CLASSIC BOAT FEBRUARY 2018 23BETTY II
Below, left to
right: the man
who had the boat
built, Harry
Smith; the man
who sailed her
engineless to
Holland, Ralph
Mountstephens;
flying new sails in
July 1952L
ike a sorcerer, the owner of a boat that’s
right feels he is in possession of a magic
wand. With her in his hands he can tack
up a tight channel in which others
mis-fetch, he can steal a passage others
burn fuel to make, he can weave a wake
others can only follow.
For me this has come true, because after more than
15 years of pursuit, the tiller of Betty II is now my magic
wand and already I am spellbound at her turn of speed,
directional stability and ease of driving, having recently
sailed her from Keyhaven on the Solent back to my
home at Leigh-on-Sea in the Thames Estuary, where she
was built in 1921.
This humble little gaffer is, quite literally, the only
inanimate object I have ever coveted as I, too, was one of
those once left in her wake wondering what on earth I
was doing wrong.
It all started many years ago when I was the proud
owner – well, until then anyway – of an Alan Buchanan
sloop, the 30ft (9.1m) Yeoman Junior Powder Monkey.
She was no slouch herself and as I spotted a little
wedgewood blue gaffer on a converging course, I said
idly to my mate: “We’ll soon leave him standing.”
How wrong could I have been? As we came abreast,
the gaffer simply left us for dead. As I looked at the
name on her stern – Betty II – I thought to myself: “One
day she’ll be mine.”
Since buying Betty II in September 2017 I have been
engaged in maritime archaeology in a bid to analyse
what is so special about such a simple boat. The first
thing I have discovered is that I am not alone in being a
disciple of this basic, shoal-draught gaff cutter.
She was designed by Harry C Smith who also had a
hand in drawing Tarifa, a one-time cover girl for Classic
Boat. As Tarifa’s owner, the Isle of Wight-based musical
instrument and yacht restorer Mark Hickman explained:
“Harry C Smith was ahead of his time with design of
full sections and beam run aft. He went on to join the
Burnham Yacht Building Company with GU Laws and
together they produced some champion 6-Metre
yachts.”
Betty II’s first owner was, just to confuse the issue,
also called Harry Smith, but this one was Harry StuartSmith, a City insurance broker who named the boat after
his youngest daughter Betty, who was referred to forever
after as ‘One’.
Harry loved his new boat so much that he had two
sets of sails for her, made by Turnnidge’s sail loft at
Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, one set white for summer and the
other tan for winter.
He entered the boat for her first year’s racing, 30
years before I was born, in Southend Yachting Week- The programme and sailing instructions feature
the King’s yacht Britannia on the cover, sailing in Class A
of boats 70 tons and over for a first prize of £75. Turn
over the page and there is Betty II sailing in Class C for
boats up to 10 tons with a first prize of £6.
Ill health forced Harry to sell the boat in 1953, when I
was two years old, to Ralph Mountstephens, an
architect, who cruised her engineless with his wife and
two sons to the Norfolk Broads and across the North
Sea to Holland and Belgium.
Unfortunately a car accident meant that after 13 years
of happy ownership Ralph sold her to sailmaker Stan
Bishop of Windward Sails in 1966, when I was 15 years
old. Stan’s apprentice Peter Waghorn still runs the
Leigh-on-Sea-based loft, now called W Sails, and recalls:
“Betty was so slippery she did not require an engine.”
Stan sold Betty II to boatbuilder and renowned
dinghy racer Ray Davies, who rebuilt her in the 1970s.
When Stan Bishop saw her with her planking sprung off
the stem “like a banana”, Ray recalls: “He burst into
tears and said: ‘What have you done to my Betty?’”
Ray re-fastened her and put in seven laminated ‘ring
frames’ to strengthen her. He also put in new garboards
of mahogany which he admitted were too narrow,
leaving a gap between the garboard and the next plank
up, which was a touch too wide just to be filled with
caulking cotton.
“I was going to take them out, glue a piece along the
edge and refit them,” he told me, but then his father Vic’s
boat, Almita, a 1906-built bermudan cutter became
available and he sold Betty II. As an aside, Almita was
owned by author Walter de la Mare, another local sailor,
who for a time was Betty Smith’s boyfriend.
Dick Johnson, former editor of Yachting World and
the voice of Cowes Week Radio for many years, was