Martyn Mackrill 2017 - complete exhibition (both catalogues) by Messums

front cover

1. Becalmed

limited edition print of 50 17.8 x 15.2 cmsâ&#x20AC;&#x192; 7 x 6 ins

inside front cover is a detail from no. 16

Limited editions and original paintings based on the voyage of the Dulcibella in Erskine Childersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; novel of 1903 The Riddle of the Sands catalogue I

2017 text by

DICK DURHAM

PREFACE by Dick Durham

Writer, sailor, soldier, ‘spy’: the author which haunts us still the book help us understand the inertia of World War 1 as the centenary of that conflict is remembered, or not? One man who has got closer than anyone to answering those questions is author, yachtsman and soldier Maldwin Drummond OBE. His book, The Riddle, is the result of a three-year investigation made by sea in his yacht Runa VII, by land and by air interviewing Childers’ family, researching archives and consulting naval historians. When a new, up-dated edition of his guide book to one of the great conundrums of maritime history was planned, Martyn Mackrill was pressed into service to produce oil paintings and sketches. Dick Durham, as a yachtsman who has sailed three times to the mysterious Frisian Islands was then seconded to help Martyn with a contemporary visit.

2. The Childers’ plan

limited edition print of 50 15.2 x 17.8 cms 6 x 7 ins

Ever since reading The Riddle of the Sands, painter Martyn Mackrill and writer Dick Durham have been hooked on the novel’s strange spell. Like many thousands of sailors, and nonsailors for that matter, the pair could never quite shake off the haunting quality of a yarn which was more slippery than the slimiest elver. Was it based on a real threat, or not? Had its author Erskine Childers witnessed something tangible which made the military take him seriously, or not? Can the legacy of

Dick writes: ‘Erskine Childers was a man book-ended between Empire. When he set out in his gaff-cutter Vixen, for the German coastline, he was a patriot. The British Empire was at its zenith, just two months before, Queen Victoria, celebrating her Diamond Jubilee, sent a telegram to every corner of the largest Empire in history, covering a quarter of the world’s population: “Thanks my beloved people. May God bless them.” ‘Twenty-five years later that same Empire was beginning to crack up. Riots in India, and unrest in Egypt foretold the end. While bloodshed in Ireland, most intractable of them all, had put Childers in a death cell, condemned as a nationalist.’ His real-voyage boat Vixen, he re-named Dulcibella, after the boat in the novel (both named after his favourite sister) adding further to the labyrinthine mix of fact and fiction. She was a gaff-cutter in real life, in fiction she was both cutter and yawl. She was burnt in 1949, 27 years after Childers’ death and her iron keel lies somewhere beneath a Lymington housing estate.

3. Runa

limited edition print of 50 21.6 x 15.2 cms 81⁄2 x 6 ins

A journey back in time Only the ferry gave us any indication that our world had a third

‘Put the kettle on Davies. I have just arrived with my

dimension. It steamed steadily forth under a vastness of charcoal

portmanteau! Excellent service on the London and

cloud marbled with ashen fissures, over a leaden sea, pock-marked

Southend Railway. Could you send someone to pick me up?

with black triangular wavelets. Before the penetration of our little

Yours Carruthers.’

ship, both sea and sky appeared as one vertical grey sheet. Astern the coastline had disappeared into the same smoky shroud, as

Both of us are yachtsmen, both of us sail gaff-rigged, traditional

the vessel’s propellers drove us relentlessly forward bestirring the

craft, and both of us, in common with thousands of others, had

monotonous face of the Wadden Sea, and producing a welcome, if

been bitten by the Riddle bug. However only one of us had sailed

temporary, streak of white.

to the Frisians. In my youth I had taken three different yachts to the

Almost imperceptibly, as we headed north-east into the bitter,

Dutch Frisian islands, which Childers himself visited on passage to

autumn wind, a long, low, dark line manifest itself along the hinge

the Baltic. So it was inevitable that I had to be Davies, the older,

between sea and sky. Then, on this smudge of terra firma, a strange,

monosyllabic and gnarled owner of the Spartan gaffer Dulcibella,

black monolith with a sharp point, like a Pickelhaube, appeared

while Martyn, a neophyte to the area, was obliged to adopt the

piercing the sky. Next, at last, came colour, the unmistakeable red

dilletante, foppish and metropolitan character of Carruthers, the

and white bands of a spindly lighthouse, around the base of which a

Foreign Office wallah.

speckle of vermillion roofs revealed a hamlet half hidden in a wood.

Childers was more fortunate than both of us – needing no twin

It was our first view of the German Frisian Islands, the weird

to provide his inspiration – for his leading characters, in my opinion,

waterworld which author Erskine Childers had sailed to in a

were drawn from himself. He was both a skilled small boat sailor,

converted lifeboat 119 years beforehand.

a Corinthian, in Victorian parlance, and his alter-ego resided in the

The book which his voyage produced, The Riddle of the Sands,

House of Commons where he worked as a clerk.

first published in 1903 has sold, at the last count, more than two

Our timing was deliberate being a century after the 1916 Battle

million copies and was included in The Observer newspaper’s list of

of the Somme, the opening day of which saw the British Army suffer

‘The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time.’

the greatest loss in its history when 19,000 men were killed before

Two of its readers, Martyn Mackrill, and myself, in preparation

breakfast, for Childers had always insisted his book was not a novel,

for a journey to try and understand the lure of this novel, had already

but a literary warning device about the German military threat.

adopted, in a comical manner, the personas of the yarn’s main

And while Davies and Carruthers’ clumsy attempts at espionage

characters, Davies and Carruthers.

reveal a plan of invasion from the Frisian Islands, Winston Churchill,

Martyn had started the charade with a mobile phone text as he

First Lord of the Admiralty made life follow art by ordering a report

came up from his home in the Isle of Wight to join me in Essex, both

from Childers on the feasibility of an invasion to the Frisian Islands.

coasts of which Childers had already explored in a small open boat:

It’s a campaign which author, soldier and yachtsman Maldwin Drummond, whose book The Riddle examines the fact and the

4. Runa Off Beachy Head

limited edition print of 50 15.2 x 21.6 cms 6 x 81⁄2 ins

fiction behind Childers’ voyage, believes to this day would have

the guns he had smuggled in, and a Westminster Bill extending

‘shortened the war.’

military conscription to Ireland turned him once again back into

Both of us had lost family in the Great War. One of Martyn’s great

the uncompromising Davies. This time permanently. He joined his

uncles, Robert Ramsay, was killed during the Battle of Jutland, two

cousin Robert Barton, now a member of Sinn Fein, who introduced

of mine, Arthur Best and Stanley Durham in Flanders. The latter, like

him to Michael Collins, the movement’s military chief and Sinn Fein

Martyn’s, with no known grave: his name is hewn on the Menin Gate.

President, Eamon de Valera. Childers became a zealot and while

In August 1897 Childers set sail from Dover in his seven-ton, gaff-

some of his fellow nationalists saw Home Rule as the best deal they

rigged cutter, Vixen, for a four-month cruise to the Baltic. Martyn and

were going to get, Childers no longer trusted his fellow Englishmen

I left Dover in something a little bigger, the 28,000-ton Calais-bound

and, as Sinn Fein’s Minister for Propaganda, he pushed for an all-out

ferry, Pride of Burgundy for a week’s motoring tour to East Friesland.

