A Century of Sydney's Flying Sailors

The book

The Sydney Flying Squadron published this history in 1991 for its centenary. It is the club's own account of its first hundred years, an oblong book of 108 pages with photographs throughout and an index.

The Dictionary of Sydney cites it for Mark Foy and the founding of the Squadron in 1891 (pages 11 to 16), for Foy's promotion of the 18-footers over the larger 22-footers (page 17), and for the 1960s and 1970s, when the new lightweight 18s met resistance at first and the skiff classes began carrying sponsors' names on their sails (page 70).

The club's newsletter of 15 April 2021 took much of its history from the book: the founding meeting at Rainford's Cambridge Club Hotel in August 1891, Foy's triangular course, handicap start and coloured sails, the row over the Anniversary Regatta of 1892, the League's breakaway in the 1930s, the clubhouse at Careening Cove in 1958 and the purchase of the Pattons Slipways site in 1973. Among the book's photographs is the Sydney Morning Herald's picture of the North family crew with Avalon in the 1940s, which the club reproduced in its article on the North family.

The author

Margaret Molloy (1932 to 2023) was a journalist and writer, born at Nowra into a family that owned and edited the local papers, and she wrote for the Shoalhaven News. In 2012 she called this book the most enjoyable of her projects: Mark Foy's granddaughter offered her Foy's diaries, and while researching it she met some of the finest skiff sailors in the country. She received the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2009 for her service to the Pittwater community, and died in April 2023, aged 90.

No bookshop sells it new. Second-hand copies turn up, and the club may still hold some of its own: ask the office.

• AbeBooks, second-hand: two copies listed, from US$17.35 plus postage

Prices as the sellers listed them on 28 October 2026.

Libraries that hold it: National Library of Australia, State Library of NSW.