(The author calls himself "Charles E. Robinson, B.A." on the title page, but in 1889 he double-barrelled his surname, becoming Charles Edmund Newton-Robinson. Confusingly, he sometimes also seems to have used Newton as a given name instead of Charles Edmund.)

At the time he made the journey described in this book, Robinson was still an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge. He later became a barrister, but he was obviously yet another of those great multi-purpose Victorian enthusiasts, being not only a yachtsman but also a noted art collector, fencing for Britain in the Olympic Games of 1900 and 1906, and publishing - amongst other things - several volumes of poetry, a parody of Alice in Wonderland, and the article on the épée in Encyclopædia Britannica. His father was the painter and art-collector Sir John Charles Robinson, one of the original curators of the South Kensington Museum (the V&A) in the 1850s.

Together with a couple of Cambridge friends, the indispensable professional skipper ("Hescroff") and sometimes a locally-recruited pilot, Robinson sailed his little 34ft yawl from Dorset to the Elbe in the summer of 1874, with the ostensible aim of visiting his brother who was (for unexplained reasons) staying with the Pastor of Brunsbüttel.

The route he followed took him up-Channel to Dover, across to Oostende, through the Delta and the Dutch canals to Amsterdam, then across the (then) Zuiderzee and through the Frisian canals to the Lauwerszee, where he got into the North Sea again to cross to the mouth of the Elbe. By the standards of the time, this was quite an adventurous journey. Apart from a few eccentrics like John MacGregor, no-one considered small yachts like the Widgeon suitable for overseas cruising; on the other hand, the sort of big keel-yachts that English gentlemen liked to sail in the 1870s would have had far too deep a draught to venture into Dutch inland waters.

Nowadays, of course, a 34ft yacht would count as at least medium-sized. A modern yacht of that size would also have a far simpler rig than the Widgeon, and be arranged to have a lot more cabin-space as well. Widgeon must have been quite a tight squeeze with four people on board, and from time to time they had five. And modern yachting enthusiasts, in the sub-millionaire bracket at least, don't have to worry about segregating the paid staff from the gentry. I was really struck by the way that persisted even when Robinson and Hescroff return to England by steamer at the end of the trip - Robinson goes cabin-class and dines in the saloon, Hescroff has to sleep in the fo'csle with the emigrants.

It's interesting to note all sorts of other things that you wouldn't immediately think about that have changed since 1874. One very obvious one is that modern yachts invariably have engines. If Robinson needed to manoeuvre in a harbour, he had to pay some fishermen in a rowing boat a few shillings to give him a tow (miraculously, there always seemed to be some of those on hand); when travelling through the canals he variously hitches a lift at the back of a chain of barges with a steam tug, hires a man-with-a-horse for the day, or - for short distances - "a couple of sturdy boys". Perhaps the most astonishing thing for a modern reader in that connection, though, is when he spends most of a day drifting around becalmed in the middle of the straits of Dover waiting for a wind. If you tried that nowadays you'd probably be run down by a bulk-carrier within minutes, or arrested by the coastguard...

It was fun too to see the Netherlands as they were 150 years ago, when the Delta and Zuiderzee were still tidal, when you had to be wary of the official charts because new railway bridges kept popping up unannounced, when Urk was still an island and grass was growing in the deserted streets of Enkhuizen (pop. 5000 at the time), when it was rare to find a foreign visitor to Amsterdam who was there for something other than business, when pleasure-boats were exempt from harbour-dues(!), when almost no-one spoke English, and when it was difficult to get a decent glass of beer...

Robinson's discussion of Brunsbüttel and Hamburg is interesting too, of course - construction of the Kiel Canal wouldn't start for another 13 years, so Brunsbüttel was still nothing more than a quiet, small fishing port with a ferry across the mouth of the Elbe. And it's only ten years since the area stopped being part of Denmark. It's funny to see how Robinson, who was completely baffled by Dutch and found Frisian only slightly easier, now claims to be perfectly au fait with Plattdeutsch, and even quotes and translates some verses for us. Could it be that his brother has been giving him a hand? ( )