uffa fox model yacht

The Best of Uffa: 50 Great Yacht Designs from Uffa Fox’s Five Famous Volumes

Uffa Fox is a legend in the world of yachting. He was a designer and builder of innovative and graceful yachts. In the 1930’s he reviewed the best yacht designs of his day and filled five book with his comments. Best of Uffa is a selection from those five volumes including the 50 best of the classic yachts.

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Designer legend : Uffa Fox - the enfant terrible of yacht designers

YACHT-Redaktion

 ·  12.03.2024

Shipyard founded at the age of 21

Although uffa fox's first skerry cruiser did not win, it turned out to be seaworthy, debts force uffa fox to write a book, "sailing, seamanship and yacht construction" was a complete success, returning to his beginnings as a designer, the "flying fifteen" became the "flying family", his connection to prince philip made uffa fox famous, more books, but also motorboats and aeroplanes.

When a sailor moors his boat to a bell buoy in heavy swells, he is either deaf or in great distress. The sea scouts on board the 9.30 metre long and only 1.67 metre wide whaling boat "Valhalla" were not deaf when they moored at the Cap de la Hève buoy after midnight on a July day in 1921 and after passing through the last lock of Le Havre due to decreasing winds and strong tidal currents. The young people waited there in agony until the wind picked up from the north after a while. The sails could be set and the return journey across the channel began.

Paris instead of Solent

The strong wind carried them towards their destination until half past one in the morning, when it dropped so that they had to row from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon. The strong tidal currents around the Isle of Wight did not allow them to call at their home port of Cowes. The open boat was pulled onto the beach and a final night of bivouacking began. Two of the boys made their way to Cowes on foot. After a two-week trip, they had to return to their training centre the next morning. They walked barefoot, as the captain of the ten-man crew had forbidden them to take shoes and socks with them. To toughen up and save weight.

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The 23-year-old captain was called Uffa Fox. The crew members were between 14 and 18 years old. Their parents thought they were travelling in the Solent. In fact, they had tried to secretly cross the English Channel and sail up the Seine to Paris. Due to time constraints, they had to give up shortly before reaching their destination. On their return, the parents were horrified and took the Cowes Sea Scouts board of directors to court. They had to resign as a result. Uffa Fox was no longer allowed to lead a youth group, which didn't bother him too much, as he was firmly convinced that he had given the youngsters an unforgettable adventure.

As a student, Uffa Fox was a know-it-all who didn't fit into the system

Uffa Fox was born in Cowes on 15 January 1898. He left school at the age of 14 and began an apprenticeship as a boat builder. His niece June Dixon describes him in "Uffa Fox: A Personal Biography" as a know-it-all pupil who got in his own way. Teachers and parents were convinced that he would have been intelligent enough to master all qualifications with ease, but even then he didn't really fit into the system.

But then Fox was lucky enough to learn in an innovative boatbuilding workshop during his seven-year apprenticeship at SE Saunders in Cowes. The First World War was breaking out, technical superiority was essential for survival, and experimentation was part of it. Sam Saunders had patented a new technique. He constructed hulls with four layers of mahogany veneer, held together crosswise with waterproof glue and copper wire. He used this to build watertight hulls, naval aircraft, nacelles for airships and the "Maple Leaf IV" racing boat.

After a long working day in the shipyard and at weekends, Fox was drawn to the Sea Scouts, where swimming, sailing, rowing, camping trips and sporting competitions offered him a wonderful change from the adult life of the working world.

The oak tree in the garden instead of money

A sailing enthusiast as he was, he convinced his father that he had to build his first six-metre dinghy cruiser after attending evening classes in boat construction for a few weeks. He refused financial support, but offered an oak tree in the garden as a source of material. Uffa Fox motivated friends to help him cut down the tree. But as soon as the components were sawn out, he lost interest.

A few months later, at the second attempt, Fox built a 16-foot sailing canoe in the garden shed with the help of his father, which he sailed along the coast.

The teaching company forgot to put him on the list of employees important to the war effort.

In his training company, Uffa Fox managed to annoy the older boatbuilders by being a know-it-all and giving unwanted advice. When war broke out, they somehow forgot to put him on the list of employees who were important for the production of war goods. He was promptly drafted into the navy.

