I
f you want to know about old boats, classic boats, boats of
revolutionary conception that made Britain the builder of
choice in the earliest generation of superyachts, there’s only
one place to go, one man to meet. The place is the office of
GL Watson on a floor of the former headquarters of
Martins Bank, Liverpool and the man is the company’s
managing director, William Collier, probably unique in possessing
a PhD in the history of yacht design and yacht building.
GL Watson is an anachronism in boat building. Like so many
of the once-great Clyde shipyards, it might have closed decades
ago. But, unlike William Fife, its revered Clydeside contemporary,
the GL Watson design studio evolved after World War II to
concentrate on commercial vessels, lifeboats and fast motor boats.
By the 1990s, while no longer a force in contemporary yacht
design, it remained the repository of one of the finest archives in
late 19th century and early 20th century boat design. When Collier
needed the line drawings for one of his most ambitious projects, his
search led ultimately to buying the firm, now based in Liverpool
and repositioned as a restorer of historic yachts.
His journey started in East Anglia, touring mud berths
with his grandfather. “I came from a sailing family and
it was wandering around those mud berths as a child
that really sparked my interest in small boats,” he
says. Among the old hulks converted into houseboats
at Pin Mill on the Orwell, was the 19-M class
Mariquita, a shadow of the boat it had been in its
pre-World War I heyday. “I grew up with that
boat. I’d known her all my life.”
In the late-1980s, as a broker in the Cannes
office of Camper & Nicholsons International,
Collier established the firm’s classic yachts
division that oversaw the sales and refloating of
boats like the 12-M Cintra, Flica II, Miquette,
Vim and Trivia, the 8-M Fulmar, the Big Class
cutter Lulworth, Avel and Mariquita, restored by
Fairlie Restorations. Collier was perfectly placed
to marry the skills required in managing yacht
projects with an accumulating knowledge in
early yacht design, a passion he invested in his
doctorate he embarked on at the University of Liverpool.
He left Camper’s in 1993 to pursue his studies while working as
a consultant, often with Fairlie, a connection that developed to a
stage in the late-1990s when he became involved in the yard’s
restructuring, helping to underpin its resurgence initiating projects
such as the 15-M The Lady Anne and Hispania and cataloguing
the Fife Design Archive. In the mid-1990s he co-founded the
Yachting Archive Project, with Hampshire Archives Trust.
“It was surprising just how many important yachts had survived
in those mud berths,” he says. “In those years I was tracing and
repatriating lost Fifes as well as undertaking research to support
the restorations. It was detective work, tracking down the designs
and right documents to get these boats properly registered.”
His Liverpool base is both office and maritime museum. The
walls bear pictures and half models, including many of the
lifeboats that came from the GL Watson studio. (The company was
naval architect to the RNLI for nearly 100 years from the 1880s.)
While Fife concentrated on wooden yachts, George Lennox
Watson pioneered designs in both wood and steel. In sailing yacht
design, the business was rivalled only by Nathanael Herreshoff in
the USA and William Fife and Son in the UK. In powered leisure
yacht design, Watson was unrivalled. First designing and racing
wooden sailing yachts in the Clyde, he focused on waterline
length and lead keels, fitted externally to improve righting
moment under canvas. Later, signature designs included the
clipper-bowed steam yacht with counter stern. Among Watson’s
firsts were his 1882 yacht, Wendur, when he introduced the first full
clipper bow on a cutter or yawl. Three years later on Dora he
pioneered the spoon bow and on Shamrock II, the pole mast.
Sitting at his desk, Collier opens the firm’s sales ledger, a store of
19th century wealth creators and royal households.
The list runs from Watson’s first yacht, Peg Woffington, via the
five-tonners, Clotilde, Vril, Freak and Shona that established his
racing credentials, to racing giants Thistle, Valkyrie II and III,
Britannia and Shamrock II. Then there are the steam yachts and
their owners, Edmond de Rothschild, Frederick William Vanderbilt
and James Gordon Bennett. When Watson died, the design office
was led by draughtsman James Barnett, responsible for many of its
motor yachts between the wars. The ledger includes lines on the
design and purchase of the yacht Nahlin, ordered by Lady Yule.
The salvage and restoration of Nahlin, more than any other
project, established GL Watson. Collier was still working with
Camper’s when he started looking for Nahlin, one of the UK’s
most historic motor yachts. Lady Yule sailed Nahlin
around the world in the 1930s, chartering it to the
future Edward VIII in 1936 when he used it for a
Mediterranean holiday with Wallace Simpson. But
before World War II the yacht was sold to the king of
Romania and after the Communist Party took
over, its whereabouts became obscure.
“I had a news item from 1967 saying it was
a floating restaurant on the Danube,” he says.
“I sent a Telex to the Communist shipping
authority, making an offer, and they replied,
saying the boat was not for sale. But this was
the confirmation that I had been seeking – that
it still existed, 20 years on.”
The next year Collier went to Romania to see
Nahlin and put together a deal to buy it, but
with the overthrow of the Communist regime in
1989 it took another 10 years of haggling and
red tape until the yacht could be brought back to
a dry dock on the Mersey. The only company
that possessed drawings of Nahlin, so crucial to its restoration, was
GL Watson. “I had lunch with the managing director and found
that he wanted to sell the company, so I bought it,” says Collier.
The GL Watson archive has enabled Collier and his team to build
up the business as a leading restorer of classic yachts. It also offers
management of new builds to original designs; and replicas of two
Watson-designed sailing yachts are due to be launched next spring.
Clients stand to get a yacht with character, design élan and history.
GL Watson focuses on big, lengthy projects. Beyond its work on
Nahlin, it has managed the restoration of another of its designs,
Blue Bird, built originally for Sir Malcolm Campbell. The yacht
was acquired from a Dutch canal from where it was moved for a
full restoration. Today, with Talitha, it belongs to Tara Getty.
A third restoration, undertaken at the Falmouth-based shipyard,
Pendennis, has been that of the 50m (165ft) yacht Malahne.
GL Watson’s re-emergence in classic yacht restoration which, he
argues, is central to the UK’s strengthening reputation for such work,
will next focus on the 1920s-built yacht, Caritas that, just now, is
sitting in a California trailer park. Beyond these projects is a
proposal to rebuild Istria, the greatest 15-M pre-World War I. The
yacht was broken up, but the company has drawings and plans...
“All we need is a willing customer,” he says. “It’s a big step to take
on the running and ownership of a big classic yacht. Seeing the
experiences of our clients we know it’s a step worth taking.”
“It was
surprising just
how many
important yachts
had survived
in those mud
berths”