Irish Republic. The resulting Civil War in Ireland between the Home

As we drove north we discussed the life of Childers. He had been

Rulers and the Nationalists, saw Childers arrested for carrying a

born in the salubrious district of London’s Mayfair in 1870, the son of

gun. He was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad on

an English academic father, Robert, and an Irish mother, Anna. Both

22 November 1922 at the age of 52.

parents died from TB before Childers was 13 and he and his brother, Henry, and sisters Dulcibella, Constance and Sybil moved to Wicklow in Ireland to be brought up by Anna’s brother Charles Barton and his

‘That’s the bare bones of his story,’ I said. ‘As bare bones go there’s plenty of meat left on them,’ said Martyn, ‘what an incredible life.’

wife Agnes. Childers studied law at Trinity College, Cambridge and after graduating started his career in the House of Commons. As an upright Englishman, a bit like Carruthers, he enlisted in the

Lost on the sands

City Imperial Volunteers artillery and fought in the Boer War. Yet, as a

We disembarked from the Harlesiel ferry onto the flour-like sand

self-styled Irishman, an independent, a bit like Davies, along with his

dunes of Wangerooge, the epicentre of The Riddle of the Sands. In

wife Molly, from Boston, USA, Childers used their wedding present,

common with all the Frisian Islands, Wangerooge is pinned down

the 28-ton Colin Archer yacht Asgard, to smuggle 900 German rifles

in the face of North Sea storms, or more diplomatically, German

transhipped from a tug-boat in the Dover Strait to Howth, County

Ocean storms, by clumps of spear-like marram grass, networks

Dublin for the Irish Volunteers just two months before the outbreak

of bound faggots and concrete sea walls studded with wave-

of the war with Germany, he’d predicted in The Riddle of the Sands.

breaking nodules. The last of the East Frisian Islands, Wangerooge

Then Childers switched back to being an upright Englishman again,

looks out over the Jade estuary which floats the impotent navy of

joining the RNVR, writing a memorandum on the seizure of two

contemporary Germany at Wilhelmshaven. As the country’s only

German Frisian Islands and winning the DSC fighting for the Allies in

deep water port, founded as a naval base by Prussia, it was, when

World War I, after all the Carruthers side of him knew that an English

Erskine Childers arrived in 1897, about to be developed. Kaiser

gentleman kept his word and he believed the British would support

Wilhelm II’s mission to outgun the Royal Navy, had sparked an arms

claims of Irish nationality once hostilities ceased. However the

race with a fin de siecle version of mutually assured destruction. He

vicious reaction to the rebels of the Easter Rising, who were using

oversaw many dreadnought battleships in build at Wilhelmshaven.

5. Aboard Runa, Looking Aft

limited edition print of 50 15.2 x 17.8 cms 6 x 7 ins

Martyn, with his shopping basket of brushes in one hand and his collapsible easel in the other and I with a shoulder bag stuffed with

up his easel on that same damp strand while I walked out across the miles of firm, ribbed, sea-abandoned sand.

camera kit, spare tubes of paint, a flask of tea and packed lunch

For the time being Neptune’s estate was mine and I strode

for two, ignored the narrow gauge railway which snaked across the

across a damp desert of wormcasts, black toothpaste-like deposits

marshes and was swallowed up by a giant flood gate as it disappeared

of goose droppings, and razor shells, a scene that would not have

into the town, and instead trudged off instinctively towards the huge

changed since the 27-year-old Childers walked in for water and

Pickelhaube which we discovered was West Tower, a 180ft high

eggs at a ‘lonely shanty on the shore,’ over a century before.

brick edifice padlocked against the elements. This strange day mark

What had changed was the technology in place to prevent

was a replica of St Nikolaus Church, built in 1327, which once stood

Wangerooge, being washed away again, leaving the West Tower

in the centre of Wangerooge, and which doubled as a lighthouse.

marooned at sea. Two miles out on the tideline, a large pontoon-

Three more since then had been constructed, but the fourth version,

barge, squatted like some mechanical centaur, ‘moored’ by

built in 1601, was eventually deserted by the island itself after a storm

adjustable legs. It supported a digger which grabbed bucket loads

surge washed away the village in 1854. It was this disembodied tower

of the sea bed and deposited them into a fleet of lorries which

which Childers saw on October 5 1897 when he noted in Vixen’s log:

ferried the dirt back to a new sea wall being landscaped by workers

‘Walked to the west point of the island to see the old church tower

in high-viz jackets, in a Forth Bridge job of reclamation.

which stands right in the sea at half flood … looks most bizarre on the lonely verge of the North Sea.’

Childers and his crew, brother Henry, had spent four days here in early October while wind-bound on their outward passage to the

With the outbreak of war in 1914, the stranded church was

Baltic. They anchored Vixen here again on the return voyage relieved

blown up to prevent its use by hostile forces and the tower which

after crossing the vast sands which choke the estuaries of the Elbe,

stands today, back on dry land once more, was built in 1933.

Weser and Jade. It was on a section of these shoals – the Hohenhorn

Martyn and I looked across the Harle gat, a shoal-infested gap

Sand – that Childers had Davies run Dulcibella aground and almost

between Wangerooge and the neighbouring island, Spiekeroog.

founder having been led there by the treacherous Dollman who was

Surf was breaking as seas rolled in from Heligoland Bight and a

‘piloting’ him with his barge-yacht Medusa through to the Elbe.

flock of black brent geese bobbed in quieter water under the lee of a breakwater.

‘Very glad to have done with what was the only difficult part of the return voyage,’ Childers wrote in Vixen’s log on November 25, as they

‘There’s no point in painting that, Carruthers,’ I said desirous of

anchored. That same night a near disaster aboard Vixen was also

getting back down off the exposed sea wall, ‘I would never anchor

used in the novel when Dulcibella, aground in the dark with no riding

there.’

light or anchor deployed, received a visit from a mystery prowler.

We walked back to the red and white striped lighthouse and

Vixen’s log recalls: ‘Landed with heavy load of water jars and

found the town just as Childers had: ‘a pleasant, little sand-

oil-cans. Dark when we started back loaded to the last extreme.

embedded village crouching round a magnificent light tower.’

Alas we had forgotten to light the lamp and we entirely lost the boat

Vixen had anchored off Wangerooge a mile and a half from the

in the dark. Then remembered that we had also put no anchor out!

shoreline and at half-ebb Childers had walked ashore. Martyn set

Had to separate and search, E found her at last a long way off from

6. The Saloon, Vixen, Looking Forward

limited edition print of 50 17.8 x 22.8 cms 7 x 9 ins

where we had gone to. Relief. Lighted lamp and returned to help H with the load’.