After the war, Fox, newly married, founded his own shipyard at the age of just 21. Creative and unconventional, he set it up in a decommissioned ferry on the Medina River, which he had acquired with financial help from his father. The passenger compartments became his home. Engine rooms served as workshops or storage, and the central loading area was roofed over and could accommodate several dinghy hulls at the same time.

As a passionate regatta sailor and with his experience in lightweight construction from his apprenticeship, Fox began developing planing dinghies in 1927. Although he was not the "inventor" of the planing dinghy, as is often claimed, his designs and publications contributed greatly to the spread of the new planing hull shape.

The 14-foot dinghy was recognised as a British design class at this time. The class was a great field of experimentation for designers. With the construction of two prototypes, the young shipyard owner moved away from the still round hull cross-sections of the usual designs towards his radical design of the planing dinghy. The front section had a V-shape, which provided the initial lift to raise the hull. This allowed the rear, flat section to glide.

Overwhelming success for Uffa Fox's planing dinghy "Avenger"

Fox was able to utilise all of his previous experience in the design of his third dinghy "Avenger". The result was a boat that was able to plane in moderate winds, both on a room sheet course and upwind, while remaining controllable. The success was overwhelming. Fox finished 57 races of the season with 52 first, two second and three third places.

Weight is only useful for a steamroller"

True to his motto "Weight is only useful to a steamroller", Fox designed "Avenger" to be as light as was possible with the techniques of wooden boat building known to him at the time. Uffa Fox and two crew members proved that the open 14-foot dinghy was nevertheless seaworthy on a 100 nautical mile ride across the English Channel to Le Havre for regatta sailing. After a subsequent 37-hour journey home through heavy seas and steamboat traffic, they also took part in the regatta that had just started in their home waters.

For some time, the regattas of the 14-foot dinghies in England were jokingly referred to as "Fox-hunting", as the competitors only ever sailed after Fox's dinghy.

The first keelboat he built was "Vigilant", a design based on the archipelago cruiser rule. In the summer of 1930, Fox sailed the 22 square metre archipelago cruiser with two friends from Cowes to Sandhamn in the eastern Swedish archipelago to take part in the Royal Swedish Yacht Club Centenary Races. They arrived in the middle of the regatta action and, to the surprise of the dinghy sailor who was used to winning, had little success. They were nevertheless awarded a trophy - for travelling across the North Sea. Until then, skerry cruisers were not considered suitable for the high seas.

On the return journey from Cuxhaven to Lowestoft with only one other sailor, Fox had to sail his light, slim boat against a heavy storm, which he managed surprisingly well. According to the knowledge of the time, sailing boats for the high seas should be high-sided, heavy and robust. Fox recognised the seaworthiness of the lightweight hull, which did not force its way through the waves, but floated lightly and elegantly over them like a Viking boat.

Uffa Fox saw Olympic potential in the sailing canoe

The designer believed that the International Sailing Canoe was the ideal boat for the Olympic one-man class. The canoeist had to master the mainsheet and jib sheet as well as the centreboard and planing seat. There was no greater sporting challenge in sailing at the time.

In 1933, Uffa Fox visited America with his sailing friend Roger de Quincey to challenge the sailing canoe scene there. Fox designed two sailing canoes for this purpose, "Valiant" and "East Anglian", which differed significantly from the round canoe shape of the Americans with their V-shaped bow area and the relatively wide and flat underwater area in the rear third. They started in Quebec and won all the important regattas on their way to New York, including the trophy donated by the New York Canoe Club.

The American canoes sailed with outrigger boards and were ketch-rigged. Two masts were also required by the British challengers. Fox interpreted these regulations in his own way and placed another small mast in front of the unstayed mast at an angle so that it touched the main mast in the upper third and could carry the foresail.

In his opinion, the design of the winning model should always be passed on to the losing team in order to promote further development in sailing.

It was typical of Fox that he handed over the plans of his successful model to the losers. In his opinion, the design of the winning model should always be passed on to the losers in order to promote further development in sailing.

