Classic_Boat_2016-01

JAMES ROBINSON TAYLOR

NIGEL SHARP

Top: Sails by

Ratsey and

Lapthorn, which

had the boat’s

original plans

and sail stamp in

its archives.

Left: The Belfast

Lough builder is

name-checked

on a tiller plate

Tern’s mainsail, they used an upside-down 2 instead.
After that first race the yachting correspondent of the
Glasgow Herald wrote: “William Fife III has vindicated
his name by designing fast and handsome boats.”
It was probably in 1901 that the Kings sold Tern, and
she was taken to Scotland, where she had three different
owners, before returning to Belfast Lough seven years
later when EJ Charley bought her. In 1912 she was sold
again and then had a succession of at least eight owners
who kept her in Dublin, Cork and Waterford over the
next 40-odd years. During that time she was converted to
a yawl (c1915), by 1938 she had a 2-cyclinder Watermota
petrol engine, and was described in one owner’s memoirs
as “a comfortable four-berth cruiser”. In the late-1950s
she was sailed to Falmouth by two young men, possibly
just for the adventure but otherwise futilely, because they
then had to sell her to pay for their return home. In 1959
she was found semi-abandoned in the Helford River.
She then had five owners in the Falmouth area.
During this time her mizzen mast was removed and her
counter stern was cut off when some rot was found
there. The fourth of those owners was George Enisto
who took her to Penpol Boatyard in Restronguet Creek
for restoration. Sadly he died in 1998 just as the work
was being completed and he never got to sail her.