Eight years later in The Riddle of the Sands, Childers swapped curses for compliments as he scripted Davies to opine glowingly: ‘They’ve licked the French and the Austrians, and are the greatest

An Emperor’s new clothes

military power in Europe … but what I’m concerned with is their

If Erskine Childers had utilised his alter ego to produce the

Emperor of theirs is running it for all it’s worth. He’s a splendid chap,

characters in The Riddle of the Sands, that same second self

and anyone can see he’s right. They’ve got no colonies to speak of,

created a greater contradiction when it came to real life and one

and must have them like us.’

real life in particular. Childers shared similar physical characteristics with Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last Emperor of Germany. Both men were slightly

sea-power. It’s a new thing with them, but it’s going strong, and that

As we shall see later on, as the struggle for Irish independence intensified, Childers turned his own view of German imperial power completely on its head – for real.

built, of middling height and both had a problem limb. In the Kaiser’s

On October 7, Vixen entered Brunsbuttal for the Kaiser Wilhelm

case it was a withered left arm, the result of his mother Vicky, Queen

Ship Canal and Childers experienced his first brush with German

Victoria’s daughter, suffering a breech birth. In Childers’ case it was

‘thoroughness’, in the received chauvinism of the time, as he was

sciatica of the left foot caused by his love of walking in rain and wind

ordered to ‘fill up a form, which being intended for vessels up to

on the Wicklow hills of his youth which had left him lamed for life.

10,000 tons, contained lists of unanswerable questions.’ The

Both men were also sailors.

following day they moored alongside a schooner, the Johannes,

And there the similarities ended.

whose skipper was immortalised in The Riddle of the Sands.

When Wilhelm was elevated from Prince to Kaiser he was given

Vixen’s log records: ‘At last lashed alongside the Johannes

a new wardrobe. It included a sword, never used in anger, a skin-

schooner bound for Kappelen in the Baltic. Skipper Bartels a right

tight white uniform with 26 decorations or awards to choose from,

good sort. He began by a solemn present of pears. We replied with

a pair of knee-high leather boots and an eagle-crested helmet. His

wax matches (an everlasting source of wonder and joy to all foreigners)’

behaviour became as grandiloquent as his dress. He telegrammed

On October 10 1897 Erskine Childers saw his first German ships

Transvaal President Paul Kruger and congratulated his Boers for

of war: ‘Beat in light winds up Kiel Fiord … suddenly the mists rolled

fighting the British, after the botched Jameson Raid, news which

away … and a long line of battleships moored in the fairway.’

shocked the world.

Just four months before, Alfred von Tirpitz, Secretary of State

Childers wrote: ‘What a damned insolent puppy that Emperor is.’

of the German Imperial Naval Office, sent a missive to the Kaiser:

He was on holiday in the south of France with a Cambridge

‘For Germany the most dangerous naval enemy is England. Our

pal, Ivor Lloyd-Jones, who two years later, as one of Vixen’s crew,

fleet must unfold its military potential between Heligoland and the

helped Childers sail her from Boulogne to Amsterdam, en route

Thames. The military situation against England demands battleships

to the Baltic. Childers’ letter continued: ‘Lloyd-Jones is here and

in as great a number as possible.’

we spend the day Emperor cursing and expressing a sublime confidence in the tenacity of the Anglo-Saxon race.’

That year Germany counted the number of armoured ships of over 5,000 tons: Britain had 62, France 36, Russia 18, Germany 12.

7. Meeting Clara

limited edition print of 50 17.8 x 22.8 cms 7 x 9 ins

Tirpitz said a ‘danger zone’ existed: a zone Germany must pass before she was too strong for England to attack.

the dark…Harbour full of warships (just before the Kim-Chau affair) whose launches were tearing about everywhere.’

From Kiel brother Henry returned to England and Childers

Kim-Chau, or Tsingtao in China, was seized by Germany as a

sailed solo into the Baltic. Of Sonderburg he noted in the log: ‘The

military base where ships could coal thus avoiding the British colony

town is Danish to the core though German since ’68. The very

of Hong Kong where they had to book up nine months in advance

shopkeepers spoke German with reluctance.’ Four miles up Als

for dry-dock work.

Sound, he noticed a small monument in a clump of fir trees on the

Vixen sailed on to Cuxhaven where Childers went for a walk

bank. ‘Landed and found a graceful little Gothic memorial to those

noting: ‘There were some tremendously strong forts on the point to

killed at that spot in 1864 when the Germans forced a landing

command the Elbe fairway.’

and conquered Als Sound. Good bas-reliefs showed scenes in the battle. It was a monument to the memory of the dead of both

Four days later Vixen’s riding light glittered over the ebbing tide behind Wangerooge once more.

nations and seemed to me singularly dignified and touching in its peaceful surroundings.’ Two days later Childers walked up the Doppel Berg at Dybbol

Falling glass

‘scene of the last desperate stand of the Danes, taken by storm in

For a few, brief hours the grey autumn canopy which had dominated

1864…

our trip to the German Frisian islands, lifted and Spiekeroog lay in

‘The great stone memorial was very interesting, so were the relics of the battle stored in a inn close by.’ It was to return to Denmark following a plebiscite in 1920 two years after the end of the Great War.

front of us a green and khaki land bathed in brilliant sunshine with chasing patches of cloud shadow. We walked westwards from the ferry and scaled white sand dunes the size of small foothills, leaving a trail of soft footprints, like shepherds through snow, until

This was the furthest north Childers sailed and upon Vixen’s

at the summit we looked down on a plain of fawn-coloured sand,

return voyage, he was re-joined by Henry on 3 November at

threaded with azure blue channels edged with breaking white rollers

Flensberg. He’d arrived from London with gun cartridges in ‘the

where shoal met sea. Looking back towards the coast we watched

hope of shooting duck’, an activity Childers was to use in The Riddle

the distant ferry, the size of a toy, returning to the mainland, its tiny

of the Sands as a cover story for Davies and Carruthers, while they

windows lit-up with the low sun.

spied on German military build up. Nine days later while sailing back down Kiel Fjord Vixen was hailed by a Customs steamer and ordered to heave-to after which

Weaving through sharp-edged tufts of marram grass we started tumbling down the avalanching sand, breaking into an involuntary jog as we tried to stay upright.

they were boarded by an officer ‘who searched everything (a most

At the bottom Martyn unpacked his easel near the water’s

unusual proceeding in Germany) and then demanded a table, pen

edge, pock-marked with a million dead shells, wind-driven plumes

and ink, embarrassing requests in view of the mess the cabin was

of sand on their leeward side. Among this marine detritus lay crab

in after our hard day’s sail. He gave us a clearance paper and they

carapaces, cracked open for their edible flesh then discarded by

left us. It was a tiresome delay and we had to beat on to Kiel in

wheeling gulls, and left for barnacles to put roots down.

8. Running into Bensersiel

limited edition print of 50 20.3 x 25.4 cms 8 x 10 ins

On 26 November 1897 Vixen was making heavy weather of it along the southern edge of this island which looks, in plan, like a seal.

The following day, in thick fog, they groped by compass towards the booms marking Neuharlingersiel and spent a night in harbour.

‘Wind south-west to our profound disgust and glass falling

After our ferry docked at Neuharlingersiel, Martyn and I supped

heavily. Under way at eight for the old game of beating….heavy

tomato soup in a waterside inn. We thought of Childers and his

thrash along Spiekeroog taking long legs over sand with the lead.’

brother, with snow on deck, trying to warm themselves. We thought

After making some oil sketches Martyn and I walked to a little

of them, too, as we lay in our cosy, guest house beds, for Vixen was

house surrounded by cobblestones which encompassed a mini-

invariably anchored outside the harbours of East Friesland and on

museum in which Martyn had a ‘Eureka’ moment.

more than one occasion the pair, in anticipation of heavy weather

Despite many hours of internet trawling Martyn had failed to find an image of a vessel similar to that owned by Herr Dollman, the

overnight, slept on the cabin sole to avoid being rolled out of their berths as the tide made.

