By the end of the 1880's, the appeal of the sailing at Erith was waning. The gardens near the Clubhouse made way for a coal wharf, the river was increasingly polluted and vessels waiting to dock upriver crowded the tideway. But the real limitation was the Club 'circular course', perhaps better described as a 'boomerang'. Adventurous helmsmen must have found it increasingly boring to sail the same course with just the variation of progressing clockwise or anti-clockwise, according to wind direction.
The development of the railways, which had made the village of Erith accessible to Londoners, had also reaches the village of Burnham in Essex. Visitors to Burnham found a tidal estuary, the Roach flowing into the Crouch from the south, offering racing variety, clear winds and miles of undeveloped salt marshes and mud flats. The advance party settled for a room at the White Hart in Burnham as their first base. Thus it was that on June 5th 1892 a number of boats made the trip from the Thames to Burnham-on-Crouch to visit the new branch.
The Quayside outside the White Harte Hotel in the 1890's