When we returned to Cannes in 1866, the completed boat was sent out by sea, and we saw her released from her casing with immense interest.  She was christened in due form, with a bottle of champagne, by our first cousin, the venerable Lady de Ros, and named the Abercorn.  Lady de Ros was a daughter of the Duke of Richmond, and had been present at the famous ball in Brussels on the eve of Waterloo in 1815; a ball given by her father in honour of her youngest sister.

The crew then went into serious training.  Bow was Sir David Erskine, for many years Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Commons; No. 2, my brother-in-law, Lord Mount Edgcumbe; No. 3, General Sir George Higginson, with my father as stroke.  Lord Elphinstone, who had been in the Navy early in life, officiated as coxswain.  But my father was then fifty-five years old, and he soon found out that his heart was no longer equal to the strain to which so long and so very arduous a course (three miles), in rough water, would subject it.  As soon as he realised that his age might militate against the chance of his crew winning, he resigned his place in the boat in favour of Sir George Higginson, who was replaced as No. 3 by Mr. Meysey-Clive.  My father took Lord Elphinstone’s place as coxswain, but here, again, his weight told against him.  He was over six feet high and proportionately broad, and he brought the boat’s stern too low down in the water, so Lord Elphinstone was re-installed, and my father most reluctantly had to content himself with the role of a spectator, in view of his age.  The crew dieted strictly, ran in the mornings, and went to bed early.  They were none of them in their first youth, for Sir George Higginson was then forty; Sir David Erskine was twenty-eight; my brother-in-law, Lord Mount Edgcumbe, thirty-four; and Lord Elphinstone thirty-eight.

The great day of the race arrived.  We met with one signal piece of ill-luck.  Our No. 3, Mr. Meysey-Clive, had gone on board the French flagship, and was unable to get ashore again in time, so at the very last minute a young Oxford rowing-man, the late Mr. Philip Green, volunteered to replace him, though he was not then in training.  The French men-of-war produced huge thirty-oared galleys, with two men at each oar.  There were also smaller twenty and twelve-oared boats, but not a single “four” but ours.  The sea was heavy and lumpy, the course was five kilometres (three miles), and there was a fresh breeze blowing off the land.  Our little mahogany Oxford-built boat, lying very low in the water, looked pitiably small beside the great French galleys.  It wasn’t even David and Goliath, it was as though “Little Tich” stood up to Georges Carpentier.  We saw the race from a sailing yacht; my father absolutely beside himself with excitement.