English-born spy whose daughter Clara excited passionate feelings

That night we listened to the wind howling around the eaves

in Davies. His craft, the Medusa, aboard which, in an act of rogue

of our room, pulled the counterpanes further up to our chins and

pilotage, Dollman almost led Dulcibella to her destruction on the

were very glad not to be afloat. The Germans have a word for it:

Hohenhorn sands, is described as a ‘barge-yacht, along the lines

schadenfreude.

of a Dutch galliot, with leeboards and those queer round bows and square stern.’

The day after their brief sojourn in Neuharlingersiel, the crew of Vixen were forced to seek shelter again as the ‘glass began falling

Now, here on the white-washed walls of this tiny museum, were

with frightful rapidity almost visibly as you watched it.’

paintings of several such craft . We felt as excited as Davies and

As they hauled in the anchor they found it had bent under the

Carruthers as the pieces of their investigation fell into place, just like

strain and as the ‘wind grew to an even worse gale with heavy rain

our own.

and a hurricane look in the sky,’ a waterspout passed them just 400

On the evening tide our ferry reversed out of Spiekeroog and

yards away.

headed back for the mainland with gulls circling and manically

‘We were in the centre of a cyclone, we supposed, about 11, for

pecking at wormholes briefly revealed by the ferry’s displacement

the wind suddenly veered to the NE and blew a hurricane making

wash.

our anchorage and Bensersiel a lee shore.’

As we left the shelter of the harbour a black, anvil cloud covered

They bore away for Bensersiel and as they reached the entrance

the heavens, and storm force winds drove towards us, as rain frizzed

channel ‘found the booms almost covered by an abnormally

up the shallows. Our day of sunshine was over.

high tide and very hard to see. Henry stood forward and waved

Vixen, too, had heavy weather here.

directions, while E steered. Soon got into breakers and found it a

‘At dark it looked very stormy so we tacked over to the mainland

devil of a situation. Fearful work with the tiller under so much sail.

side and ran her aground at half ebb opposite the village of

One or two heavy gybes at turns of channel.

Neuharlingersiel. In view of gale put out two anchors. Blew a hard

‘Whole population on beach and yelling. Tide so high that all

gale in night with snow. Cabin quite warm with both lights and stove

clues were obscured, but H conned her skillfully on and we were

and curtain up. Heavy toll on the weather side.’

soon tearing into the mouth of the “harbour” about 15 feet wide at

9. Running for Shelter (Dulcibella making for Bensersiel)

oil on canvas 101 x 127 cms 393⁄4 x 50 ins

about seven knots. It was a tiny basin with not even room to round

‘A little figure in a fisherman’s jersey with hunched shoulders

up. Tried to get sail down but peak jammed. Let go anchor with a

and straining arms, the wind tearing through his thick hair, his face

run, luffed and brought up in time with bowsprit over the quayside

desperately set, he tugged, heaved, fought with his hands feet and

and received the bewildered congratulations of the people who

teeth to master the battling elements and achieve his end. That is

seemed to think we had fallen from the sky.’

how I saw him then that is how I shall always see him now – a

Childers was grateful Vixen had not broached in the breakers although he sensed a feeling of anti-climax from the locals:

tussling wisp of humanity, high overhead, and swirling with the slow swirl of the mast against a tumult of tempestuous sky…’

‘Underlying the general welcome we detected a slight current of

Once clear of Bensersiel, Childers steered Vixen ‘NW across

disappointment connected with salvage operations which at one

sands for Langeoog. ‘An hour’s sail a boom loomed up and the lead

time had appeared probable!’

told us we were in four fathoms so we let go having not an idea where

So vivid was this incident, that Childers used it virtually unchanged in The Riddle of the Sands even though it did not drive the narrative of the novel forward.

we were.’ But he was at least familiar with this island as two months earlier, on her passage north, Vixen had grounded off Langeoog. For Martyn and I the passage across to Langeoog was much less laborious. We simply sat behind the ferry’s reinforced glass

The lonely farm-house

windows sipping coffee as I read out Vixen’s log: ‘Reached the

A fishing boat, its nets hauled high up on derricks to dry, glided

walked a mile over sand to a farm-house carrying a big stone jar and

in through the entrance channel as Martyn and I watched it

got water and milk.’

pass. It was low water and we had walked halfway out along the tumbled rock training walls, re-tracing the nerve-wracking

shoalest spot off east of island and there stuck with no water. Henry

We looked at one another. ‘Let’s find the farm,’ we said simultaneously.

passage of Vixen’s entry into Bensersiel. The booms, or withies,

We had been caught up in the irresistible urge to associate which

which guided him in, and which the surge tide had covered, were

characterizes those smitten with the Riddle lure. It’s something to

now 10 feet above our heads and are today supplemented with

do with tangible details: the No. 3 Rippingille paraffin stove, the

sturdy posts.

Raven mixture for Davies’ pipe, the Norfolk jacket, real items which

Childers had been forced to ‘charter two men’ to haul Vixen

inhabit the novel and make it accessible to its disciples.

out bodily from this port: ‘a long, tiresome business against a fresh

We strode off on a mission, to chase up some other factor of

head wind and we grounded several times but at last we were in the

authenticity. Not once did we consider hiring bicycles, nor did we try

open … unpleasant prospect as it was quite dark and raining and a

and find a dog-cart to haul our load, nor even a proper map. Simply

lee shore.’ It was also the first day of December when most yachts

driven forth to find the farm, we set out once more in the opposite

have been laid up for over a month.

direction of our fellow passengers and away from the town. All

But Childers was a tough nut on a boat as a vivid description

we had was a tourist board brochure not to scale. But there was

of the sailor aloft by his crew, Alfred Ollivant, on a later cruise to the

something unbearably evocative in the line: ‘Henry walked a mile

Baltic exemplifies:

over sand … and got water and milk.’

10. The Corinthian Sailor

limited edition print of 50 15.2 x 17.8 cms 6 x 7 ins

We walked into the grey, against the wind, over the sea wall and along a pink brick road towards the island’s eastern end. Horns turned as chewing Highland cattle watched us pass, beaks turned as suspicious barnacle geese, at a safe distance, watched us pass, noses turned as horses in canvas gilets watched us pass.

‘Five o’clock. You walk to the ferry?’ he asked incredulously. ‘Yes,’ I said hopefully. ‘Well enjoy it,’ said the farmer as he cracked the reins and the old shire horses clip-clopped past us. With 10 minutes to spare until the last ferry departed Martyn

When we thought we might, ourselves, turn back, we decided

and I collapsed like marionettes with their strings cut, onto the seats

we were halfway there, when we found out we had not been halfway

of the terminal waiting room. We had hiked nine miles carrying all

there, we decided we might as well carry on.

our kit and I could only concur with Molly Childers’ forward to the

At the end of the island we looked out over a bleak, flat seascape:

1931 edition of The Riddle of the Sands that the book: ‘remains the

the gat between islands with the low lying suggestion of Spiekeroog

cherished companion of those who love the sea and who put forth

to weather.

in great or small sailing ships in search of adventure and the magical

Stoically Martyn, now shivering from the cold, set up his easel.

contentment to be won by strenuous endeavour.’

‘Look at that colour,’ he said through chattering teeth. ‘At least 50 shades of grey,’ I said, disgusted to have discovered the tea had gone cold in the flask.