Even before the preparations for Fox's sailing canoe adventure in North America, the publisher Peter Davies had approached him with the proposal to write a special book about sailing. Although he had already enthusiastically published his findings in several magazine articles, Fox was not sure whether his discipline would be enough for a whole book and declined. He was also already more than busy as a designer, shipyard manager and regatta sailor. When Fox received an unannounced visit from his banker just two days before his departure for canoe sailing in America, who this time did not engage in the usual drinking session that always ended with compromises skilfully negotiated by Fox, he felt backed into a corner. The bank demanded the cancellation of the expensive venture, which would have added to his mountain of debt. In desperation, Uffa Fox telegraphed the publisher and negotiated an advance payment for his first book.

After his successful trip to America, Fox used his diaries, regatta experiences and notes from his most recent sailing canoe tour to help him work on the book. Unbiased and enthusiastic about the boat designs of others, he wrote to well-known designers with the request to publish their designs in his book. To everyone's astonishment, he soon had more plans of "competitors'" boats on his desk than he could include in one book.

Fox's first book, "Sailing, Seamanship and Yacht Construction", told of his adventures and designs, and contained his own thoughts on sailing and comments on the constructions of well-known designers. It was a resounding success and was reprinted several times in the years that followed. The steady flow of royalties delighted Fox, whose lifestyle always consumed more than he earned. He decided to invest more and more time in writing, lecturing and producing magazine articles.

The steady flow of royalties delighted Fox, whose lifestyle always consumed more than he earned.

His wife Alma, a teacher by profession, did the bookkeeping at Fox and mediated between the staff and the moody boss. Now she also took on the role of the driving editor of his books.

However, when she was introduced to a new woman at his side, in addition to a few tacitly accepted infidelities by her husband, she separated from him and Fox's new love Cherry moved in with her son Bobbie in the country house purchased not long before by Alma and Uffa Fox. Fox once again persuaded his father to invest his savings in a new company, Uffa Fox Limited, and in 1938 he bought the Medina shipyard, including the house, and set up his business and main residence there.

During the war, Uffa Fox benefited from government contracts

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Fox had lost most of his boatbuilders due to a dispute with his otherwise loyal employees and their union caused by his unruly outbursts of anger. However, due to the uncertain economic situation, he was now able to recruit new craftsmen without union membership with ease. Despite heavy air raids and the partial destruction of his shipyard, he now had enough money to invest in a country estate thanks to orders from the Ministry of War. He was able to afford gardeners, cooks and servants, organise parties and go horse riding or take pleasure trips in his cars despite limited petrol vouchers.

When the war finally came to an end after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a source of money that had been abundant for Uffa Fox until then also dried up.

In the post-war period, Fox once again focussed on the design and construction of pleasure craft. When the Royal Yachting Association asked several designers to create a twelve-foot sailing dinghy, Fox was able to draw on an existing design. He had already designed boats of this size for the Oxford and Cambridge University teams and submitted his 12-foot Cambridge design for the competition.

His design won the contract and the Fairey company began production of the "Firefly" single-handed boat, which was nominated for the 1948 Olympic Games in Torquay shortly afterwards. The gold medal went to the then 20-year-old Paul Elvstrøm. However, the class was replaced by the Finn dinghy at the very next games.

In the book "Das Boot für dich" (The boat for you) published by Günther Grell at Delius Klasing & Co in 1966, the cabin cruiser "Atalanta" was highly praised as a trailerable family boat. The innovative design by Uffa Fox for series production made of moulded plywood had a futuristic look with its whale deck and double centreboards. In fact, the aim of the design was not to create beautiful lines, but to optimise it from a manufacturing point of view and to gain space based on market analyses. Between 1956 and 1968, Fairey Marine produced 291 Atalantas in lengths of 26 and 31 feet.

When he was almost 50 years old and Fox already had more than 20 years of experience with planing dinghy hulls, the designer wanted a boat with the characteristics of his dinghies, but without the risk of capsizing. He sketched out the lines of a planing keelboat 20 feet long with the rig of the international 14-foot dinghies. After regatta successes, energetic efforts to found a class association and skilfully placed publications, the Flying Fifteen became a success. Uffa Fox went from one regatta to the next with the hull and rig on the roof of the car and the 200-kilogram keel sticking out of the boot. More than 4,000 of the Flying Fifteen were built.

