exhibition (1880-1). In 1882 he was elected a member of the Institute of Naval Architects, before which he read a paper on a new form of steering-gear. He was also for nearly twenty years consulting naval architect to the National Lifeboat Institution. He died at Glasgow on 12 Nov. 1904. Watson married in 1903 Marie, the daughter of Edward Lovibond of Greenwich. He had no issue.
S. E. F.