By the end of the Second World War Fairey Aviation were well-prepared to begin production of small hot-moulded dinghies to keep all their highly skilled staff employed. After Uffa Fox’s stepson ditched in the Channel the great man set about designing a new airborne lifeboat capable of being dropped by aircraft with a parachute to reduce the impact with the water. Many hundreds of aircrew were saved using Fairey’s moulded wood machines which carried two small engines, fuel, oars, mast and sails, plus dry, warm clothes, food and cigarettes… The largest versions (below) carried up to 25 airmen and were dropped by bomber
production cruisers won a total of 202 awards in powerboat races, many of them with Currey or Twiss at the helm. This included an impressive 54 awards in 1969, when international regulation started to change the rules, and offshore powerboat racing became dedicated to purpose-built raceboats instead of tuned-up family cruis- ers with comfortable accommodation. Public awareness was famously height-
ened in 1963 when five Faireys starred in the concluding chase scenes in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love. The elegant Huntsman 28 is Fairey’s
In 1957 Sir Richard’s son Dick Fairey
(who died only three years later), together with his former school chum Bruce Camp- bell, proposed they build a sea-going motorboat designed by the American naval architect Ray Hunt. Technical development of faster motor-
boats, which use their power to lift them- selves out of the water rather than pushing themselves through it, had progressed steadily from the turn of the century, but Ray Hunt had evolved a new shape for the hull that would allow it to maintain speed in rough seas. Traditional planing hulls were flattened
out at the stern to maximise speed, but are very uncomfortable in the rough, when they jump from wave to wave and land heavily. Ray Hunt formed the bottom into a constant deep-V shape – at a carefully calculated angle of 24° from the keel – from forward right to the transom. He then added spray rails, which together with this new hull shape provided a softer landing and better directional stability allowing the boat to maintain its speed through rough water. Bruce Campbell was granted sole rights
for selling all the motorboats, while actively helping Fairey’s own naval archi- tect, Alan Burnard, to develop the boats, all of which used the hot-moulded con- struction. But the first Hunt boats, which were fast single-engine open launches, did not sell and Bruce decided he could do better alone. He rented a yard at Badnam Creek just upriver of Hamble village and bought the first hulls from Fairey to which he added luxurious cabins, and called them Christinas. Then in 1959 Sir Max Aitken, chairman of Express Newspapers, ordered a Hunt
38 SEAHORSE
boat direct from Fairey, finished to Alan Burnard’s design, and persuaded friends to buy them too. He also suggested the name Huntress, which Fairey adopted. In addition to both the Fairey Huntress
and early Christina boats, in 1960 Alan Burnard developed the Hunt hull into the glorious Huntsman 28, now with twin diesel engines. The same Huntress hull was also used by Dell Quay Yachts for their twin cabin pocket-cruiser Ranger. After completing 19 Christinas with Fairey hulls Bruce Campbell adopted a slightly larger Hunt hull for his similar Christina 25s. And so Fairey and Campbell had become friendly rivals. Meanwhile, Fairey’s test pilot, the air
speed record breaker Peter Twiss, joined the Fairey Marine team and Sir Max Aitken set up the first International Off- shore Powerboat Race from Cowes to Torquay in August 1961 with the specific purpose of ‘improving the breed’. This race was won by Tommy Sopwith in
Thunderbolt, a Bruce Campbell Christina 25, and the Fairey diesel Huntsman was third driven by Charles Currey. Peter Twiss retired the damaged Huntsman no8 of Billy Butlin (of Butlin’s holiday camp fame), but five of the nine finishers had Hunt-derived hulls. (An interesting footnote: Thunderbolt
was discovered rotting in the Med in 2006 by powerboat racer and designer Don Shead, who rescued her and brought her back to the UK. She was later immacu- lately restored at Oulton International Boatbuilding College and was relaunched in 2010. Watching Thunderbolt open the throttles at modern classic powerboat events is a reminder of the impressive durability of hot-moulded construction). Between 1961 and 1973 Fairey Marine
most iconic powerboat, and in 1963 it was followed by the larger twin-diesel Swords- man 33 which had more spacious accom- modation, especially with the option of an aft cabin. An updated Huntsman, the 31, was
built in 1967. There were also a few varia- tions on the wooden boats, designed by Alan Burnard, and many further hulls completed by other yards. In all about 450 hot-moulded Fairey powerboats were pro- duced, and a large number were exported. Though no one knows the precise number, a large proportion of these boats are still afloat or undergoing restoration today, 60 years after the first examples went afloat (a number of the original raceboats were lost to fire during competition, many of them powered by highly tuned petrol engines). By the end of the 1960s glass-fibre
construction had become the norm for the majority of boatbuilders, and was adopted for the 1969 Spearfish 30, based on the aft cockpit Huntsman 31. Fairey’s final production leisure boat
was the glass-fibre Fantôme 32, which also featured an aft cabin. Although about 150 glass-fibre cruisers were built they were less distinctive, and the imposition in 1974 of a new 25 per cent UK sales tax (VAT) on luxury items was the final burden that caused Fairey Marine to move its focus to military customers. The original Hamble Point site was extended out into the river and a marina built. Changing circum- stances led the company to leave Hamble Point in 1983, but the site remains a centre of boatbuilding and repair. Today the flourishing Fairey Owners’
Club has about 350 members, around half with Fairey boats being carefully nurtured for the next generation of owners.
www.faireyownersclub.co.uk
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