Legacy of a flawed gospel

‘No, look, down at the edge there: violet, see that. It’s water.’

Norderney looks like a legless locust from the air, it’s armoured

‘That’s all we’ve got to drink,’ I said sulking, but I stared until my

western head poking a beady eye at its supplicant mainland port.

eyes dribbled, ‘It’s brown. I’ll give you that.’

Unlike the other, more bucolic islands, Norderney, at least its

But at least we’d found the farmhouse – Meirei Farm – the only

metropolis, has a sense of permanency thanks to a proliferation of

one on that end of the island, a red brick, barn-like structure built in

concrete - albeit with a regular dusting of sand – built to develop it

1870, according to the farmer who was busy loading folks onto his

as a spa town for German hypochondriacs with its ‘iodine-scented

horse and cart.

air’ and sea-water bathing.

‘Where you from?’ he asked as we started on the long trek back.

It was late September when Childers sailed in, to visit his first

‘Isle of Wight,’ said Martyn.

German port, and the tourists had gone: ‘Bright, pretty, strangely

‘Aha the south, and you?’

southern looking town, just going to sleep again after the summer

‘Essex.’

season.’

‘I come to Chelmsford. I have my appendix removed. Essex is good place.’

Martyn and I arrived in the middle of October and the ‘season’ was still very much in evidence. The ferry disgorged hundreds of

I smiled weakly and hoped our world-renowned NHS service

passengers, and scores of cars into streets brimming with shoppers,

would indirectly secure Martyn and I a seat on the farmer’s

back-packing students, and health tourists. The long beaches were

charabanc.

thronged with dog-walkers, kite-fliers, and cyclists.

‘Do you happen to know the time of the last ferry?’ I asked solicitously.

We set up studio on the sand looking out across the sea gat towards the island of Juist where Childers walked ashore after

11. Aground on the HohenhöRN

limited edition print of 50 20.3 x 25.4 cms 8 x 10 ins

grounding Vixen in fog. Henry had to use the foghorn to guide him

sand in all its manifestations; the delicate pink of the island dune in

back. It seems this might have hacked him off as in the evening

the evening glow, and all the infinitely various and subtle hues – from

Childers went ashore again, to dine alone:

umber to pale straw – of dry or drying flats. Monotony of scene must

‘Slight indisposition among the crew so I landed again and brought champagne and beefsteak at the hotel. Blew hard in the night.’ A day earlier they had sailed past a beacon, which plays a crucial part in The Riddle of the Sands, as Davies and Carruthers used it to locate themselves while rowing in the dinghy on a spying mission.

be a joy in itself…’ Martyn fixed the still wet canvas onto the rack of his portable easel, stuffed the brushes back into his shopping basket and wiped the paint off his fingers with a slosh of turps and a rag. As we started to hike back to the ferry port a lifeboat came out and towed the hapless yacht into harbour. If anything served as

This, too, came originally from Childers’ cruise in Vixen:

a symbol of Erskine Childers’ spirit it was this. Not once in a four-

‘We were in a weirdly lonely place just at the verge of the North

month, 2,000 mile cruise through the waters of five different nations

Sea, close to a grotesquely dreary structure called the Memmert

at the wrong time of year, did Vixen, an engineless gaffer require

Beacon. Tide turned after dark at 8. To our disgust it had turned

assistance from the lifeboat service.

thick and we had a difficult job to sail to sheltered water with no help from Borkum light which was not visible.’

Our ferry moved slowly out of harbour at dusk. It was low water and the channels were shallow. The great lumbering vessel ran

Martyn worked up an oil sketch as sand drifts blew around

aground several times negotiating the Busetief watt between the vast,

his legs. A fresh easterly wind was picking up and just half a mile

exposed sands of the Hohes Riff and Itzendorfplate, using its bow-

offshore a yacht was hovering in the most unlikely place, right on the

thrusters to wriggle, squirm and churn its way back to the mainland.

edge of the channel in furious running tide. ‘I think he’s gone aground, ‘ I said, ‘he’s dropped his mainsail. Now he’s anchored, his engine must have failed.’ Martyn paid no heed, his hands were starting to hurt from the cold and he was desperate to capture something before he could no longer hold a brush. A wan sunlight which reflected silver in the ribbed sand disappeared behind cloud and the seascape dulled as it became overcast.

Martyn and I disembarked at the workmanlike port of Norddeich, the ‘dirty village … silent, empty place desolate in sympathy with Nordeney,’ which Childers experienced, and spent our last night in Germany before driving home. So what were we to make of this disembodied necklace of semipermanent islands, this half-land, half-sea terrain where plough nudges sail, this eroding ‘edgeland’ and its germination of a siren novel still in print? England shares a feature with her geological twin, Germany: the

‘That’s a blow,’ I said, but Martyn could still detect colour.

loss of thousands of acres of territory. The respective land masses

Childers himself had an eye for the subtle colours of the Frisian

of East Anglia and continental Europe were once conjoined by the

coastline which haunted him and never really left his conciousness.

Doggerland ‘bridge’ which supported Mesolithic farmers.

He, too, wrote about the place in retrospect: ‘one must possess

Its deluge by rising sea levels, now the North Sea, saw huge and

innate or acquired liking for low countries and for navigating the

rapid movements of these tribes. On the continent they moved into

intricate shoals which bisect their shores … Above all one must love

distant hinterlands, in Britain we became islanders, hiding behind

12. Through the Ekken Sound

limited edition print of 50 20.3 x 25.4 cms 8 x 10 ins

our protective sea. It was the sea that came to divide, and also to identify, us and them.

Later in his memoir, Lord Keyes, Admiral of the Fleet wrote: ‘Lieutenant Erskine Childers RNVR … was the author of The Riddle

But sometimes the sea lets us down, the invasions from Roman,

of the Sands and had devoted his leisure for some years to cruising

Saxon and Dane lie deep in our national psyche. It plays on our

in a small yacht in the German estuaries. His knowledge was

mind.

invaluable.’

And Childers understood this when he wrote his novel.

And yet it was never acted upon decisively. Instead, as the

Three years after ‘The Riddle of the Sands’ publication, Winston

Allies entrenched on the Western Front, Churchill devised another

Churchill, as Under Secretary for the Colonies met the Kaiser in

strategy to end the stasis, a strategy in which ironically Childers

Silesia as a guest to witness German Army maneuvers. ‘The Kaiser

was involved. In 1915 he joined HMS Ben-My-Chree as an aerial

sat astride a magnificent horse surrounded by kings and princes

photographer in the disastrous Dardanelles campaign.

while his legions passed in what seemed an endless procession …

As one of his biographers, Jim Ring, said: ‘In view of the outcome

I am very thankful there is a sea between that army and England,’

of the campaign … it is fascinating to speculate what might have

Churchill recalled.

happened had it rather been decided to invade the Frisians in

The threat from Wilhelmine Germany was the first we’d suffered

1915… . Could the Allies have shortened the war saving millions of

in modern times and it played on the minds of the great and the

lives? … it would have been a curious consequence of that voyage

good as well as the great unwashed. The Royal Navy moved their

in the Vixen so lightly undertaken in 1897.’

fleet from Scapa Flow in the Orkneys to Rosyth on the Firth of Forth thanks partly to The Riddle of the Sands. When war did break out, while Childers was serving as a lieutenant in the RNVR aboard HMS Engadine, a cross-Channel

That voyage featured again in 1917 as Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare, when Childers, now a lieutenantcommander with Coastal Motor Boats, sent corrections to the Admiralty charts for Heligoland, the Elbe and Langeoog.

ferry converted to a seaplane carrier, he described as ‘a gim-crack

And shortly before the armistice, Childers, now a major in the RAF,

pleasure boat with pop-guns and delicate butterfly planes’ he

learned that his first bombing objective is over, yet again, The Riddle

received news that Germany had built 30 bullet-proof steel barges.

of the Sands territory, with Wilhelmshaven and Kiel as the targets.

