FIELD OF DREAMS
and brought her back to Aldeburgh for restoration.” A
buyer was found, but sadly he died before the restoration
was complete.
The 50 Square Metre Seehexe was designed and built
by B Wilke at Kiel in 1936 for Hermann Goering’s
Luftwaffe. She was a Windfall yacht allocated to the
Royal Navy and spent most of her time in Gosport
attached to HMS Daedalus.
“I have been told she was fast, but all I know about
her racing record is that she won the RORC Channel
Race, mentioned in Adlard Coles’ book Heavy
Weather Sailing.”
Peter rescued her from Cardiff when her then owners
needed to move her due to the Cardiff Bay development.
Peter Wilson has a strong personal link to the Orford
Whitewings, two of which he has in his yard, as he
learned how to sail aboard one.
One is Nona, built by Charles Sibbick in 1900 and
the other is Alf-a-Mo.
I first met Peter Wilson in 1980 when, with my crew,
Peter Willetts, we were cruising an 18ft, three-quarter-
decked Essex One Design, Mallard, drawn by Morgan
Giles. We came ashore one rainy Sunday afternoon at the
Aldeburgh Yacht Club in cold, northeasterly weather
seeking a B&B for a night’s respite from the damp bilges
of a cabinless boat.
After remarking on our boat’s pretty lines and asking
what she was and what we were doing, Peter Wilson
said: “A B&B in Aldeburgh on Sunday? You’d better
stay with me.”
Grateful for a dry bed we said we would take Peter
out for dinner at the best restaurant.
“A restaurant, in Aldeburgh on Sunday, you had
better dine with me!”
We at least managed to buy the beer, and, after
cruising up to Snape, a few days later, were shown round
the Aldeburgh Boatyard. Even then Peter was collecting
his classics, as a sort of boat rescue service.Matthew Lingley
with 8-Metre
Bryony, and seen
sailing (top)“She was originally gaff rig, but bermudan for most
of her life,” says Matthew.
She has a long and illustrious history and was once
owned by Edward Baker, son of William Meath Baker,
who was a close friend of composer Edward Elgar, and
who was said to be the subject of the fourth of the
Enigma Variations, entitled WMB.
Later, she was owned by the one-time British
representative to the America’s Cup Committee, Major
Henry Maitland Kersey DSO, who lived at the same
address as Phileas Fogg. Maitland was a close friend and
business associate of Sir Hugh Andrew Montagu Allan,
director of the Allan Royal Mail Line. Subsequently, he
appears to have been instrumental in the takeover of the
Allan Line by Canadian Pacific. Allan’s wife and two of
his three daughters were aboard the Lusitania when she
was torpedoed and sunk off The Old Head of Kinsale
during World War I. Shortly before the Second World
War she was owned by Fredman Ashe Lincoln, a
prominent member of the Jewish Society, a well known
Queen’s Counsel, a member of the RNVR, and latterly a
Conservative MP. His son is now Senior Rabbi at the
Park Avenue Synagogue in New York.
Then there’s Jo, a 1920, Second Rule 6-Metre built by
Anker and Jensen specifically for the 1920 Olympic
Games at Ostend, where she won the Gold Medal for
‘new rule’ Sixes. “She was one of the first Second Rule
boats and was already outclassed by 1922,” says
Matthew. “In 1926 she came over to the Clyde and
raced there for several years, being re-named and
re-numbered. In 1995 we found her in a hedge at the
back of the boatyard at Pin Mill, with a tree growing
through her and both bow and stern knocked off. We
did not then know what she was but Peter rescued herClytie’s
galvanised tiller
and bronze name
plate, originals
from 1908