Cetonia racing Meteor IV

One of the most handsome of the pre-Great War racing schooners, Cetonia - originally named L'Esperance - was designed by J.M. Soper and built by Camper & Nicholson at Gosport in 1902. Registered at 295 tons gross (147 net), she measured 120 feet in length with a 24 foot beam, and carried an impressive 11,216 square feet of sail. Her most notable owner was the racing peer Viscount Iveagh and under his colours, she was a frequent winner. Just as keen as Iveagh but even more competitive was the German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II who, in less than twenty-five years, owned five successive Meteors, each one larger and more splendid than its predecessor. Meteor IV, a steel schooner, was designed by Max Oertz and built in the Germania yard at Kiel in 1909. A familar sight at Cowes in the last years before the Great War, she won many prizes for the Kaiser prior to the building of his last yacht Meteor V in 1914.