‘Is The Riddle of the Sands going to come true?’ he asked his diary rhetorically.

Given the reaction from the authorities to his book, Childers could be forgiven for believing it to ‘be true’. But he had wanted

It was while aboard Engadine Childers wrote his memo on

it to be true from the outset, calling it ‘a record of secret service’

‘The Seizure of Borkum and Juist’ and flew as an observer on the

in the sub-title. Yet Vixen’s voyage had been an accident. Childers

Cuxhaven Raid, the first combined ops between aircraft, surface

original intention had been to sail west into Biscay and enter the

ships and submarines, ‘To provide any assistance I could from my

Mediterranean via the Canal du Midi. Only British prevailing winds

knowledge of the German coast.’

and a boat that was a poor tool to weather saw him change course

For this raid he was personally thanked by Churchill and the Admiralty sent a copy of The Riddle of the Sands to every ship in the Navy.

for a downwind passage. He committed nothing to Vixen’s log about the multi-various German channels choking the great ports of Wilhelmshaven,

13. Als Sound

limited edition print of 50 15.2 x 17.8 cms 6 x 7 ins

Bremerhaven and Hamburg, being part of a grand design for

In fact Childers feared the British authorities might arrest him

invasion of troop-filled barges towed by tugs. It was only in retrospect

for collusion with Germany in the fight for Irish independence.

as Germany’s sabre-rattling became impossible to ignore, that

Childers had become virulently anti-British, almost treasonous, as

Childers realized his voyage could make a good yarn.

this previously unpublished letter to his wife, written just five months

Yet, the reader, like Childers, wants it to be true. At the time of its publication readers could thrill themselves with the belief it might be

before the end of World War I and which is held at London’s Imperial War Museum, shows:

true. And as contemporary readers, we love to tease ourselves with a cosy horror story that once might have been. Martyn said to me on our journey north: ‘Wouldn’t it be fascinating if we tripped over something Childers may have discovered, but which he never revealed?’ It’s that never quite knowing, the elusive quality, the enigma of its legacy which makes The Riddle of the Sands so compelling. But we must be careful what we wish for because the ambiguity surrounding Childers’ world-famous book was the cause, indirectly, of his execution. For it was Arthur Griffith, Vice-President of Sinn Fein, and a supporter of the Irish Free State, who accused Childers the ‘damned Englishman’, who disagreed with his view, of starting World War 1! He was enraged at Childers’ stubbornness over the signing of a treaty for Home Rule. Childers wrote: ‘AG insolent to me about altering drafts. Attacks me about The Riddle of the Sands … says I caused the European war and now I want to cause another.’ This extraordinary claim was partly based on the telegram which was sent from the director of Naval Intelligence to the Dublin office of what was then the Irish Volunteers, but which became the IRA, requesting Childers – busy unloading rifles from Asgard - to return to the Admiralty. It was hardly surprising many in Ireland feared the eccentric Englishman was a double-spy. He never was of course, but so good was the story, so masterfully had he entwined fact with fiction, so well had he promoted it as reality that it was difficult to shake off the suspicion that he had been spying on Germany and had now turned his spy-glass on Ireland.

‘Darling Molly, May 1918 We are not singing hymns of hate or wasting time on hate at all. I have come to the conclusion that the true Irish are peculiarly free from hate and that it is only the Anglo-Irish breed which still retains this great British characteristic. No doubt Germany’s governing classes are as bad as England’s so far as Junkerism goes, but they have this redeeming feature that they are clever. What is really wrong with the English is their Empire spirit. No doubt they are as fine a people as any in the world even in spite of the fact that they have for more than a century or more lived at the expense of other peoples… ‘I realize now that England is no more fighting for liberty than Germany is, perhaps less. England would do just as bad things in Ireland today as Germany did in Belgium but whereas the Germans said plainly that they had to do it for their own ends the English would say they had to do it for the good of the Irish. Do you think an English pledge one whit more reliable than a German? We do not because we have never known the English to keep a pledge. ‘Frankly I don’t believe you when you say that “England has more leanings of righteousness than any other nation.” She has more hypocrisy, if people holding your ideals are

14. Sail Plan of the vixen

limited edition print of 50 25.4 x 20.3 cms 10 x 8 ins

still willing to accept and rejoice in “Empire” orders, how

certain that I never heard of a German plot or have seen a

can the poor and uneducated be expected to vote and

German or discussed German co-operation with anyone.

work for those who realize that Empire and freedom are terms which deny one another as they obviously must. ‘Yes the SF (Sinn Fein) government would possibly be intolerant too, but not so intolerant as an ordinary government because they are men of the people and not aristocrats... ‘Naturally we are anxious for an English defeat as somebody said the other day if you are a mouse and the cat has her paw on you and a dog bites the cat you are pro-dog even if you know that the dog will put its paw on you with equal pleasure. Still there is a chance you may escape the melee.

‘Devoted, Bob’ The reflection of orange street lights flickered on the canal waters in the cold, easterly wind as Martyn and I left Friesland before dawn. ‘Can you imagine the relief daylight must have brought to them after the long winter nights spent in a damp, cramped cabin isolated far out on the sands?’ said Martyn as we drove away. I could. The last request granted to Erskine Childers before he faced the firing squad was that his execution be delayed so he could witness the sunrise. DICK DURHAM

‘The paw we have had on us for 700 years has very sharp claws. We see no reason why we should not be as free as you are and we mean to go on struggling for as many hundred years as will be necessary to free us. Thank God you did not treat us well and develop our country as the Germans did Alsace Lorraine, for then we might have lost our nationality and become willingly absorbed in your Empire. When you say England is “fighting for liberty” you mean really that she is fighting to prevent Germany from doing what she, England, has already accomplished. How can a country fight for liberty which holds Ireland, India and Egypt by force of arms? The Empire says to its dependencies you cannot govern yourselves, you fight amongst yourselves, you are not capable etc etc – so the capitalist who first of all deprives the labourer of the opportunity says to him “You cannot live unless I provide employment for you.” ‘I love you beyond words. ‘Please go on writing and keeping me straight. I am horribly ashamed of myself and your letters take the place of the Bible. If I am arrested it may interest you to know for

