MARIAN REMADE

An article by Nic Compton from the  August 2005 issue of Classic Boat magazine

THE legend of the Bristol Channel pilots and their vessels, the hardy pilot cutters, is well entrenched in British nautical folklore. The Bristol Channel, we are constantly reminded, is one of the most dangerous shipping lanes in the world, with extreme tides and weather to match. The vessels which evolved to cope with these conditions and deliver the pilots safely to approaching ships at all times of the year and in any weather have rightly earned a reputation for speed and seaworthiness. Equally, the men who sailed these boats, the legendary Westernmen, and the pilots they worked with have acquired almost iconic status as brave and competent seamen. John H. Morse, it seems, was a little bit different. Born in Cardiff in 1861, he came from a family of Bristol Channel seafarers, and both his father and grandfather were Cardiff pilots. Having served his apprenticeship and worked as a first class port pilot, on July 1896 he qualified as a Channel pilot - the ultimate qualification, allowing him to work the entire Bristol Channel. From his pilot's license, we learn that he lived at 26 High Street in Penarth (immediately next to Cardiff), that he served his apprenticeship in Toabaiaiff Tieoi (presumably a Welsh spelling), and that he served in the overseas trade for two years. The register of pilots also contains a brief description of the man:

Height 5ft 4in
Brown hair
Brown beard
Blue eyes
Fresh complexion

The 1891 census reveals that John Henry Morse was married to Margaret and that they had, at that time, five children, Marian, Ethel, Mary, Winifred and John. Tantalisingly, the register of pilots states that he owned his own boat, but doesn't give the name of the vessel--and at some point many of the Cardiff pilotage records were thrown out to provide infill for a new dock. From earlier censuses, however, we learn that his mother and his grandmother were called Marian and Mary Ann respectively, while other records show that his grandfather was "Owner and Master" of a vessel by the name of Mary Ann. Circumstantial evidence, therefore, points to John Henry Morse being the owner of the pilot cutter Marian.

Far from being the noble master of the Western Approaches, however, J.H. Morse seems to have been something of a reluctant, and even recalcitrant, pilot. The minute books of the Cardiff Pilotage Board abound with claims for "disputed Pilotage" by Morse against various rival pilots - particularly one R.S. Reid and one J.W. Reid, with whom he seems to have had ongoing feuds. In most instances, the Board finds against Morse. An entry for 8th January 1895, for instance, finds Morse complaining that James Reid boarded the SS Nethergate even though he himself "was first in turn to the westward when the vessel bound up". Reid responds by accusing Morse of being slow off the mark and still being at anchor when he himself set off. The Board apparently agrees, awards the pilotage to Reid and raps Morse for "want of alertness".

It seems too that J.H. Morse was, perhaps in common with many of his kind, not the mildest mannered sailor on the Bristol Channel. At least twice in the minutes he is censured for "abusive language" and ordered to apologise to the ship's captain.

But perhaps the worst indictment of Morse's tenure as pilot comes on the 7th April 1901. By then an experienced pilot with well over 20 years in the profession, he decided to take on an apprentice. First, however,  he had to get approval of the Board. After giving his request due consideration, the board concluded that "Morse had, for some years, confined himself to working vessels coming from the eastwards and seldom if ever went to the westwards for ships". In other words, rather than venturing out into the wilds of the Western Approaches, Morse was hanging out at the eastward end of the Channel waiting for easier pickings from Bristol and Avonmouth, in the fond hope of being back for tea. This, they said, was not conducive to best practice in the Pilotage Services and "would seriously prejudice the apprentice's chance when he came to apply for a license".

Morse's application was refused and only a written appeal from him assuring the Board that he would sail more "to the westward" eventually persuaded them to approve the request.  After a final spat of disputed pilotage between one J.L. Harvey and J.H. Morse, the minutes note on 6 July 1915: "The Clerk reported the death of John Henry Morse, First Class Pilot." He was just 54. Some months later, Mrs J.H. Morse is reported as applying "for the usual annuity" out of the pilotage funds - presumably a reference to a widow's pension - and is duly awarded £18.17 per year (equivalent to around £5,000 now). But, while John Henry Morse may not have been the most courageous, the most polite or the most emollient of pilots in the Bristol Channel, he must have done something right, for his charge, the cutter Marian, survived his custody and survived well enough that, when sail eventually did give way to steam and the vessel's working life was finally over, she was not automatically scrapped. Many other pilot cutters were not so lucky. All those years thrashing it out in the Western Approaches took its toll on the best-built craft and many ended up abandoned to the mud or chopped up into firewood.

Built in 1889 by Hambly & Sons in Cardiff, Marian was nearly a quarter of a century old when Morse died. What happened next is unclear, but at some point in the late 1910s or early 1920s she was converted into a yacht - including, in a symbolic break with her working-boat past, being painted white. It was a time when yachtsmen were starting to make serious ocean voyages, several of which were written up in landmark books which would subsequently sow the seeds for a whole generation of ‘cruising' nomads. One such was the Norwegian Erling Tambs, whose 1933 book "The Cruise of the Teddy" describes a trip to the Pacific aboard his Colin Archer Teddy. Inspired by the book, aircraft designer Johnny Aherne-Heron bought Marian - by then renamed Colaba - intending to sail the ocean blue. The second world war exploded those dreams, however, and instead of frolicking amid the atolls Marian found herself on a mud berth on the Hamble. At the end of the 1950s, she had a very brief period of sail again under an enthusiastic young television producer, William Taylor, now living in Devon, before slumping back against the harbour wall in Brixham where he had found her. Like many others of her kind, she was eventually derigged and turned into a houseboat, suffering the usual indignities in the process. One owner, simply known as ‘Fibreglass Bill', smothered her in the sticky stuff - an act which would nowadays be met with derision but which nevertheless seems to have helped preserve her for a few more years.

