Over tea in the club's hushed library, under a portrait of the Marquis of Donegal (commodore, 1847--48), historian and former commodore Maldwin Drummond says such snubs were dangerous in an age when yachts carried real cannons.
For weeks beforehand, men converged every evening to sip sweet tea or coffee laced with cardamom and discuss rival plans to relocate the district library or extend the municipal pier.