10 minute read
A FAIREY LONG HISTORY
Fairey boats may no longer be built, but the name remains hugely popular, and so we decided to delve into the story of this iconic boat builder, which goes back more than 100 years and begins, perhaps surprisingly, not on the water but in the sky.
Beautiful to look at and bullet proof in construction –the Fairey Finn. Image: D. Henshall
There is a very good adage that says when something looks right, the chances are it will work right. Most people will have their own examples of this. From the Spitfire to the E-Type Jaguar or the 5o5 dinghy to the QE2, we all recognise that magical fusion of design and functionality.
For those who love their boats, and in particular, their powerboats, there is one craft that, despite being some 50-yearsold, still clearly falls into this select, elite group that will always turn heads. The boat, of course, is the wonderful Fairey Swordfish, a curvaceous 33ft long masterpiece from the drawing board of designer Alan Burnard.
These boats would come to represent the epitome of that unique building method that is so associated with not just the Fairey name, but with their long term presence in a large factory on the point of the northernmost shore that guards the entrance to the Hamble River. Yet the presence of the Fairey factory has its roots more than 100 years ago, as a new form of transport was just beginning to spread its wings.
FLYING START The first generation of aeroplanes at the start of the 20th century was made of wood and canvas, so it was little surprise when areas rich in boatbuilding expertise would be involved in the manufacture of the first aircraft.
On the area known as ‘Hamble Point’ the Luke family, who had moved down to the South coast from Limehouse on the Thames, operated their boatbuilding business, and in 1910 became involved in the Hamble Hydrobiplane or HL1.
Sadly, this plane was not a success, but the Solent would soon be full of the sounds of other aircraft. In 1913, Winston Churchill, in his capacity as First Lord of the Admiralty, came to the Solent and took his first ever flight, which even included him spending some time at the controls.
The Navy was keen to get to grips with aviation with the Royal Naval Air Service being formed just before the outbreak of war in 1914, at which point it had more aircraft, not to mention more type of aircraft than the Royal Flying Corps!
The area around the Solent quickly became a hotbed of Naval flying, and when war broke out the boatyard at Hamble Point was requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence.
Today Fairey powerboats are rightly considered a true classic. Image: David Henshall FAIREY PLANES The big step change came in 1915 when the site was allocated to a new aircraft company created by Richard Fairey. Fairey, who was only 27 at the outbreak of the war, had already proved himself a clever and innovative engineer and one with a strong interest in flight.
Driven by the demands of wartime, the Fairey company developed a range of planes and, though they also became a supplier to the Royal Flying Corp/ RAF, they were best known for their Naval aircraft.
The rapid growth and development in aviation would slow, then come to almost a complete stop in the post-war years, with the 1920s being very lean years for the UK flying industry.
Hamble was not immune to the effects of the downturn. At Hamble Point, Fairey hung on and at times clung on, with their travails being recounted in a barely disguised form in some of the books of novelist Nevil Shute, who had formed a long friendship through the shared interests in planes and boats.
As the UK slowly emerged from the Great Depression, life down at Hamble Point would also pick up pace. Although it was easy for the site to do work on seaplanes, which could be launched from their large slipway, Hamble Point suffered from not being co-located with an airfield.
Instead, the aircraft were placed on a ‘Queen Mary’ low loader trailer and transported a mile up the road to Hamble aerodrome, though with the narrow and twisting lanes that fed the village this produced some interesting and at times comical situations.
In the end the nations of northern Europe would CHANGING TIMES come together to defeat the Barbary Pirate menace, Once the pace of work quickened up with and when an Anglo-Dutch fleet shelled Algiers the new threat of war and rearmament, thousands of slaves would finally be released. planes were often towed on their
Image: Everett Collection/Shutterstock undercarriage behind a tractor, but the reality for aircraft work at Hamble Point was changing fast. The days of wood and canvas had gone, to be replaced by aluminium, but in a strange twist of fate it was planes built in wood that would determine the Fairey future at Hamble.
The technique of cold moulding was certainly not new in aircraft construction, with French aircraft being built of laid up and glued veneers back at the end of WW1, but with the global shortages caused by the 1939-45 conflict, moulded construction, often using early forms of plywood, became a necessity. However, this would push the current glue technology past acceptable limits, given that a plane could be operating in the frozen regions of the northern latitudes or the humid heat of the jungle.
The scourge of moulded structures is delamination, not wanted at 400mph and 20,000 feet up!
The answer was to build huge cylindrical steam ovens and ‘pressure cook’ the structure, resulting in the term ‘holt moulded’ as distinct from the existing ‘cold moulded’. At Hamble, a number of these ‘autoclaves’, together with the supporting boilers, were constructed making what had been a traditional boatyard look ever more like an industrial plant, but the writing for wooden construction was already on the wall for all to see.
