Mastodawn

Le Royaume-Uni s’autorise à arraisonner les navires de la «flotte fantôme» russe dans ses eaux territoriales

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.opex360.com/2026/03/26/le-royaume-uni-sautorise-a-arraisonner-les-navires-de-la-flotte-fantome-russe-dans-ses-eaux-territoriales/

Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh Sep 5, 2023

Finest yacht in the world: the thread about the Leith-built “Iolanda”

Today’s Auction House Artefact is a 1909 painting of the beautiful yacht Iolanda, cruising off Naples, by the artist Antonie de Simone. She was built in 1908 by Ramage & Ferguson in Leith for the wealthy American railroad and shipping financier (and yachting fanatic) Morton F. Plant, and had a long and interesting life

Iolanda, by Antonie de Simone, 1909

At this time if you wanted one of the biggest and best steam yachts in the world you went to Messrs Cox & King of Pall Mall in London to design it, specifically their naval architect Joseph E. Wilkins. And once you had your plans you likely went to Ramage & Ferguson in Leith to have them built. The Iolanda was the largest of the vessels that came out of the Cox & King-Ramage & Ferguson partnership, being 310 feet long (94.5m) and displacing 1,823 tons (1,654 tonnes). Described as “probably the finest yacht in the world“, she could make 19 knots on her 3,500hp steam engines and with her bunkers filled with 600 tons of coal she could cruise for 6,000 nautical miles. To lengthen her endurance, she was also rigged as a schooner and could proceed under sail power alone.

Iolanda, from “Steam Yachts” by Erik Hofman, 1970

That’s a very big and very fast yacht by the standards of the day – as much as now – indeed she was the tenth largest yacht on Lloyd’s Register in 1913 and the third largest in private ownership (behind that of the Vanderbilts and of Gordon Bennett of the New York Times). This was the third in a series of such yachts that Plant had gotten from Cox & King – the others being the Venetia and the Vanadis. She was crewed by a compliment of 70 and had a capacity for 80 passengers. The interiors, as you might expect, were the finest that money could buy, a Queen Anne style. Her fittings included three electrical generation plants, a 3,000 feet long (914m) string consisting of 1,500 red, white and blue lamps that could be strung from the masts, a desalination system that could produce 15 tons of fresh water per day, a special system to chill the seawater in her plumbing for cold baths and an infirmary with its own X-ray machine.

The interior of the Iolanda, from Yachting Magazine, October 1908

Morton Plant, whose sailing schooner was named Elena after the Queen of Italy, named Iolanda after the Italian Princess Royal. He was particularly proud of how big his new steam yacht’s funnel was. To demonstrate its size and to mark the occasion of the launch of the hull in Leith in February 1908, he held a party luncheon inside it for 100 guests (the funnel at this times till being on its side on the quayside). Plant. On his arrival back in the US at New London on August 29th 1908, he flew a 220-foot long pennant from the masthead.

The Iolanda in 1912

In 1909, Plant and his friends began a 33,000 mile cruise around the world that would take almost a year (including the visit to Naples as seen in the painting). He wrote and published an account of this voyage in 1911, sensibly titled The Cruise of the Iolanda. He returned from this global jolly on July 5th, 1910, but had already grown tired of his new toy and soon put it on the market. It was bought in 1911 by Mme. Elizabeth Tereshchenko, a friend of Plant and a wealthy member of the Ukrainian upper class, who spent most of her time in Cannes.

Plant and friends on deck on the Iolanda, from “Cruise of the Iolanda” by Morton F. Plant.

The Iolanda came complete with her Norwegian captain, Charles A.K. Bertun. On the outbreak of WW1, Bertrun and the yacht were stuck in Norway. As the property of an allied nation (the Russian Empire), she was secretly chartered to the British Admiralty and Bertun escaped with her to England on the pretext of going to Bergen for dry docking. The Royal Navy commissioned the yacht as a patrol vessel – work which her size and speed well suited her to. For this purpose she was given a couple of 3″ guns, and seems to have had an uneventful war.

Cross-sectional builder’s model of the Iolanda displayed at the New York Yacht Club.

Morton Plant died on 5th November 1918, just before the end of the war. His obituary noted his long list of yachts and membership of the New York, Atlantic, Corinthian (Philadelphia), Indian Harbour, Larchmont, Sea View, Royal Thames, Royal St. George and Royal Forth Yacht Clubs. When the war ended a few weeks later, Captain Bertun took possession of the Iolanda on behalf of the Tereschenko family and took her back to Leith to Ramage & Fergusons to be refitted and repaired after war service. On the death of her owner now exiled in Cannes and Monaco – she passed to Elizabeth’s son, Mykhailo Tereshchenko. Mykhailo was Russian Foreign Minister in November 1917 when he had been rounded up by the Provisional Government and locked in the St. Petersburg Citadel. He escaped from this imprisonment in 1918 and fled to Norway with the 42 carat Tereshchenko diamond, the largest blue diamond in the world. Legend says that this diamond is cursed, and this was responsible for the fall of Imperial Russia and the Tereschenko dynasty.

Photo of Mikhail Ivanovich Tereshchenko from the first edition of “Ten Days that Shook the World” (1919)

The family needed money to finance their life in exile on the French Riviera, so sold the Iolanda to the yacht brokers Camper & Nicholson in 1921 for use on the hire market. In 1927 she was purchased by Moses Taylor Pine Jr. of the National City Bank in New York. Like Morton Plant before them, the Moses Pines made an inaugural cruise and published an account of it (Diary of Happenings Aboard the Steam Yacht Iolanda, Being a More Or Less [principally Less] Veracious and Plain Account of the Adventurous Voyage Undertaken etc. etc.) Moses died, I believe, the following year, but his wife kept the yacht on for her own use. In 1939 the Admiralty once again came calling on the Iolanda, buying her off Mrs Moses through an intermediary, Mrs G. J. Guthrie Nicholson of Newport Rhode Island, reportedly for only $5. She was commissioned once again into the Royal Navy, this time as the submarine tender HMS White Bear. Her principal duties were to escort submarines heading out on, and returning from, patrols into their home bases.

HMS White Bear during World War 2, Imperial War Museum photo © IWM FL 4085

On Nov. 30th 1942, White Bear left Holy Loch in company with the submarine HMS Tuna – which she escorted as far as Wolf Rock off Cornwall – before the latter set a course for the Gironde estuary to drop off 6 Royal Marine Commandos for Operation Frankton – the Cockleshell Hero raid.

1955 film poster for the fictionalised account of Operation Frankton – “Cockleshell Heroes”

White Bear was refitted as a survey vessel in 1944 and posted to the East Indies Fleet, stationed at Colombo. She was fitted with a large and modern printing plant so that the newly surveyed charts could be sent straight to the fleet.

The printing room on HMS White Bear

She returned to the UK in 1947 and was sold, first to Burwood & Co. of London. She was scrapped in Holland in 1958 at the age of 50. A number of artefacts survived, including her clock, the ship’s bell (which sold in 2018 at auction for £1,116) and her figurehead.

The figurehead of the Iolanda, a 1928 photo

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