The Weekend Watson – Charles Henry Ashley

Charles Henry Ashley really is a G.L. Watson for the Weekend – you can sail and row in her… or should it be row and sail…

Peter Williams / Clwb Cychod Cemaes

“To a reader today, it may seem strange that men would elect to use oars as the motive power in a lifeboat that they would take to sea in the most testing conditions. But the crews were local fishermen who might well have used sail to take them out to the fishing grounds, but who recognised from long experience the power and precision that rowing offered in a boat of 40ft or less. Generally speaking, on those parts of the coast where there were many sandbanks and shallow water, the men tended to favour oars because it gave them very close control over their craft. The last pulling lifeboat did not leave service until about 1948.”

(Martin Black, G.L. Watson – The Art and Science of Yacht Design)

The pulling and sailing lifeboat Charles Henry Ashley, fully restored and operated by Clwb Cychod Cemaes/ Cemaes Boat Club on the north coast of Anglesey, North Wales, is a remarkable survivor from the days when man and sail power were still preferred by the majority of the crews of smaller lifeboats of Britain and Ireland over the fledgling internal combustion engine.

Built in 1907 by Thames Ironworks at Bow Creek to G.L. Watson’s 38ft non self-righting* design, she cost £1090, and  remained (very patiently… launched in anger only seven times) on station until 1932 at her precarious and exposed looking eyrie at nearby Porth yr Ogof. Perhaps her light use in service contributed to her later survival and revival…

Try that as well as shipping oars and raising rig in an onshore breeze… / Clwb Cychod Cemaes

Voila! / Clwb Cychod Cemaes

After decommissioning, the station was closed and Charles Henry Ashley led the usual life of many an ex-lifeboat – a combination of pleasure boating, lay up and static display. But importantly for her unique place now in posterity and in the G.L. Watson story, she never left the area, and her previous role in the maritime life of that exposed coast wasn’t forgotten.

Her rebuild in the experienced local hands of John Jones, Classic Sailboats – builder of many of the newer Dublin Bay Water Wag dinghies as well as Hal Sisk’s replica Dublin Bay Colleen Class sloop Colleen Bawn – was completed in 2009.

© Kevin Lewis photosbykev.com

Clwb Cychod Cemaes/Cemaes Boat Club offer a unique chance to experience the skills and fitness levels of the remarkable lifeboatmen of the past aboard the Charles Henry Ashley, with various levels of membership, including “Single Day Sail”.

For anyone experienced, or just interested in the joy of the teamwork involved in rowing twelve oars in unison, it’s surely the chance of a lifetime. But the adrenalin rush of – like it or not – hurtling down a slipway at more than hull speed, shipping oars and raising sail into a strong onshore breeze – on the call of volunteer duty – will just have to be imagined. Nowadays her home is the picturesque drying harbour at Cemaes; sailing sessions follow nature’s timetable.

IM/ MB (Big thanks to Mac Ozanne of Cemaes Boat Club, and photographer Kevin Lewis)

*Amid all the pomp and circumstance of his long hours on designs for America’s Cup challengers and palatial steam yachts, G.L. Watson worked from 1887 for a very low annual stipend on improvements to lifeboat design as the Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s Consulting Naval Architect. He advocated better stability over self-righting ability. Via his successors, J.R. Barnett, William Smart and Allen McLachlan, G.L. Watson & Co. continued the consultancy right up to the relatively modern 52ft (16m) Arun Class, the last of which was withdrawn from service in 2008.

Read all about it in Martin Black’s comprehensive and beautiful biography -

G.L. Watson – The Art and Science of Yacht Design.

Charles Henry Ashley with a modern Trent Class lifeboat at Cemaes Bay RNLI Day, 2011
© Kevin Lewis photosbykev.com

The Reliance Project 3

A superb image was posted on The Reliance Project’s blog yesterday to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the launching of the 1903 America’s Cup defender “super cutter” Reliance at the Herreshoff yard, Bristol, RI., USA.

No skirts needed to hide her beautiful and potent lines: her adversary, the William Fife Jr. designed Shamrock III had already been launched – on Paddy’s Day, of course – at Wm. Denny Bros. of Dumbarton, Scotland.