Marian's fortunes, in common with that of many traditional boats, began to look up in the 1980s. At about the same time that her much larger and much grander cousin, the J-Class Endeavour, was dragged out of her mud berth on the Hamble River and taken to Holland for a multi-million dollar restoration, Marian also slipped her mooring for the first time in decades. Her eight-year restoration  at the hands of Peter Stuysted, ,much of it alongside the pilot cutter Peggy in Bristol, was an altogether more modest less showy affair, however, than that of the ‘Darling Jade'. Some planks were replaced, frames were sistered, a steel framework under the counter repaired, new bulwarks put on and a new iroko deck fitted. The main priority was to get the boat out of the mud and sailing again, based on the well-founded theory that ‘a boat sailed is a boat saved'. For several years Marian could be spotted at many of the classic boat regattas in southern England and Brittany in her distinctive black and red livery (by now being an authentic working boat was regarded as something to be proud of), although she had a reputation for being somewhat ‘delicate’.

By the time Dominic Ziegler came across her, she had changed owners once again and was lying under cover up the River Helford in Cornwall, awaiting a saviour. After a childhood knocking about on the Hamble River - mostly racing Mirrors, Lasers and, later, IOR boats - Dom had been instilled with romantic memories of the former great dames of the sea languishing in various corners of the river. In particular, boyhood days were spent slapping paint inside and out on Robin Knox-Johnston's glorious Brixham trawler, Terminist, now just old bones--Robin's pay being a full-works pub lunch at the King and Queen. Working as a foreign correspondent for the The Economist based living in China, these memories were re-awoken  and, like many expat before him, he began to long for something quintessentially English to come home to. And what more quintessentially English than a British Channel pilot cutter?  First, however, the boat had to pass the scrutiny of surveyor David Cox.

“David was very forthright,” Dom says.   “She was visibly hogged.  He said the centerline was shot, the frames were shot and many had been sistered three times, the planking was in good nick but the fastenings were shot. He told me she would need a complete rebuild at some point in the next few years, but that she would be okay for a bit of coastal sailing until then.”  Just how ‘shot' the boat was became apparent one day as Dom was sailing around Land's End. “You could tell she was changing shape because on one tack the latch for the loo door was too high to lock it, and on the other tack it was to low!”  The solution, Dom concluded, was always to  make sure there was at least one shipwright on board whenever Marian went sailing.

After three years of "doing a bit of coastal sailing” and across to Britanny, Dom decided the time had come to bite the bullet. Although he had no chance of following in Tambs's footsteps just yet, he did have aspirations to sail further than Land's End and, if Marian was to do so without having to be recaulked in mid-ocean (as had already happened on more than one occasion), then a major rebuild was on the cards. Simply handing the boat over to a boatyard to do the work wasn't an option, however - Dom's salary simply didn't stretch to that. Instead, he rented a space at Gweek Boatyard and employed a team of Cornish boatbuilders, led by David Walkey, to do the job. No contract was signed with David and no budget was agreed beforehand - it had all been agreed on a handshake a couple of years before, and the final cost was left open-ended. Trust was paramount.

Long before the work started, however, Dom started collecting the necessary materials. Oak logs for the frames were stacked up with timber for the deck beams and left to season, and thousands of specialist fastenings ad fittings were sourced. “It was lovely to contemplate this going on from the other far side of the world,” says Dom. "It was all part of the anticipation."

Although the boat would end up being completely rebuilt, it was important to Dom that she looked as much as possible as she had when she was a working pilot cutter, rather that when she was a yacht. Fortunately, photos dating from immediately after her conversion showed the position of deck fittings and the flush deck arrangement before cabin trunks were added. And the vessel had miraculously retained many of her original deck fittings - including the distinctive mainsheet buffer, her anchor winch, ratchet reefing gear, gaff saddle and iron tiller - which simply had to be refurbished and replaced put back. Below decks, there was nothing left of the original accommodation, so the new interior was based on the classic pilot cutter arrangement of crew's quarters and galley up forward, with the navigation area aft and pilot berths (yes, genuine ‘pilot’ berths!) in the saloon and table to port.

Some 10,000 man hours and several trees later, Marian was relaunched in the autumn of 2002 - this time in an elegant two-tone blue which, in a typical 21st Century compromise, neither shouts out ‘working boat’ nor ‘yacht’.

Dom, meanwhile, had been appointed to a new post in Japan and his plans to go cruising had to go on the back burner. Instead, under the name of the Real Boat Company, Marian is to be chartered from her base in Mylor on the River Fal, with former underwater diver-turned-yacht-skipper Jim Goddard at the helm. From his years diving, Jim has intimate knowledge of Cornish waters so is just the man for the job. Besides which, he is just the kind of big, burly seafaring type that you just can't help having complete trust in.

Meanwhile, Dom is still rehearsing the arguments around Marian's restoration “There are those who object to the fact that the boat has been so completely rebuilt,” he says, with a pained expression. “But it does mean that she can now be sailed just as hard as everyone else, and it means we can go cruising without having to worry about seams opening up the whole time. I am sure it was the right thing to do...”

You get the feeling that, even while he is interviewing Japanese leaders about the state of the yen or relations with China, he will still be thinking about how to adjust the sheeting angle of Marian's jib or whether carrying an outboard engine for the dinghy is really in keeping with the spirit of the boat. For while the boat's horizons have widened since John Morse's days, the issues remain largely unchanged. And no doubt the old pilot is happily swearing in his grave about that.

History researched by Hannah Cunliffe