BRING BACK THE BEAUTY Cromorna 38 West Forth Street Cellardyke A community group from Cellardyke have formed to KY 10 3HL restore one of the few remaining 1930’s ring net boats [email protected] left still afloat. She is lying in Birkenhead and must be www.facebook.com/cellardykebuilt/ transported to the East Neuk of Fife. HISTORY OF THE BOAT The Manx Beauty PL 35 was launched along with her sister ship the Manx Fairy PL 43 on the 11th June 1937. These two boats and two others the Manx Lad and Manx Lass were ordered as part of a Manx Government initiative to revive the Isle of Man fishing industry. By subsidising a fleet of state of the art ring netters the Manx Government hoped to encourage young Manxmen back to the fishing. The Isle of Man had a huge sailing fishing fleet which declined very rapidly into the 20th century and very little investment was put into steam powered fishing vessels. By the 1930s comparitively few young men on the Island saw prospects in the fishing and the large ring net fleets of the West Coast of Scotland and boats from Ireland were working their waters very sucessfully. So why come to a comparitively unknown yard in Cellardyke for these boats and not go to Weatherheads, Walter Reekies or Millers? All these yards were extremely well known and respected for their ring netters. The Manx Government decision to invest in these vessels was to encourage their young men by giving the highest possible return against running costs and here is where we introduce Provost William Carstairs of Anstruther. Willie Carstairs was son of a Cellardyke fisherman who had not followed his father to the sea but studied business and by the 1930s owned one of Cellardyke’s most sucessful Oilskin Factories, John Martin and Co. he was also a member of the Fishery Board for Scotland. Carstairs was a visionary who saw the demise of the steam drifter with its rising build costs and even greater running costs. He saw his share fishermen and community like many of Scotland’s fishing communities suffering in the economic depressed years at the end of the 1920’s and early 1930s. He was also a man who put his money where his mouth was and in 1928 comissioned two 53ft super bauldies (motor drifter/ liners), the Winaway KY279 from Alexander Aitken ( Aitken’s Anstruther yard stood where the Scottish Fisheries museum boat yard now operates from) and the Onaway from Walter Reekie boatbuilder of St Monans who opened his second yard next to the Lifeboat shed in Anstruther to build this boat. They were launched in November a fortnight apart to multiple newspaper articles about their efficiency, with semi diesel engines they were lauded for their relatively low running costs (even compared to similar vessels being built at the same time). The Onaway and Winaway were very sucessful however these were motor vessels developed from the fifie sailing vessel with an almost vertical stem and stern post and at 53ft it was soon seen that they could not operate safely and compete with the 90ft steam drifters particularly in the important herring fishery in the winter seas off Yarmouth and Lowestoft. And so we come to a major milestone in the history of Scottish fishing boat design, in 1930 Willie Carstairs comissioned the Gleanaway KY 40. She was the first cruiser sterned motor drifter, a 75ft wooden boat design not tweaked from the sailing fishing vessel design but specifically to his order developed as a motor https://www.facebook.com/cellardykebuilt/ [email protected] boat, the Gleanaway was the mother of the Scottish and UK Fishing fleet. Her basic premis of hull design was prevalent in Scotland until the big transom sterned vessels were sucessfully developed. She was built by J & G Forbes of Sandhaven at about £2800 approximately half the cost of a wooden steam driter, but even with a larger more powerful engine than was offered with subsequent boats her running costs were 1/3 that of a steam drifter providing the fishermen with a much better share. The Gleanaway was christened by Mr Adamson Secretary of State for Scotland. Six years later, Provost Carstairs designed the replacement for the Gleanway. As always with consideration to his local commmunity, instead of returning to Sandhaven for the boat to be built, he brought one of the Forbes family, George, to set up a yard in his beloved Cellardyke, providing employment locally. The East Fife Boatbuilding Company was set up in a redundant boatyard in Cellardyke just east of the harbour. but instead of building the boats in the yard and then dragging