Dick Durham was born within the sound of fog-horns at Leigh-on-Sea, Essex where the Thames turns from river to estuary. That river is in his DNA: his grandfather, Richard Durham OBE, DSO went to sea as an apprentice in the square-riggers, Pass of Killicrankie and Pass of Brander, both of which towed up river to the London Docks. His father, Richard II, a lifelong yachtsman, taught Dick, aged 12, how to hand, reef and steer. He has been sailing for over 50 years, starting in dinghies, dayboats, and then on to cruising yachts and racing machines and has sailed from Norway to Gibraltar in both his own yachts as skipper and in friends’ craft as crew. As a lad he served as mate in the last working sailing ship in the UK, the Thames sailing barge, Cambria, under the legendary Bob Roberts, carrying cargo from the London Docks to East Coast ports. Dick also sailed aboard the Brixham trawler, Leader, on a delivery trip from Scotland to the West Country, the 55ft brigantine, Black Pearl, when she was rescued by the St Nazaire lifeboat during a November Storm 10 in Biscay. He has raced aboard the 12 metre Victory for the America’s Cup Jubilee, was crew aboard Warpath, a 41ft raceboat for the 2001 Fastnet Race and was watch leader aboard Sir Francis Chichester’s restored Gipsy Moth IV, for two legs of her second circumnavigation. Most recently he crewed for Sir Robin Knox-Johnston aboard the world-girdling Suhaili in the first Hamble Classic Regatta. Dick worked as a newspaperman on the Fleet Street tabloids for 20 years and as an online journalist for CNN.com Europe before joining the staff of Yachting Monthly where he was news editor and, later, features editor. He now works as a freelance journalist writing occasionally for newspapers but more regularly for the yachting press. He has written six books about sailing, including the biographies of yacht designer, Maurice Griffiths, coasting bargemaster, Bob Roberts, and yachting cartoonist, Mike Peyton. An RYA Yachtmaster he currently sails Wendy May, a Maurice Griffiths’ designed 26ft gaff cutter, built in 1936.

15. Soundings

limited edition print of 50 21.6 x 15.2 cms 81⁄2 x 6 ins

16. Gone Ashore

oil on canvas 102 x 183 cmsâ&#x20AC;&#x192; 40 x 72 ins

17. On The Sands

limited edition print of 50 17.8 x 22.8 cmsâ&#x20AC;&#x192; 7 x 9 ins

18. Fetching Water

oil on canvas 46 x 76 cms 18 x 30 ins

East Friesland Islands – The Weather sketches

19. Spiekeroog oil on board

30 x 41 cms 12 x 16 ins

20. Norderney oil on board

21. Across the gat (Looking towards Langeoog) 22. Wangerooge oil on board

30 x 41 cms 12 x 16 ins

oil on board 30 x 41 cms 12 x 16 ins

23. Langeoog

oil on board 30 x 41 cms 12 x 16 ins

24. Short-cut through the Sands

oil on canvas 50.8 x 76 cms 20 x 30 ins

25. Arriving in Kiel

limited edition print of 50 17.8 x 15.2 cmsâ&#x20AC;&#x192; 7 x 6 ins

26. The German Invasion Fleet

limited edition print of 50 17.8 x 22.8 cms 7 x 9 ins

27. We’re Done For Now

limited edition print of 50 17.8 x 22.8 cms 7 x 9 ins

28. Laying up

limited edition print of 50 15.2 x 17.8 cms 6 x 7 ins

Martyn Mackrill Honorary Painter to the Royal Yacht Squadron Born 12th August 1962. Married Bryony, 14th December 1984. Birth of children: Olivia, 1997; Georgina, 1998; Charlie, 2000. Martyn is a keen yachtsman and still owns the 31 foot gaff-cutter “Nightfall”. He was fully involved in her 12 year restoration, which included a new hull, new deck and interior all faithful to her original plans. He also builds exquisite model ships with a particular interest in Clyde paddle steamers. MEMBERSHIPS Royal Solent Yacht Club; Royal Thames Yacht Club: becomes their honorary painter in 2000, following in the footsteps of Condy, Norman Wilkinson and W. L. Wylie; British Classic Yacht Club. ART EDUCATION 1981–2 Portsmouth College of Art 1982–4 Sunderland Polytechnic

ONE MAN EXHIBITIONS 1986–90 Cooper Fine Arts 1993–94 Cooper Fine Arts 1998–99 Royal Exchange Art Gallery 2001 Royal Exchange Art Gallery 2003 Royal Exchange Art Gallery 2005 Joins Messum’s 2008 Messum’s, ‘Home Waters’ 2009 Messum’s, ‘Home Waters II’ 2010 Arthur Beale, Ships Chandlers, Shaftesbury Avenue 2010 Messum’s 2017 Messum’s, ‘Writer, sailor, soldier, ‘spy’’ – limited editions for Maldwin Drummond’s book ‘The Riddle’. Messum’s, ‘Home Waters III’ GROUP SHOWS 1996 Kendals Fine Art, Cowes 1995 John Martin, Albemarle Street 2002 Jonathan Grant Galleries, Auckland, New Zealand 2004 Island Fine Arts 2005 Monaco Yacht Club, Monaco.

2006 ‘The Call of the Running Tide’, Messum’s 2007 ‘The Call of the Running Tide’, Messum’s OPEN EXHIBITIONS 1985 Royal Society of Marine Artists 1986 Royal Institute of Watercolours PUBLICATIONS “Yachts on Canvas”, by James Taylor, 1998, Conway Maritime Press Traditional Boats and Tall Ships Magazine, 2000 Classic Boat Magazine, Sept 1995 America’s Cup Jubilee, Official Book 2001 Yachting Heritage, 2005 and 2008 COLLECTIONS HRH Princess Anne, HRH Prince Henrik of Denmark, Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, Royal Thames Yacht Club, Royal Solent Yacht Club and private collections worldwide.

back cover

29. Coming Ashore

CDXVIII

limited edition print of 50 25.4 x 20.3 cms 10 x 8 ins

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Studio, Lords Wood, Marlow, Buckinghamshire. Tel: 01628 486565 www.messums.com Photography: Steve Russell, Dick Durham Printed by DLM-Creative

www.messums.com 28 Cork Street, London W1S 3NGâ&#x20AC;&#x192; Telephone: +44 (0)20 7437 5545

front cover

above

30. 12 Metre Yachts Racing on the Solent

31. Closer to the Wind

32. Haul-away

oil on canvas 102 x 127 cms 40 x 50 ins

opposite - on title page oil on canvas 102 x 127 cms 40 x 50 ins

black wash 56 x 41 cms 22 x 161⁄8 ins

MARTYN R. MACKRILL home waters III

catalogue II

2017

www.messums.com 28 Cork Street, London W1S 3NGâ&#x20AC;&#x192; Telephone: +44 (0)20 7437 5545

Martyn Mackrill is as happy painting a clinker built dinghy laid up in a boatyard awaiting some winter attention as he is a 12-metre yacht under press of canvas in a stiff breeze, in a running sea, midsummer. He knows about boats, and he is a keen sailor himself. He is currently the Honorary Painter to the Royal Yacht Squadron and has had a busy year, but the new pictures contained within this catalogue speak of an artist happy in his work. Detailed pencil sketches express the joy he finds in the everyday seamanship required to run a vessel. Whilst thrilling at the prospect of recording the great races of the past, his deep knowledge of these vessels, their working parts, and the seamen who run them give his work an integrity that is often missing from other contemporary marine paintings. Sea condition, wind strength, and the setting of the sails are all at one in his pictures. Detail is laid in with the confidence of a master of his subject, so that small detail is there but doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t obscure the overall impression of a vessel underway, sails trimmed to the condition and course she is sailing. You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to be an expert to enjoy his paintings; they express a love for the sea and sailing that is for all to share. Home Waters III is part of a series of exhibitions that we have held and, as its title suggests, most of the content is of yachts racing in the Solent waters and around the Isle of Wight. But there are delightful channel-cruising subjects too, harbour sketches with boats alongside, and scenes of just mucking about in boats. Martyn continues to thrill his audience and is definitely at his peak in this exhibition. 33. Nightfall, running into orford haven