Fox was so enthusiastic about the success of his gliding hulls that he developed the "Flying Family" in the following years. One of his outstanding designs was the Flying 30 "Huff of Arklow". Built in 1951 by John Tyrrell & Son in Arklow, Ireland, it is considered to be the first ocean-going yacht with a split lateral plan and designed for planing.

Despite all his successes, Fox had to part with his expensive country home for financial reasons. With a loan from a friend, who was the chairman of his sailing club at the time, he bought an old warehouse right on the waterfront. Out of gratitude to his patron, he named it "The Commodore's House", which he extended over the following years and kept until the end of his life.

In the summer of 1949, Fox met Prince Philip for the first time at a regatta in Cowes. The people of Cowes had given Elizabeth II and Prince Philip the Flying Fifteen "Coweslip" as a wedding present. After regattas, parties and drinking sessions with the Prince, Uffa Fox became famous throughout the country thanks to the British press.

His fame led to television shows, expert appearances at boat shows and recordings of shanties sung by him. Despite this prominence and his outstanding yacht designs, Fox was sadly denied the title of Member of the Institute of Naval Architects. He had never studied. All efforts to obtain the coveted title and add it to his designer title were rebuffed with the laconic suggestion that he should study.

But then an opportunity finally arose that Fox knew how to capitalise on immediately. Years earlier, he had designed his dream yacht "Stardust" for a circumnavigation. However, he was never able to build it for himself. But whenever the enquiry for the design of a long-distance yacht landed on his desk, Fox took the design back to the drawing board. In 1940, for example, the Yawl was reduced from 36 to 25 feet and built in teak in what was then Bombay. She was later sold to Lord Runciman, who wanted to replace her with a new build after many fine years.

Viscount Runciman turned to Uffa Fox for the new design. While working on the new ship, he realised that his client was none other than the president of the renowned Institute of Naval Architects. He openly approached the lord about his problem, and it only took three months for it to be solved to Uffa Fox's satisfaction - he could now proudly call himself a member of the elite institute.

After 20 years of abstinence, Fox finally devoted himself to writing books again. In the summer of 1959, the book "Sailing Boats" was published, followed a year later by "According to Uffa". Both books were successful. In addition to sailing boats, Fox's portfolio in the following years also included rowing gigs, paddle steamers, seaplanes and motorboats. In 1955, he was awarded the coveted title of "Royal Designer for Industry" for his work to date. For John Fairfax, the first solo rower to cross the Atlantic, Fox designed the rowing boat "Britannia" in 1968, a self-righting and self-draining construction made of mahogany wood.

Sailing and partying were more important to Uffa Fox than earning money

Throughout his life, it had been more important to Uffa Fox to design, sail and party than to earn money. Although he had successfully published his designs and ideas, he had not been able to market them sustainably enough for the income to easily finance his lifestyle.

The last boat he built for himself was "Ankle Deep", a 25ft open motorboat that hung over the water on davits from his "Commodore's House", ready to take him out on the water or to dinner on the royal yacht during Cowes Week.

Uffa Fox took part in his last regatta at the age of 70. During Cowes Week 1972, he was once again hoisted aboard "Coweslip", Prince Philip's Flying Fifteen. They had competed in countless regattas together on this boat. Fox was also taken aboard the royal yacht "Britannia" for dinner one last time. He died two months after the exertions of the regatta week on 27 October 1972.

Text: Detlef Teufel

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Uffa Fox: reflections on a great sailing character, by Barry Pickthall

Ahead of the UF50 celebrations in Cowes, from 18-21 August, Barry Pickthall reflects on the legacy of the designer, sailor and the man himself

H e was my boyhood hero. I collected all his books, and as a cub reporter working for Yachts & Yachting magazine back in the early 1970s, I had the great privilege to meet the man. It was one of those lazy days during Cowes Week when what little wind there was continually boxed the compass and brought mayhem to the racing schedule. Too doddery by then to continue his usual role as sailing master to the Royal Family, Uffa Fox still had the mark of mischief that coloured so much of his life. Wearing nothing more than a night shirt, cap and carrying a candle he greeted Prince Charles back to the dock in the early evening light with “What kept you all this time?”

