in the barge on board the Princess Augusta yacht: when the standard was hoisted at the maintop, and Commodore Payne's broad pennant floated at the foretop. As the Princess passed Woolwich, the whole band of the royal regiment of artillery played 'God Save the King,' and the military cheered the standard. It was the first burst of loyalty her Royal Highness had heard on English ground, and it drew from her tears of joy. About noon the Augusta yacht reached Greenwich, when the Princess embarked in the barge, steered as before by Lieutenant Mainwaring, and landed on the right of the stairs, in front of the Hospital; where she was received by Sir Hugh Palliser, the Governor."—Naval Chronicle. The Princess Augusta appears in the Navy List of 1800 as being laid up at Deptford. She was subsequently broken up.
The first open sailing match on the Thames, of which any record appears, was sailed during the summer of 1749, and was won by the Princess Augusta, a small yacht or pleasure boat owned by George Bellas, a Register in Doctors Commons. The course was from Greenwich to the Nore and return; the prize being a silver cup presented by the Prince of Wales, afterward King George III. It appears that this youthful patron of sport had already presented a cup which was rowed for from Whitehall to Putney, in celebration of his eleventh birthday, on June 4th, of the same year, when it was intimated that he might also present a prize to be sailed for by yachts or pleasure boats on the Thames.