oil on board 36 x 25 cmsâ&#x20AC;&#x192; 14 x 10 ins

top left

34. Ready About watercolour 38 x 33 cms 15 x 13 ins

top right

35. Crew Study II pencil 30 x 20 cms 113⁄4 x 7 7⁄8 ins

bottom left

36. Preparing to Sail pencil 30 x 20 cms 113⁄4 x 7 7⁄8 ins

bottom right

37. Flaking Down pencil 40 x 31 cms 151⁄2 x 12 ins

above

38. Winter Storage

oil on board 41 x 31 cms 16 x 12 ins

right

39. Black Jack

oil on board 31 x 41 cms 12 x 16 ins

top left

40. Study for ‘Handling the Backstay’ pencil 31 x 40 cms 12 x 151⁄2 ins

top right

41. Study for ‘An Idle Ship’ pencil 40 x 31 cms 151⁄2 x 12 ins

bottom left

42. Hauling the Top-Sail Halyard pencil 40 x 31 cms 151⁄2 x 12 ins

bottom right

43. Crew Study IV pencil 40 x 31 cms 151⁄2 x 12 ins

44. Down Channel

oil on canvas 71 x 107 cms 28 x 421⁄8 ins

top left

top right

45. Harwich Regatta

46. Dartmouth Regatta

pen and ink 57 x 84 cms 221⁄2 x 331⁄8 ins

pen and ink 46 x 66 cms 18 x 26 ins

bottom left

bottom right

47. Clyde Regatta

48. Audrey: Lord Dunraven’s 20-Rater Racing off Cowes

pen and ink 31 x 71 cms 12 x 28 ins

pencil and black wash 58 x 76 cms 23 x 297⁄8 ins

49. The Big Class, circa

oil on canvas 76 x 127 cmsâ&#x20AC;&#x192; 30 x 50 ins

1930

top left

50. Ashore watercolour 31 x 56 cms 12 x 22 ins

top right

51. Halcyon Days watercolour 37 x 28 cms 141⁄2 x 11 ins

bottom left

52. Close Tacking watercolour 37 x 28 cms 141⁄2 x 11 ins

bottom right

53. Rowing About watercolour 28 x 38 cms 11 x 15 ins

top left

54. Aloft watercolour 38.1 x 25.4 cms 15 x 10 ins

top right

55. Dropping anchor watercolour 34.3 x 22.2 cms 131⁄2 x 83⁄4 ins

bottom left

56. The Bell buoy watercolour 34.3 x 22.2 cms 131⁄2 x 83⁄4 ins

bottom right

57. Ghosting In watercolour 41 x 43 cms 16 x 167⁄8 ins

above

58. Against Wind & Tide watercolour 28 x 37 cms 11 x 145⁄8 ins

right

59. Solent Sunlight

oil on canvas 41 x 51 cms 16 x 201⁄8 ins

60. Homeward, Brixham Trawler Approaching Bolt Head

oil on canvas 71 x 107 cmsâ&#x20AC;&#x192; 28 x 42 ins

top left

61. A Steady Course pencil 40 x 31 cms 151⁄2 x 12 ins

top right

62. Crew Study III pencil 40 x 31 cms 151⁄2 x 12 ins

bottom left

63. Spreading her Wings pencil 40 x 31 cms 151⁄2 x 12 ins

bottom right

64. Becalmed pencil 40 x 31 cms 151⁄2 x 121⁄4 ins

65. A Freshening Breeze

oil on canvas 101 x 127 cms 393⁄4 x 50 ins

top left

top right

66. Solent Raters

67. Ghosting In

pencil and black wash 25 x 36 cms 10 x 14 ins

black wash 22 x 27 cms 81⁄2 x 10 5⁄8 ins

bottom left

bottom right

68. The Club Steamer on the Clyde

69. Turning at the Mark Boat

black wash 41 x 56 cms 16 x 22 ins

black wash 43 x 43 cms 17 x 17 ins

70. One Reef Down – A Solent One-Design on a Breezy Day in the Solent

oil on canvas 102 x 127 cms 401⁄8 x 50 ins

top left

top right

71. Thames Sailing Barges

72. Yarmouth One Designs

pen and ink 31 x 51 cms 12 x 20 ins

pencil and wash 29 x 42 cms 111⁄2 x 161⁄2 ins

bottom left

bottom right

73. Threshing Home

74. Hunter’s Quay

pen and ink 51 x 71 cms 20 x 28 ins

pen and ink 51 x 76 cms 20 x 30 ins

above

75. Blue and Gold Yachts Racing in the Clyde

oil on canvas 51 x 76 cms 20 x 29 7⁄8 ins

76. Lying Alongside

oil on canvas on panel 31 x 25 cms 12 x 10 ins

77. shrimper on the orwell

oil on canvas on panel 40.6 x 27.9 cms 16 x 11 ins

78. Sea Bird, a 25ft Yawl

oil on canvas 46 x 76 cms 18 x 297⁄8 ins

79. Rothesay Bay

oil on canvas 25 x 31 cmsâ&#x20AC;&#x192; 10 x 12 ins

80. The Silver Sea

oil on canvas 61 x 76 cms 24 x 29 7⁄8 ins

ART EDUCATION 1981–2 Portsmouth College of Art 1982–4 Sunderland Polytechnic ONE MAN EXHIBITIONS 1986–90 Cooper Fine Arts 1993–94 Cooper Fine Arts 1998–99 Royal Exchange Art Gallery 2001 Royal Exchange Art Gallery 2003 Royal Exchange Art Gallery 2005 Joins Messum’s 2008 Messum’s, ‘Home Waters’ 2009 Messum’s, ‘Home Waters II’ 2010 Messum’s 2010 Arthur Beale, Ships Chandlers, Shaftesbury Avenue 2017 Messum’s, ‘Writer, sailor, soldier, ‘spy’’ – limited editions for Maldwin Drummond’s book ‘The Riddle’. Messum’s, ‘Home Waters III’ GROUP SHOWS 1996 Kendals Fine Art, Cowes 1995 John Martin, Albemarle Street

2002 Jonathan Grant Galleries, Auckland, New Zealand 2004 Island Fine Arts 2005 Monaco Yacht Club, Monaco. 2006 ‘The Call of the Running Tide’, Messum’s 2007 ‘The Call of the Running Tide’, Messum’s OPEN EXHIBITIONS 1985 Royal Society of Marine Artists 1986 Royal Institute of Watercolours PUBLICATIONS “Yachts on Canvas”, by James Taylor, 1998, Conway Maritime Press Traditional Boats and Tall Ships Magazine, 2000 Classic Boat Magazine, Sept 1995 America’s Cup Jubilee, Official Book 2001 Yachting Heritage, 2005 and 2008 COLLECTIONS HRH Princess Anne, HRH Prince Henrik of Denmark, Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, Royal Thames Yacht Club, Royal Solent Yacht Club and private collections worldwide.

left

81. Boatshed, NewTown

oil on canvas 45.7 x 25.4 cms 18 x 10 ins

back cover

82. Nightfall at St. Helen’s Quay

oil on board 41 x 31 cms 16 x 12 ins

CDXIX

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