The Royal London Yacht Club's steam yacht Queen Marfisa, 1889

Designed by Dixon Kemp and built by W. White & Sons at Cowes in 1887, the steel screw schooner Queen Marfisa was owned by Mr. George Beer of Barton Fields, Canterbury. Registered at 127½ tons gross (86½ net and 160 Thames), she measured 121 feet in length with a 17 foot beam and was powered by one of her builder's own 2-cylinder engines. Her first owner, Mr. Beer, belonged to several yacht clubs amongst which was the Royal London whose colours she is flying in this painting. Subsequently owned by Mr. Charles Kettlewell of Grosvenor Square who renamed her Marchesa, by 1900 she was owned jointly by T.H. Sooby & Sir William Corry and called Marcella. Under different ownership but still named Marcella when the Great War began in 1914, she was hired by the Admiralty as an armed boarding steamer in July 1915 but was sunk on 24^th March 1916 after a collision in the Downs.