LEFT: Instantly recognisable, a Fairey Classic with strong connections to Hamble - the Fairey Swordfish. Image: A. White
NEW APPLICATION With the advent of the jet engine, there would not be a peacetime requirement for wooden aircraft parts, even those that had been hot moulded. Luckily for the factory at Hamble, both Sir Richard Fairey (knighted in 1942) and Fairey MD Charles Chichester-Smith were very keen sailors, who realised that the investment in the autoclaves could indeed have a peacetime application. Chichester-Smith knew top helmsman Charles Currey from their pre-war days in the International 14 fleet and, knowing that he was about to be ‘demobbed’ from his role in charge of a high speed Motor Gunboat, signed him up for the new venture, Fairey Marine, which would be based out of Hamble.
The tooling was constructed for a mould of a 12ft dinghy to an Uffa Fox design, on to which the hulls were laid up and cooked in the autoclave. The laying up process itself used a number of strips of very thin Agba wood (veneers), which were then stapled to the mould and each other.
To ensure that the glue was evenly applied the veneers were manually put through what can best be described as a large washing mangle, where the rollers were wetted with the glue. This was normally a task given to the apprentices, few of whom bothered with protective gloves. In the surrounding villages, it was very easy to spot an apprentice from Fairey as the glue stained their hands yellow, though it did not seem to cause any long term harm.
The result, though, was a hull that was light, incredibly strong and long lasting and without the web of internal ribs that were such a part of the dinghies of the day.
FIREFLY BORN The new boat was christened the Fairey Firefly, a nod to the parentage of the company as the name Firefly had already been used several times for successful Fairey aircraft.
The first sail of the prototype, with Charles Currey and Uffa Fox on board, could have been a disaster as the mast came down (today’s Health and Safety would not have been impressed as neither man was wearing a lifejacket, but both were in weighty duffel coats and wellington boots!).
Hard on the heels of the Firefly came another boat that bore the name of a famous Fairey aircraft, the 15ft Swordfish, another design by Uffa Fox. However, there would be those who complained that all he had done was to scale the 12ft hull up to 15ft.
Much is made of the story of how the Firefly was used in the 1948 Olympic regatta at Torquay, but until quite late on in the proceedings that had not been the plan. Instead, it was the bigger Swordfish that was supposed to be on duty for that event, only for the lack of a single hander see the Firefly pressed into service.
The Swordfish was then dropped, to be replaced by the American Star keelboat. For Fairey, the Olympics meant a confirmed order for 24 boats that were then shipped to Torquay on a Tank Landing Craft. However, this was a one way only trip.
Past the Games, the boats were sold ‘from the beach’ as cash strapped Torquay tried to recover some of their outlay. The Firefly was a huge success, not least because it came equipped with a metal mast (at least the lower section was metal) and together with the Swordfish they would help drive the expansion in domestic dinghy sailing. the 5o5. Fairey were already building one candidate for the International Trials that would be held to choose a new performance dinghy with the Uffa Fox Jollyboat, but just across the river at Warsash the prototype of a far superior boat, the 505, was being constructed in Jack Chippendale’s boatyard.
After cold moulding the first few hulls Jack found the whole process labour intensive and passed the project across the river to Fairey, where it would join the Flying Dutchman and International 14. By now the Fairey line of boats was looking more like a dynasty, ranging from the diminutive Duckling to the highly successful Albacore, with motorboat enthusiasts being catered for with a high speed ‘ski boat’ and a dumpy 16ft motor-launch.
There is, however, another very good old adage that suggests that the potential profits from boatbuilding increase in direct proportion with the size of the boat built.
As well as huge growth in the dinghy scene cruising, together with what was becoming known as the ‘atomic family’, was an equally buoyant area that Fairey would tap into with their 26ft long, turtle decked, lifting keel Atalanta (named after Sir Richard Fairey’s wife), which could justifiably stake a claim as being the first practical trailer sailer.
From the Atalanta came the Fulmar and Titania. Beauty, especially in boats, will always be in the eye of the beholder, but the Atalanta was a huge success which then led on to a stretched 31ft version. With some justification Fairey marketing material could claim that this was the ‘biggest range from Europe’s largest boat builder’. Next month we will continue the fascinating story of Fairey from the 1950s and 1960s to the iconic brand’s eventual demise.
In effect the autoclaves were just giant sized pressure cookers, with steam heat and pressure curing the glue used in the moulding process. Image: G. Currey
Before the land was reclaimed in front of the factory (by just dumping in all the now redundant aircraft at the end of WW2) the Fairey site at Hamble Point. Image: Fairey Marine
Where it all began - The Luke Brothers boat yard on Hamble Point. Image: I. Underdown
