| I have noticed that David Cox is rather puzzled by the picture Regatta Day 2 that appears in the December issue of Mersea Life. The Regatta, the 1911 one, was a one day event and the photo was No. 2 taken on the day. I have gone through my postcard collection and found the first one which is titled Waiting for the Band.
On No. 2 we can see the band is in place and on postcard Regatta Day 3 the crowd is even larger. A group has gathered on the water's edge waiting to be ferried out to watch the watersports from the Committee Boat or the Line. We even have a motor car mingling with the crowd. Not many of those about in 1911.
Thomas Hammond like most postcard publishers, produced cards to sell and here he would have an abundance of buyers seeing themselves in a photograph - probably for the very first time. Sailing races would have taken place in the morning and would have finished some time ago, the crews getting ready to take part in the watersports. As a matter of interest the first card was mailed on 22 September 1911 to Kate French of Blackheath, London, with the message.'Could you possibly come home on Wednesday next as Wivenhoe Regatta is on Thursday and we are all going by trap.' That would please the environmental campaigners.
Hammond took one shot on his way down to the Regatta showing a Berry's bus loaded with spectators throwing up a cloud of dust as it passes the Coastguard Hut - now known as Grannies Playground.
Published in Mersea Life Magazine March 2020, page 22.
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