Uffa was one of the most significant 20 th- century characters within the sport, and certainly the most innovative, particularly in the field of dinghy and keelboat racing. He was one of the first to master the concept for a planing hull, the first to develop a reliable rotating mast, and the first to embrace mass-production techniques. Many of his designs have stayed the test of time: boats like the Firefly, Albacore, Flying Fifteen and National 18 continue to enjoy active class status, and many others have been brought out of garages, lofts and the Cowes Maritime Museum for display on Cowes Parade during the UF50 regatta.

One of his most innovative designs was the International 14 Avenger designed in 1928.  She proved far ahead of her time, winning 52 of her 57 race starts, including the coveted Prince of Wales Cup. Uffa also sailed her three-up in stormy conditions 100 miles across the English Channel in 27 hours to race against the French fleet in Le Havre. They won, then sailed home again in 37 hours.

Avenger set a pattern for many years to come. She had a fine bow with prominent vee sections that developed into a flat floor aft. Carvel built, she was narrow, with a beam of just 4ft 8in (1.4m), narrowing to 3ft (0.9m) at the transom.

Her mast was also an advance. Up until that time, spars had been limited to 15ft 6in (4.8m) in order to fit inside a standard goods wagon. The Int 14 hull was the largest that could be sent by train – which dinghy sailors did in those days to compete in other parts of the UK, for 6 Shillings anywhere in England. It had been these size restrictions that had prevented the use of a bermudan rig. Uffa overcame this by producing a jointed mast similar in principle to a fishing rod, with the top mast fitting into a metal sleeve – a concept revived many years later with the Laser.

Avenger’s real advantage was her ability to plane. While other Int 14s could do so on occasions, Avenger would pick up her skirts and fly across the waves at the slightest provocation, and on the wind, she was just as efficient.

Was Avenger the first planing dinghy? Almost certainly not, but she did it better than most and set a design trend that was followed by other great designers like Ian Proctor, Jack Holt and Peter Milne.

Another design that marked Uffa’s career was the 12ft (3.7m) Firefly. Launched in 1946 to provide budget boating immediately after the war, the first Fireflys, named after Sir Richard Fairey’s famous fighter plane, were priced at £56 in kit form or £65 complete. That was £30 less than a National 12, and a third the price of an International 14. The boat used build techniques developed by the Fairey Aviation Co to produce wooden airframes for the Mosquito bomber which Charles Currey, then an innovative young sailor and dinghy builder, newly demobbed from the Navy, adapted to produce the world’s first mass-produced one-design dinghy.

The idea was sparked at the tail end of the war when Fairey Aviation was looking to diversify production at their Hamble facility to provide peacetime employment. Sir Richard, Colin Chichester-Smith, then chief executive, and Alan Vines, Fairey’s Chief Engineer, were all keen International 14 sailors, and the idea of using Fairey’s revolutionary hot-pressure moulding system to mass-produce lightweight dinghies, had immediate appeal. Fox had already built up a close working relationship with the company during the war, designing among other things an airborne lifeboat that could be dropped from aircraft to aid crews who had ditched into the sea.

Just prior to hostilities, Uffa had been commissioned to design a 12ft (3.7m) carvel sailing dinghy for the Oxford and Cambridge Sailing Society that he had dubbed the Sea Swallow. The war had brought a halt to the project, and when he learned that Fairey was looking for a 12ft sailing dinghy, he simply scratched out the name Sea Swallow from the plans and replaced it with Firefly.

Needing someone to run the operation, Colin Chichester Smith fired off a letter to fellow 14 sailor and boatbuilder Charles Currey, encouraging him to resign from the Navy by guaranteeing him a job for two years. For Charles, it turned into a lifetime’s work. He arrived at Fairey’s then top-secret aircraft factory spread out across the marshes at the entrance to the River Hamble, on Friday 3 May, and worked through the night to complete the first hull. The following day, he was joined by Uffa for a first test sail. Ignominiously the alloy mast broke and crashed down, but undaunted, Currey repaired the spar with a wooden section pushed up at the base and set off the following day to race the boat with Nora Chichester-Smith against the latest National 12 class dinghies for the Henley Challenge Cup – and won.

The class became a spawning ground for many of Britain’s top sailors. Stewart Morris, Charles Currey and his sons Alastair and Gordon, Bruce Banks, Rodney Pattisson, Robin Judah, the Jardine Brothers, John Maynard, John Oakeley and of course Mimie Currey, Charles’ daughter who remains the only female to have won the Sir Richard Fairey Points championship trophy… all cut their teeth in this highly adaptable design which can be sailed as a single hander, raced two up, or used with a cut-down rig as a junior trainer.

