Galloping Ghosts

The book

Galloping Ghosts follows the 18-footer from the over-canvassed, over-crewed dinghy of the 1890s to the seven-man skiffs of the 1930s and the moulded veneer boats of the 1950s, through state, interstate and inter-dominion racing in Australia and New Zealand. Its publisher names among its boats H.C. Press II, Aberdare, Taree, Intrigue, Myra Too, Envy, the Jantzen Girls, Taipan, Venom and Schemer. It took about ten years to research.

It covers the founding of the Squadron and the split of 1935, when the League broke away. Ian Smith's register of the 18-footers on The Open Boat sends readers to it for the full story of the split, and for the dispute over the world championship trophy that Taree won in Sydney in 1938 and kept in Auckland. Smith, citing it, puts the number of 18-footers built between 1880 and 1954 at about 370.

The name

Before it was a book, the Galloping Ghost was a boat. It was the press's name for Aberdare, the heel-less seven-foot-beam skiff from Brisbane: in January 1938 Brisbane's Truth headlined that its Galloping Ghost had shocked Sydney's Red Terror. The club's Galloping Ghost Trophy, for the Australian Championship of the historical 18-footers, keeps the name, and the replica Aberdare races in the club's fleet. The club's old pages sometimes called the book The Galloping Ghost; its cover says Galloping Ghosts.

The launch

The book was launched at the club on the evening of Tuesday 20 March 2012, at a reunion to which the Australian Open Skiff Trust, the 18 Footers League and the Squadron invited skiff sailors. More than 100 came, and the book sold out on the night. Elliott dedicated it to two skiff men, Cliff Monkhouse and Grant Taylor. The Mark Foy Trophy, which Foy put up in 1934 and which was later melted in a house fire, was shown restored, thanks to the club's historian, John 'Steamer' Stanley, who also had a big hand in organising the night. (The club's 2021 newsletter gives the date as 12 March; the club's notice of the launch and the press report both give the 20th.)

The author

Robin Elliott is a New Zealand yachting historian. With Harold Kidd he wrote Winkelmann's Waitemata (1998), Southern Breeze, a history of yachting in New Zealand (1999, with David Pardon), and The Logans (2001), on New Zealand's great boatbuilding family, and the two wrote maritime history columns for Boating New Zealand. His Emmy (1994) is the story of seventy years of M-class yachting. The history of the original The Mistake on the club's old site is his, written in Auckland in October 2005.

New copies are still sold in Australia. Neither the National Library of Australia nor the State Library of NSW lists a copy; Christchurch City Libraries in New Zealand lend it.

• Boat Books, St Leonards, paperback: A$39.95
• Booktopia, paperback: A$50.75. Ships in 5 to 7 business days
• AbeBooks, second-hand: three copies listed, from US$14.06 plus postage

Prices as the sellers listed them on 28 October 2026.

Libraries that hold it: Christchurch City Libraries.