The Art of Arthur Watts
The Story of Summer Haze & The Building of Silver Thread
History The Cornish lug and mizzen style has now been popularised by the Drascombe Lugger. (Drascombe is a made-up name, like Häagen-Dazs, but sounds authentic) These are glass hulls built with simulated lapstrake (clinker) and a well for an outboard motor. I don't think Summer Haze was used for fishing--except possibly trolling for mackerel. She is too narrow and the flat sheer suggests a boat more at home on a river or estuary than the open sea. Also she would have had a fuller bow--more like one of the pilot gigs. I've no doubt that Summer Haze is related to the Cornish pilot gigs of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These 30-foot open rowing boats were used for salvage and rescue work, along with the occasional smuggling trip to France. Pilot gigs were not only fast but so deft at evading the revenue cutters that they were limited by law to no more than six oars. The penalty for being caught with contraband was simple and effective: the offending boat--regardless of ownership--was cut in half with a handsaw. |
Arthur Watts, sailing the original Summer Haze about 1931. Note the boomless mainsail. |
"Ay, my father was drowned at sea, and so was his father and his father's father 'afore him." |
In 1927 my father, Arthur Watts, a painter and illustrator, bought Summer Haze locally for fifteen pounds. He sailed her--mostly on the Camel Estuary until his accidental death in 1935. This particular boat was the inspiration for one of his best and last drawings published in Punch, the English humour magazine. It shows a whiskery old skipper sailing in stormy weather and telling his two terrified passengers: "Ay, my father was drowned at sea, and so was his father and his father's father 'afore him." Shortly after the outbreak of World War Two, Summer Haze was taken to Itchenor in Sussex. We sailed her on the River Itchen but had to move closer to London and leave the boat to look after herself. Summer Haze spent the war years lying in an open field with a variety of other craft whose owners were otherwise occupied. By 1946 she was in bad shape: I remember the weathered wood and grass growing up through cracks in the planking. By some miracle both spars and the two tanned cotton sails had not only survived but were still usable. At considerable trouble and expense the boat sent by rail to Padstow where she was repaired by Bill Lindsey. |
Lindsey ran the ferry service that took people back and forth across the Camel estuary and was Steven Brabyn's nephew. Brabyn, a boat builder of the old school, was a somewhat crusty character and the probable builder of Summer Haze.
Brabyn was once comissioned to put a new keel in one of the gigs, a 32 foot boat named Newquay. This was a tricky job and so jealous was Brabyn of his skills that he closed the workshop and did the job with only his most trusted apprentices.
In 1946 my sister was nineteen and I sixteen. We were quite capable of handling Summer Haze. We even raced her against other lug and mizzens in the Camel Estuary, but were almost entirely innocent when it came to racing rules and the attendant etiquette.
During one race we had another lug and mizzen pinned between us and the sandy beach and had every intention of putting her ashore. We offered our baler to the skipper, a retired admiral. His colourful language was in the best traditions of the Royal Navy. In one Padstow regatta, with John England crewing we did actually win a pewter mug, presented by no lesser person than the local aristocrat, Lady Prideaux-Brune. On another occasion I was racing Summer Haze with one of Brabyn's apprentices. Before the race got under way, the heel of our mast broke off, just above the mast step. Since we were close to Brabyn's yard we dashed in, cut a new heel, re-stepped the mast and were back in time for the start. Summer Haze with her larger rig was faster than other lug and mizzens (off the wind) and, if nothing broke, was usually first over the finish line. |
Simon Watts, aged 18 sailing the original Summer Haze in 1948. |
My sister and I sailed the boat around Trevose Head in the open sea, often with Jeremy Selby-Smith. We were teen-agers, the war was just over, live mines were still being cleared from Constantine Bay and there was a certain element of danger in the air. I don't think any of us thought that what we were doing was risky: we carried no life jackets or gear of any kind except a pair of oars, a baler and an anchor. My sister has only recently admitted that she sailed Summer Haze down the forbidding Cornish coast all the way to Newquay and back with the same Trevor England who later became a renowned coxswain of the Padstow lifeboat.
The original boat was planked in Cornish narrow-leaf elm, a tough, hard wood that steams well and does not split readily. Elm doesn't last long around the water, so the wood was 'treated.' Soon after felling, the elm logs were chained together and left in the muddy tidal waters of a local creek. After five years the wood was effectively pickled--saturated with salt. Most of the sapwood had been eaten away by marine organisms. This explains why two of the old pilot gigs (also planked in elm) have not only survived but are still being rowed 150 years later.
After the salt water treatment the logs were sawed by hand and stacked in piles to dry. Wooden strips or stickers were placed in between the planks so air could circulate. The Cornish climate is a damp one and I doubt if the moisture content ever got much below 16%. Barely air-dry wood is ideal for planking and much more amenable to being steamed, bent and twisted into place. It's also more likely to take fastenings without splitting. Planers (and the power to run them) were not readily available so planks were finished by hand with a scraper.
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Summer Haze at John Watt's farm after being
repaired in 1976. It's unusual to have four thwarts and three rowing stations in a 16 foot boat. |
In 1953 I emigrated to Canada and a few years later my mother gave the old boat to the Watt family, long-time friends and residents of Sea Mills. Somewhere along the way the original sails and spars had disappeared. John Watt had new ones made, replaced the iron centerboard and did other necessary work. The boat was kept on a mooring at Sea Mills and sailed on the Camel Estuary for nearly a dozen years.
original Summer Haze was kept here in Vera Watt's garden at Sea Mills
before being moved to France in 2003.
By the turn of the century Summer Haze was 95 years old and beyond economical repair. However, the old boat still had her shape in spite of being left outside in wind and weather. I decided the best way to preserve the boat was to measure her and build a replica in Nova Scotia, Canada, where I have a well-equipped workshop.
The latest, and probably the last chapter in Summer Haze's long history occurred in 2004 when she was taken to France by Vera Watt's grandson, Adam Jackson. Adam is a boat builder and intends to build a replica. I hope he succeeds.
Why Silver Thread?
Silver Thread was one of the Lunenburg fishing schooners that was caught in the August Gale of 1926. She was one of several boats that were fishing off Sable Island, a sandy crescent-shaped sliver of land a hundred miles out in the Atlantic. There were no hurricane warnings in those days so the rapidly increasing wind was thought to be no more than a "summer breeze." In less than five hours it was blowing a full gale and the fishing boats had no time to get clear of the island. Several foundered on the treacherous sand bars that project out a dozen miles either side of the land.
Silver Thread's skipper saved his vessel by the desperate expedient of heading straight for the sandbar and sailing over it. As he said later: "She only struck the one time and got clear: being a brand-new vessel it didn't hurt her any". So Silver Thread became known as a lucky boat with a daring and resourceful skipper.