The Royal Albert Yacht Club takes its name from the Albert Yacht Club formed in 1864 under the patronage of Prince Albert, a keen sailor. The following year the word 'Royal' was added by gracious permission of Queen Victoria. At this time the Club assumed responsibility for the Portsmouth and Southsea Regattas held in the eastern Solent. Each year Queen Victoria gave three cups for yacht racing: one to The Royal Yacht Squadron at Cowes, one to the Scottish or Irish ''Royal'' Yacht Club and one to an English 'Royal' yacht club. In 1890, it was the turn of the Royal Albert Yacht Club and which had previously received a Queen's Cup in 1873, to receive the Queen's Cup.

Charles Nottage (1853-1894) was the son of Alderman Nottage (1823-1885), the Lord Mayor of London. On his father's death he declined the aldermanic gown to indulge in yachting. He had been educated in Switzerland and Germany and then Cambridge, where he studied law. He took part in many yachting tours and three world tours. He purchased his first yacht in 1885, 'Foxhound', followed in 1889 by 'Deerhound', which he designed with George Lennox Watson (1851-1904), the Scottish designer of H.R.H The Prince of Wales's racing yacht 'Britannia' in 1893; Watson was the designer of several British challengers for the Americas Cup.

'Foxhound' and 'Deerhound' won Captain Nottage 121 cups and prizes, amounting some £3,000. 'Foxhound accounted' for fifty-six, whilst 'Deerhound' won the balance of sixty-five, which included this Queen’s Cup, one of her nineteen prizes in 1890. Nottage sold her to the Marquis Ridolfi in 1892 and she was renamed 'Oretta'. Based in Livorno and subsequently Naples for the next twenty years, she changed hands several times, being renamed 'Luisa' in 1898, when bought by Vincenzo Murolo, and 'Luisa M.' in 1903. Last owned by Ernesto Murolo from 1909 to 1911, she disappeared from Lloyd's Register of Yachts in 1912.