British Steel moored on the River Dart 2013
British Steel - Made on the Dart
In the late 1960s there was a feeling that sailing round the world had been ‘done’. All the major ‘records’ - first solo circumnavigation, first solo non stop navigation and others - had been achieved and there was little hope of engaging the public in a new attempt to sail round the world.
That's what Chay Blyth, a former Sergeant in the Parachute Regiment and adventurer, was told. He was looking to take on an adventure in 1969 that would garner interest with the public and entice sponsorship from big business.
Blyth had received an Empire medal for being part of a duo that rowed the Atlantic. He had previously been beaten in his first attempt to sail round the world, with the Sunday Times Golden Globe race in 1967, when he capsized near the Cape of Good Hope.
In 1969, after a stint as a travelling salesman, he was itching for something to really get his teeth into. He met a PR man by the name of Terry Bond who knew that British Steel (then a publicly owned company) wanted a large-scale project to sponsor so they could raise their profile with the British public. Chay and Terry started negotiating with them about adventure projects the company could sponsor – they pitched the idea of climbing the Andes then canoeing the length of the Amazon, or sailing round the world. The preferred choice of the company was the Amazon trip because ‘everything in sailing has been done’.
Then Blyth’s wife made a throwaway comment about sailing round the world with an ‘original’ twist: “Well, why not sail around the world the other way?”
The world’s currents and prevailing winds make sailing East to West much more difficult than West to East, and a circumnavigation ‘the wrong way’ was actually considered impossible by many experienced sailors. Armed with a revolutionary design by Robert Clarke for a 59-foot, steel-hulled ketch and £20,000 of British Steel sponsorship, Bond and Blyth looked for a suitable boat builder to put the yacht together in double-quick time.
They plumped, somewhat surprisingly, for Philip and Sons, based on the River Dart.
Philip and Sons had been a powerhouse of production in the 1940s and 50s – producing hundreds of vessels and employing up to 500 men at a time. The company had built its reputation on high-quality workmanship and creating sleek, well-proportioned steel boats.
It was this reputation that brought the British Steel contract to the small boatyard.
But the company had been in dire straights for much of the 1960s and had been bought out in the last months of 1969 by businessman Philip Pensabene, who had a business plan to change the yard into a fibreglass specialist.
But Blyth wanted steel and there was still much expertise to utilise at the yard. Bob Weedon, who went from the shop floor to directorship at Philip and Son during his career, was chosen as part of the small team who would have to put the design together.
From design to its completion took just four months – a remarkable achievement for a team creating something that was ‘the absolute pinnacle of modern yacht design’ at the time.
Stuffed with modern aids to sailing, the boat was launched on August 19th 1970.
Chay Blyth got ready to take on this ‘impossible’ challenge. It must have been hard to focus when every interview, all the public speculation, was that it simply would not be possible and the chances were he would have turn back, or worse. He was described as a: ‘publicity yachtist’ by ‘real’ sailors who felt he was only doing it to get attention. This talk could not have been easy for his wife, then looking after the couple’s young daughter.
Even the builders of the yacht doubted the project’s chances: Bob and his team-mates were going to weld a box onto the hull into which they would put small toys owned by their children. They hoped they could retrieve the toys and give their children a keepsake that had been ‘around the world’. But they discussed the plan and decided he’d never make it, so didn’t bother!
With these endorsements ringing in his ears, Blyth got ready to leave.
Leaving the Solent on October 18th, Blyth’s journey did not get off to a good start: the yacht was rammed by a boat in the flotilla of vessels that came out to see him off!
But he was soon on his way and all seemed to be going well, until he was off South America and was caught in a strong wind – the rigging mechanism jammed leaving him with full sail in a gale. He climbed the mast to free the mechanism, risking life and limb, and from there it was not an easy trip.
A force 9 gale in the Pacific knocked him into treacherous ice fields, damaged his self-steering system beyond repair and left him with a severe head injury.
On the rest of the journey, he encountered many storms that bent the mast and drove him again massively off course. He later said if the boat had not been steel hulled and ‘built like a submarine’ he would have been in much more trouble. As it was he was forced to remain at the tiller for more than 20 hours at a time to stay safe.
But he made it home to Southampton on August 2nd – with a boat that was in pristine condition according to reports at the time after 292 days at sea. In a stroke of good luck, Blyth sailed home just in time for the Cowes Week regatta and was welcomed as a conquering hero. As he stepped off the boat he was greeted personally by the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Anne and Prime Minister Edward Heath.
Blyth was hailed as a sailing giant – the journey was described by The Times as, “The most outstanding passage ever made by one man alone”, under the headline “Boat of Steel - Man of Iron”.
He was given the boat as a gift, but it was later sold and passed through a number of owners, including fellow adventurer Pete Goss. It is now moored on the river Dart again, painted blue, opposite the double steps of the Embankment.
Blyth made his home for a time in Kingswear, and helped that other great Dart-based Sailor Naomi James, by lending her a boat for her circumnavigation in 1978.•
First Published August 2013 By The Dart