And everyone seemed to have supreme confidence in her minimalistic cradle – presumably designed by the the master engineer himself, Nathanael Herreshoff.

Progress with this fascinating and meticulous project – to build a one-sixth scale museum-quality fully rigged model – seems to be warming up with the season.

Martin Black’s biography of G.L. Watson, designer of Sir Thomas Lipton’s previous America’s Cup challenger, Shamrock (II), reveals how the challengers handled the knowledge that the little known tank testing of Shamrock III had indicated that she would be slower than Shamrock II…

IM

Green Launch 3

After a public vote, the world’s second hybrid ferry – to be launched in May at Ferguson Shipbuilders, Port Glasgow – will be called Lochinvar, from Walter Scott’s 1808 poem Marmion , and following the “Scottish Literature Class” theme of her older sister Hallaig.

There is no local connection in that name with the route she will ply across Loch Fyne between Tarbert and Portavadie, but at least it harks back to a still much loved West Highland “steamer” (actually diesel powered) of older times – even a film star.

The first Lochinvar led an exceptionally long life, and in her middle ages briefly starred in the 1945 Powell & Pressburger movie I Know Where I’m Going! – surely one of the best lazy winter Sunday afternoon old flicks.

Lochinvar (II) is scheduled to be launched at Port Glasgow on 23rd May.

IM

Glasgow naval architect and yacht designer G.L. Watson once described yacht building as “the poetry of ship building”. Read more about Martin Black’s biography, G.L. Watson – The Art and Science of Yacht Design here.

Summer of ’42

Water Wag dinghy class historian Vincent Delany has uncovered more remarkable vintage sailing regatta footage at Dublin’s Irish Film Archive – this time in colour – showing vibrant regatta activity off Howth Harbour, County Dublin, in the summer of 1942.

Yes, 1942, during the Emergency, as the World War II years were officially known in neutral Ireland.

Where else in the world were such scenes played out in that year? The USA had gone to war against Japan and Germany the previous December; nowhere else in the Northern Hemisphere, we think – perhaps only in Argentina in the Southern Hemishere?

Sit back and enjoy only beautiful yachts, many of them gaff rigged, the majority of them locally designed and built – all in glorious colour – a rare treat thanks to Howth Yacht Club.

In his monumental 1995 book Howth – A Centenary of Sailing – a valuable social document as well as a comprehensive north Dublin sailing history – W.M. Nixon records that Howth Sailing Club’s Lambay [Island] Race attracted 21 starters in 1942, with no less than 73 yachts taking part the August Regatta.

Presumably such numbers reflected an increased confidence in security. During the early part of the previous year the east coast of neutral Ireland had found itself under aerial bombardment, and later in the spring and early summer of 1941, Belfast, a day’s sail north, as part of the United Kingdom had been heavily blitzed more than once, along with Britain’s major industrial and shipbuilding centres. It is said that the three nights of the Swansea “blitz” in late February 1941 could be heard in County Wexford.

But by the summer of 1942, with the theatres of conflict moving east, the threat of direct contact with war had receded – and the sun obviously put its hat on for the cameraman and the sailors.

I’m an imposter here, from across the water in another Celtic land. While similar scenes in Dublin Bay would be a paradise for a Scottish yachting historian, with most of the classes there designed by William Fife Jr and Alfred Mylne, Howth was a centre of home grown talent. This footage is a remarkable testament to the fine work of two of Ireland’s best yacht designers, W. Herbert Boyd and John (J.B.) Kearney.

But I’ll dare to take a stab at some boat spotting below. It would be wonderful if additions, corrections and people-spotting contributions could be added in the “Leave a Reply” box below.

01:19 et seq

The Howth 17-Footers (length water line) feature throughout: designed by W.H. Boyd of Howth, they first raced as a class in 1898 and still do – recognizable by their very high peaked, nowadays multicoloured, jackyard topsails.

“4”: 17-Footer Zaida built by James Clancy, Kingstown, 1900. Owner in 1942, H.H. Poole.

02:35

The dark hulled canoe stern yawl is Mavis, an Irish yachting icon, designed and built for himself  in Ringsend, Dublin by John Kearney in 1925. She is presently based in Maine, USA. She appears many times more, especially in close-up at 04:18.