them to harbour for launch as the sailing fifies had been, The Royal Sovereign KY 75 ( the Gleanaway’s replacement) was built on the harbourside known as the “bullwark” with all the preparation work being carried out in the old yard. Cellardyke Harbour is tiny and the 75ft Motor drifter was an impressive site when launched sideways on to an audience of 3000. Mr J. Henderson Stewart, M.P. for East Fife, and Mr George Hogarth, chairman of the Fishery Board for Scotland, were on board the Royal Sovereign for her sea trials and she was described as ”boat which may do much to revolutionise the industry” . She was fitted with the next generation engine and included multiple safety improvements including being one of the first boats where the crew could travel from the accommodation to the wheel house/ galley without going on deck. At the launch Provost Carstairs quote about the efficiency of the Gleanaway which Royal Sovereign was expected to https://www.facebook.com/cellardykebuilt/ [email protected] better was “Last season the steam drifter Breadwinner had a £445 crop, and the crew's share was £16 a-piece. The Diesel oil-engine drifter Gleanaway had £438 crop, yet the share was £33 5s each” And so Provost Carstairs yard was the ideal progressive yard to come to for the comissioning of the Manx boats. Mr. P.J. Moore, who represented The Manx Government at the launch of the Manx beauty and Manx Fairy said “The boats launched are of the very latest type, and are equipped for both ring-net herring fishing and seine-net white fishing. They will be able to operate all the year round and to carry on fishing at other ports besides those of the Isle of Man. They are cheap to run”. The story of the East Neuk connections to these boats did not end with their launch on the 11th June. Lock Horsburgh from Pittenweem had already married a Peel lass in 1934 and had taken up residence on the Island. He was appointed as first Skipper of the Manx Beauty, another East Neuk man was employed to Skipper the Manx Fairy, but it was obvious he wasn’t really upto the job when he was unable to skipper her through the Forth Clyde Canal and not long after Cellardyke crew member John Deas took over. The boats took part in their official naming ceremony in Peel on the 15th June only 4 days after their launch. John Deas fished very sucessfully stayed in Man until 1946 before returning home due to ill health. When the Manx Fairy was requisitioned for Port Inspection duties along with her 3 sister ships in WW2. John took over a replacement vessel built in Arklow Lock known as Lockie Horsburgh skippered the Manx Beauty for many years along with other company vessels until eventially going on his own. He bacame one of the Isle of Man’s most sucessful skippers getting his vessel the Signora 11 built in the East Neuk at James N Miller’s of St Monans. https://www.facebook.com/cellardykebuilt/ [email protected] The Manx Beauty was sold in 1951 and was re registered as CN 233, She was later sold to Cornwall and then on to Arthur Maddock who took the boat to Birkenhead. When the boat arrived in Birkenhead there were over thirty vessels working from the docks, over the years the fishing declined and eventually Arthur Jnr was the last fisherman to work from Birkenhead with the Manx Beauty moored there as a fish shop with Arthur Jnr working a steel boat and selling from the old boat’s deck. Arthur jnr has now retired, and having owned the beauty for 50 years the family are keen to see her restored. For Dykers this vessel is absolutely iconic, the photos of the build represent the end of the hey day of this once significant fishing community. The links continue with this story. John Deas’s son Coull now 94 used to visit the Isle of Man and work these Cellardyke built boats as well as the Sandhaven ones when he was a school boy, he proudly says the Cellardyke ones were the better sea boats. Coull’s younger sister May would go to the gutting in Peel with her mother in her holidays, and experienced the Island at a really interesting time of its history during WW2. The Navy, RAF and Army all had significant presence there, and Italian Scots (including East Neuk ones) as well as many other nationalities that were thought to pose a risk were interred on the Island. https://www.facebook.com/cellardykebuilt/ [email protected] Provost Carstairs’s influence on the Scottish Fishing industry should not be underestimated and the Manx Beauty is one of the few surviving vessels that restored would be a fitting tribute to this important Dyker.