Update


Above: generally regarded as both the prettiest and best of the Morning Clouds, on which Anthony Churchill navigated, this is the Clare Lallow-built S&S design built for the 1971 Admiral’s Cup in which skipper Edward Heath was captain of the winning UK team. Opposite: reason to smile after the British team had won the Admiral’s Cup for the first time in six years. The late Anthony Churchill is at the far right (a youthful John Green – later president of mast-makers Sparcraft – can also be seen fifth from the left!). Flanking Sir Edward Heath are Prospect of Whitby owner Arthur Slater (left) and Quailo’s owner Donald Parr. All three boats were S&S designs


FAREWELL, FOUNDER – Tim Jeffery Put aside the ‘establishment’ pigeon-hole for Anthony Churchill, despite what a Cambridge economics degree, a family tree tracing back to both the Churchill and Spencer families and being a loyal friend of former Prime Minister Edward Heath might lead you to conclude. Churchill guided two Morning Clouds to individual and team honours in the Sydney Hobart Race and Admiral’s Cup, was the prime mover behind the Whitbread Round the World Race and brought his entrepreneurial drive to events such at the FT Clipper Race and one of the world’s first ever events for boats rating at or near 70ft under the IOR rule. This Seahorse Maxi Series was named after this magazine, for


Churchill was its launch publisher in 1969. With Guy Pearce working alongside him, Churchill was very much a British Michel Etevenon, unafraid to step outside the rigid club-based system to innovate with new events. Like his distant relative Winston, Anthony Churchill was a polymath with an eye for opportunity others were blind to with a knack for making a success out of them. Born in 1935, he died quietly on 9 January at home in Ventnor,


on the south flank of the Isle of Wight, a place he’d made home since moving from his long-lived west London home. With no truck for retirement, Anthony turned a grain of a story


about Winston Churchill’s parents meeting for the first time on the island into a deeply researched book about the Jerome and Churchill families, Winston’s Island. Published just three years ago, it is a significant addition to Churchill scholarship. Anthony was an early recruit to Morning Cloud, Edward Heath


having hosted a recruitment party at his Piccadilly flat in 1968 helped along by Mike Winfield, builder of the British S&S 34s. Churchill was already a well-respected navigator on the likes of Phantom of Mersea, owned by one of the five founding fathers of


14 SEAHORSE


the Admiral’s Cup, Geoff Pattinson. He became integral to the first three (also the most successful) of Heath’s five Morning Clouds. These were the days of sextant navigation, with the navigator


also responsible for positioning the boat in terms of tide, current and weather forecast. The most enduring of Heath’s crew, Owen Parker, called the boat-to-boat tactics. In the famous Hobart win Churchill elected to take some easting out of Sydney which put the first Cloud into favourable weather and took Heath’s crew all the way south to Tasmania. The little S&S 34’s outright victory of the 1969 Sydney Hobart was the first by a British yacht since John Illing- worth’s win in 1945. And the second Cloud, a beautiful flush-deck Clare Lallow-built S&S 41, saw Heath become the first Prime Minister of a country to lead a team to victory in international sport. Ocean racing was pretty much a self-contained world. But with


Edward Heath Leader of the Opposition and then from 1970 Prime Minister, Morning Cloud’s activities were subject to unusual scrutiny. An early Burnham Week campaign in the first Cloud saw much con- fusion about the meaning of a double-gun at the start, while onboard there was the familiar ‘you sure you’re right?’ entreaty to the nav- igator. Churchill was sure, though the rest of the class retired leaving Cloudracing to nightfall. Edward Heath had to reassure his increasingly anxious police protection officers over the radio that all was well. In recent times Churchill debunked in calm, measured terms


some of the risible claims at the centre of the discredited police investigation into Edward Heath himself: no, ocean racing yachts don’t have private cabins; yes, Special Branch officers were ever present, except just before starts or immediately after a finish. After a career in financial journalism at the Express and Financial


TimesChurchill created Ocean Publications. From its 134 Bucking- ham Palace Road offices near London’s Victoria Station Seahorse was published alongside Dinghy, Sub-Aqua Sceneand titles covering tennis, powerboating, equestrian, canoeing and a number of cultural


KEYSTONE PICTURES/ALAMY


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