02:40

Believed to be Rosalind, designed John Kearney, built by Morris & Lorimer, Sandbank, Clyde, Scotland, 1936 (same model as Evora at 05:52). Owner in 1942, Dr T.J.D. Lane.

02:46

To right of the angler, M.Y. Rena, designed and built by John Leitch & Co., Renfrew, Clyde, Scotland. Owner in 1942, Howth Motor YC Commodore, William Lacy.

03:27

“12”: 17-Footer Rosemary, built by J. Kelly, Portrush, 1907. Owner in 1942, A.F.B. Thompson.

03:41

“6”: Mercia III, designed by G.U. Laws, Burnham on Crouch, Essex, England, built by her first owner, J. Jarvis Jr., either at London or Burnham, 1908. Owner in 1942, Smallridge family. Hopefully alive and kicking somewhere in NW England. She won the yacht races on Dublin Bay during the 1924 Tailteann Games.

03:46

Varnished MFV D335. She’s beautiful. What’s she called and who built her?

UPDATE 8 April 2013: identified by Sean Norris as the fishing vessel Deirdre, built by Tyrells of Arklow in 1942. Later worked out of Kinsale, Rosslare, Wexford and Portavogie. What became of this “yacht-finish” fishing boat? Who was her first owner?

04:05

“84”: Tumlaren Class, Tumbler, designed by Knud Reimers, Sweden. Owner in 1942, Launce McMullen.

04:29

Mavis, with to leeward possibly Rosalind.

From 04:46

“12”: Danish “spidtsgatter” Curlew, designed by M.S.J. Hansen, built by Viggo Hansen, Kastrup, Copenhagen, 1933. Owner in 1942, J.J. McDowell.

Possibly Osamunda, designed by J.A. Smith and built by F. Maynard, Chiswick, London, 1906. Owner in 1942 Douglas Mellon.

05:45

“265”: Marama, designed by E.P. Hart, built by Berthon Boat Co., Lymington (as Izme), 1923. Owner in 1942, Harald Osterberg.

05:52

“7”: Evora, designed John Kearney, Dublin, built by H. Skinner & Son, Baltimore, Co. Cork, 1937. Owner in 1942, Master O’Hanlon.

06:44

Stella, designed and built by John Kearney, c1927. Owner in 1942, F.M. Walsh.

07.43–07:52

Believed to be Punctilio, Dublin Bay 25-Footer (waterline), designed by William Fife Jr., built by Charles Sibbick, Cowes, 1898. Owner in 1942, J.B. Stephens.

07:52

Green hulled cutter = ?

08:38

Cutter with tan sails, Huzure, designed by Captain O.M. Watts Ltd., built by A.V. Robertson & Co., Woodbridge, Suffolk, England, 1937. Owner in 1942, Keith McFerran.

08:48

The dark hull, clipper bow sloop moored off the bow of the lifeboat is believed to be Eithne, designed and built by W.H. Boyd, Howth, 1893 and still owned by him in 1942.

10:22

“16”: 17-Footer Eileen, built by M.Moloney, Kingstown, 1908. Owner in 1942, T.H. Roche.

The above information would be impossible to compile without reference to, and huge thanks for W.N. “Winkie” Nixon’s two invaluable, incredibly detailed and entertaining contributions to the documentation of Irish yachting history, To Sail the Crested Sea – the story of Irish cruising and the first fifty years of the Irish Cruising Club (1979), and Howth – A Centenary of Sailing (1995). Reference was also made to Erroll MacNally’s 1946 publication, Irish Yachting (1720–1946), the Donal O’Sullivan compiled, Dublin Bay – A Century of Sailing (1984) and Lloyd’s Register of Yachts.

As sailors in the warmer parts of the world, and hardy souls in higher latitudes, find their feet with the most recent revision of the Racing Rules of Sailing – in force since January 1^st –  it’s worth reflecting on the origins of the codification of sailing boat racing. Where did it start?

Click here to buy online.

Irish yachting historian, Hal Sisk, is very sure about that, and makes a strong case in his new publication -

Dublin Bay – The Cradle of Yacht Racing.

This attractive, revealing and beautifully illustrated book describes how the worldwide phenomenon of competitive sailing for fun was popularised and formatted by the pioneering yachtsmen of Dublin Bay during the mid 19th Century.

