Classic yachts carry their history likeno other means of transport. The lives of their former owners seem to seep into the bulkheads of these old boats, adding value with every scandal, romance and indiscretion. Some people will buy only a classic, lured by the irresistible opportunity to add their particular patina to a glorious relic, to become part of the story.
Kalizma is a boat with more chapters than most. The 46m former steamship was built in 1906 in Scotland, but shot to worldwide attention when it was bought by Richard Burton as a gift for Elizabeth Taylor in 1967. They fell in love with the yacht during the filming of the romance Boom! in Sardinia, charmed by her long, arcing line and jaunty funnel.
At that time they were the world’s most famous couple and Kalizma was where they would escape. They would spend hours walking the decks, “touching and staring at it as if it were a beautiful baby”, Sam Kashner writes in his book Furious Love, which chronicles the obsessive-destructive relationship of the Hollywood golden couple. The boat cost them $192,000 and, Kashmer says, another $200,000 to refurbish, adding “Chippendale mirrors, Louis XIV chairs, English tapestries, transforming it into . . . an Edwardian palace. They spent months on board the Kalizma as the world’s richest vagabonds.”
Guests welcomed on board for long, boozy lunches, which were only occasionally interrupted by screaming fights between their hosts, included John Gielgud, Ringo Starr, Orson Welles and Prince Rainier III of Monaco and Princess Grace. It was on board the boat in Monaco that Burton presented his wife with a 69.42-carat diamond, thought to be the largest and most expensive in the world, for whichhe paid $1.1 million, ensuring that it didn’t fall into the hands of his rival Aristotle Onassis.
It’s this heritage that convinced Peter de Savary to buy the boat in the 1980s. The British entrepreneur used it as his base when competing for the 1983 America’s Cup in Newport, Rhode Island. “[Taylor’s] suite was all pink; the bathroom, the bedroom, everything was hot pink. It was definitely an acquired taste but I didn’t touch it – it was partof the history,” de Savary said. “It had the original engine from 1906 and you could watch the pistons going up and down, and we always had to have two men in the engine room at all times running around squirting oil.” De Savary decreed that Prince Philip was the only person allowed on deck without removing his shoes.
Kalizma has passed through several more hands since then, including those of Vijay Mallya, former owner of the Force India Formula One team, before being spotted by its present custodian, the Omani businessman Shirish Saraf. It was in a sorry state when he found it, languishing in Sri Lanka, aboutto be seized by its insurers over unpaid bills. It was slowly rotting and described to him as a “dead ship”.
But, like many owners before him, he saw something in her. “Here is a boat that’s been through two world wars, has had anyone and everyone stayon it, has survived everything, when not one other yacht of that pedigree has managed to. And you have to think, “Why?’ There must be some soul, some energy that’s different.” He bought her at a poorly attended auction in 2019 and set out to bring her back to life, in doing so spending much more thanhe paid for it, as is common with classics.
Work was interrupted by the pandemic, but the finishing touches were made last year. Kalizmais back to her best, cruising the Pacific and accepting charter bookings. Gone are the heavy, dark interiors, and in are light, breezy furnishings and fittings. Saraf did keep some threads to the past in a wall of black-and-white photos of Burton and Taylor and the useof violet, the colour of Taylor’s eyes. “I think there’s a responsibility that comes with owning something like this, and that responsibility is to keep the soul the same,” he says.
But he has done more than that – he has written the next chapter in one of the best boat stories going.
Charters from €90,000 a week, morleyyachts.com
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