ONBOARD SPIRIT OF FAIRBRIDGE
“It takes six crew members to raise our mainsail”
relatively early date for the abandonment of sail explains the lack of surviving original examples of the Liverpool schooners. (The Bristol pilots still maintained a sailing cutter as a relief boat as late as 1950.) At noon the next day, we slip our warps along with
Leader and work out of the docks under engine. Out in Carrick Roads, there is a good wind from the northwest, and the competition between the two vessels of similar length but very different rigs is intense. “Two, six, HEAVE! Two, six, HEAVE!” – It takes six crew members to raise our mainsail, two swigging on each halyard and one tailing, and the same number to hoist the foresail. Up with the staysail, and then the number two jib is set flying from the bowsprit traveller. We emerge into the grey Channel. Spirit spreads her booms and snores away on a broad reach, and soon comes up on Leader, sailing close under the Cornish cliffs, her hundred-year-old hull powering through the seas. Sensing the competition from the northerner, the old Devonian trawler manages to hold us off all the way to Fowey. We did have a reef in the mainsail though. While Spirit races up the Channel, Mike Strang, shore-based manager and a former skipper, tells me how the building of the ship was used to address urban deprivation, against a background of severe social and political conflict in inner city Liverpool.
By the 1980s its great docks that Melville so admired were largely derelict, businesses were fleeing the city, the population was imploding, and large areas had been abandoned and were becoming ruinous. Unemployment among young scousers was acute.
In the summer of 1981 the situation became explosive. There were terrifying riots in the Toxteth area, with pitched street battles between the police and local youths. Stones and petrol bombs were thrown from barricades of torched cars. Police officers used CS gas against civilians for the first time in Great Britain. It was much like last summer’s London riots, but lasted a lot longer; it took six weeks to restore an uneasy peace.
In this bleak year a group of local people formed the Spirit of Merseyside Trust, intending to build a replica Liverpool pilot schooner. The plan was to provide work for unemployed shipwrights and apprenticeships for young people. Building one small sailing boat could not solve the deep social and economic problems of Liverpool, but perhaps it could become a symbol of hope, engendering new pride in the city. Lines were taken off a detailed scale model in the
city’s maritime museum, and the extensive paperwork necessary to build a modern commercial vessel to Lloyds 100A1 and contemporary DTI standards was addressed.
MODERN TRAINING SHIP
“In this bleak year, local people planned to build a schooner”
At an early stage it was decided that the priority was to build an effective modern training ship following the lines and rig of the 19th-century schooners, rather than an exact replica of a particular pilot vessel. A shed was found in Canning Dock in the historic port. A great oak backbone was laid down, laminated iroko frames set upon it, and finally the larch planking was steamed and bent round. Soon the hull of the first Liverpool pilot schooner to be built for a century began to take shape, under the control of local shipwright Stephen Roberts.
Money was often short, and there
were problems in adapting the schooner form to take the additional weight of an engine and other modern equipment. Stephen believes that the project would certainly have failed without the commitment and drive of Henry Bicket, chairman of the Trust, who contributed some of his own funds to the build. As Spirit was slowly fitted out for her planned role as a hardworking training ship, the political and economic situation of Liverpool was becoming perilous. The Labour-controlled City Council was on a collision course with the policies of Thatcher’s Conservative government, and the project became dragged into the political dispute. It was seen as frivolous by the City Council but backed by Michael Heseltine, who had been appointed ‘Minister
Below: Skipper Campbell Greer shows a young crew member the ropes
CLASSIC BOAT APRIL 2012
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ROGER BARNES
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