IM

Altair: one of Scotland’s most beautiful things

Altair: one of Scotland’s all time most beautiful things. Made by men who worked with their head and their hands – and their heart.

Designed, built and launched at Fairlie, Ayrshire, Scotland, 1931, by William Fife and Son.

IM (Thanks to Classic Boat & Sandeman Yacht Company)

Lego shipbuiding

Thanks to gCaptain.

Scottish literature class

The eye sweet preserved ring-netter, Shemaron: “on her way, the seas unminding”.
© Jacqui Barker

When Tarbert Loch Fyne poet George Campbell Hay (1915-1984) worked 1930s summers aboard the herring skiff Liberator, the local fishing fleet would have been universally motorised, either by conversion or by design.

Perhaps reflecting this transition, in his maritime work a vessel’s power source is either of no concern, or employed to great effect for onomatopoeic rhythm. In Ardlamont, below, we can just as well imagine that he is describing a sailing vessel if that is our desire.

Hay knew the waters of the Clyde’s fishing grounds intimately through all the weather a Scottish summer can muster. Although sheltered from the worst of the North Atlantic’s tantrums by the long peninsula of Kintyre, the Firth’s short chop still drums up lively conditions, especially at its headlands. Often, the fully laden voyage home to Loch Fyne would be against wind and wave.

ARDLAMONT

 

Rain from windward, sharp and blinding;

sweet to hear my darling tramping

on her way, the seas unminding,

swinging forefoot wounding, stamping.

 

Steep to windward ridges breaking,

huddled down in flocks before her;

light she throws her head up, shaking

broken seas and spindrift o’er her.

 

 

(From Wind on Loch Fyne by George Campbell Hay, Oliver & Boyd, 1948 by kind permission of the Trustees of the W.L. Lorimer Memorial Trust/ Scots Language Centre.)

Ardlamont is an ode to the joy of confidence in a sound vessel that loves doing exactly what it was designed to do – that shows its true character when the going gets tough. It could only be written by someone with fierce affinity to such conditions, and vessels, and locale.

It could be a harsh life then, aboard boats that afforded none of the shelter from the elements enjoyed by today’s fisherman. The rare survivors of the shocking “decommissioning” chainsaw massacres of the 1980s and 1990s – some now authentically preserved as much loved pleasure vessels – offer snug accommodations where once there were fish.

Once upon a time, when my line of work was guiding a lovely old retired Scottish ocean racing yacht for her summer holidays in the Mediterranean, I woke up one morning to this sight for sore eyes at anchor next door in Puerto d’Andraitx, Mallorca: the unmistakably lovely lines of a “Loch Fyne Skiff.”

Sireadh at Puerto de Andraitx, 1991
© Iain McAllister

Sireadh was far from the waters of her youth, where she had worked out of Minard on the west shore of Upper Loch Fyne with her ring-netting partner, Clan McNab. They’d been the last of the once numerous Upper Loch Fyne herring fleet.

Her English owners were to introduce this lowlander to a shameful gap in his knowledge of Scottish literature: the work of George Campbell Hay, and his epic but generally unknown poem Seeker, Reaper, first published in 1948.

I learned that Sireadh is gaelic for Seeker, and that Hay started thinking about the poem after she motored past one night.

That I should encounter ocean roving Sireadh and George Campbell Hay so far from home seemed so apt when I eventually caught up with Seeker, Reaper. There can be no doubt about this vessel’s power source. It ends:

She’s a solan, she’s a tramper, she’s a sea-shaker,
she’s a hawk, she’s a hammer, she’s a big-sea-breaker,
she’s a falcon, she’s a kestrel, she’s a wide-night-seeker,
she’s a river, she’s a render, she’s a foam-spray-waker.
She’s a stieve sea-strider, she’s a storm-course-keeper,
she’s a tide-scour-bucker, she’s a quick-light-leaper,
she’s a stem-teerer, keel-teerer, seeker, finder, reaper.
She’s Cast off!    Anchor up!    deid anchor-weary,
she’s a chain-snubber, moorin’-strainer, restless herbour peerie.
She’s a skyline-raiser, skyline-sinker, hulldown horizon-crosser,
She’s foreland, foreland, on and on, a high-heid-tosser.
She’s a glint, she’s a glimmer, she’s a glimpse, she’s a fleeter,
she’s an overhauler, leave-astern, a hale-fleet-beater;
she’s a kyle-coulter, knot-reeler, thrang-speed-spinner,
her mood is moulded on her and the mind that made her’s in her.
She’s a wake-plough, foam-plough, spray-hammer, roarer,
she’s a wind-anvil, crest-batterer, deep-trough-soarer,
she’s a dance-step-turner, she’s a broad-wake-scorer.
She’s a sound-threider, bight-stringer, her hert runs oot afore her.
When the big long seas come on lik walls, cold-white-heided,
she doesna flinch a point for them. Straight her wake is threided.

 

Though they come from the world’s rim
wi’ a livin’ gale,
she’ll gap and batter through them
and teer her chosen trail.
She’s stieve, thrawn, light, quick,
fast, wild, gay;
she’ll curtain the world wi hammered seas,
she’ll drench the stars wi spray.
They can tower atween her and the sky –
she never felt their awe;
she’ll walk them aa, thon trampin’ boat,
she’ll rise and walk them aa.
She’s a solan’s hert, a solan’s look;
she canna thole a lee.
I’ll coil her ropes and redd her nets,
and ease her through a sea.
She’s a seeker, she’s a hawk, boys.
Thon’s the boat for me.

 

 

(From Wind on Loch Fyne by George Campbell Hay, Oliver & Boyd, 1948 by kind permission of the Trustees of the W.L. Lorimer Memorial Trust/ Scots Language Centre.)

This year’s Fife Regatta fleet will enter Loch Fyne for the first time, turning to starboard coming out of the East “Kerry” Kyle of Bute en route from Tighnabruaich to Portavadie Marina.

Will they be “wounding, stamping” their way round Ardlamont? If they are, it’ll be a magnificent sight, and unlike George Campbell Hay’s time, Ceud Mìle Fàilte and a warm shower awaits at Portavadie: an oasis of modern “facilities”, on what the Tarbert fishermen of old would have simply though of as a dangerous lee shore – “The Kerry Shore”. But that’s another of Hay’s fine poems, so we better stop. For now.

Our title refers to the class name for two ground-breaking “Scottish Literature Class” hybrid ferries in build at Ferguson Shipbuilders, Port Glasgow, for Caledonian MacBrayne. Unfortunately no works of local literature were considered for the short leet of three names for public voting for the second ferry, to operate across Loch Fyne from Tarbert to Portavadie. How can George Campbell Hay be so forgotten?

Sireadh is a rare example from her period in Scotland of a working fishing vessel designed by a yacht designer: she was drawn by W.G. McBryde of Glasgow and built in 1923 by Miller of  St. Monance, Fife, which means that she is also a rare example at that time of a west coast “Skiff” type built on the east coast.

On the other hand, in 1887 G.L. Watson probably started the popular trend for sturdy cruising yachts along the lines of the Loch Fyne Skiffs with Nell, design number 134, built by Thomas Orr Jr. of Greenock. She’s still going too, although in for a bit of surgery at the moment. We hope to come back to Nell later.

Shortly after  Sireadh’s build, by the mid 1920s,  W.G. McBryde and Miller of St. Monance were combining to evolve the next generation of “cruiser stern” type that would  become the ubiquitous Scottish fishing vessel into the 1970s – like Shemaron above, launched in 1949 by William Weatherhead of Cockenzie for an Ayrshire owner, by which time boats built on the east coast for work on the west coast were quite a normal thing.

So Sireadh became one of the last of the working Loch Fyne Skiffs built. She was sold to Northern Ireland and converted to a yacht just before the Second World War, briefly appeared in the 1946 Supplement to Lloyds Register of Yachts 1939 as “sold and now a fishing vessel” (perhaps reflecting requisitioned war service), and reappeared as the yacht Golden Plover in 1949. We hope she is still going as strong as she was in Mallorca in 1991, as Sireadh again.

IM

Grateful thanks to George Campbell Hay champion, Angus Martin, Campbeltown: poet; aural historian; author of “The Ring-Net Fishermen”, and “Kintyre – The Hidden Past” among others.