Some 200 boats were built in the first year of production, many of them bought for recreational sailing by colleges and for Britain’s military bases abroad. The biggest breakthrough came with the boat’s nomination as the single-hander class at the 1948 Olympics held in Torquay. By all accounts, it was a very windy regatta and the boat proved something of a handful to all but the 19-year-old Danish sailor Paul Elvstrom, who won the gold medal by lowering the jib when sailing to windward in the strong conditions, and re setting it on the reaches.

Uffa Fox could turn his hand, and mind, to designing and building almost anything. One example is an innovative rocking cot in the form of a miniature clinker dinghy he made to mark the birth Max Aitken’s daughter Laura, now on display at the Max Aitken museum in Cowes High Street. Just before the outset of hostilities in 1943, he foresaw the need for an airborne sailing lifeboat to be dropped from an aircraft to rescue downed aircrew in the sea.

From there came Britannia , the rowing boat used by John Fairfax to row solo across the Atlantic in 1969 which was self-righting, self-bailing and had a shelter to sleep under. In his latter years, he developed the concept further with Britannia II , used by Fairfax and Sylvia Cook to row across the Pacific in 1971/2, which remains the basis for the modern ocean rowing boats today.

Always one to steer his own course, Fox showed his distaste for authority from an early age. As a 23-year-old Scout leader, he set out for the western Solent with a crew of nine young Sea Scouts in a 27ft (8.2m) open whaler on a weekend camping adventure. He decided to extend the itinerary to cross the Channel and row up the Seine towards Paris, returning the same way 12 days later. They were met by the Coastguard, and understandably perhaps, Uffa was relieved of his leadership role within the troop.

Uffa had no real interest in money – other than to avoid paying whenever possible. At one point, his boatyard and drawing office was based in an old chain ferry on the West Cowes side of the river. Letters, especially formal looking ones, were invariably left unopened until the bailiffs arrived to serve notice on his rate arrears. Undaunted, Fox simply slipped mooring lines and had the ferry towed across to East Cowes, a separate rating district, and continued as before.

Cliff Norbury, a long-term compatriot of Ian Proctor, tells a wonderful story when Uffa joined a group of 12ft National sailors crossing the Channel by ferry to race in a French regatta. Word got round that Fox was short of cash and knowing perhaps how hard it might be to recoup any loans, the group gave him a wide berth. During the regatta, Uffa was not to be seen until the ferry return home. There on his arm was a young French woman, and despite he not speaking any French, nor she English, they lived happily together for many years.

Photographer Eileen Ramsay recalls his passionate side in her book Queen of Yachting Photography . “I was commissioned to photograph Uffa for a book cover and decided to picture him overlooking Cowes Roads from his terrace roof garden. I don’t know how many bedrooms he had in that house, but he tried to push me into each and every one of them. In the end, I had to tell him very firmly, ‘I’m here to take your portrait and think we should get on with it!’ Both he and Max Aitken were notorious lotharios, and between them got up to all sorts of mischief.”

To mark the wedding of the Queen to Prince Philip, the people of Cowes presented the Royal couple with the Flying Fifteen keelboat Coweslip . It led to a lifelong friendship with the designer, who looked after the boat and raced with Philip during successive Cowes Weeks during the 1950s and ‘60s. Fox, always the life and soul at a party, reputedly gave Queen Elizabeth a playful slap on the bottom when following her up the gangway steps to board HMS Britannia at the end of a day sailing, telling her “Hurry up Ma’am, or we will be late for dinner!”

Perhaps the most enduring and endearing memorial to Uffa’s lifelong sense of fun must be the annual seaside cricket match held at low tide on the Bramble Bank every year. He was one of the founders and the game is marked around the world as one of England’s greatest eccentricities – much like the man himself.

UF50 – A Sailing Festival to Celebrate the Legacy of Uffa Fox 50 Years On

This article first appeared in the August 2022 issue of Classic Boat magazine – try a single issue here .

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CLASSIC BOAT MUSEUM

15 January 1898 – 26 October 1972

It is appropriate that this museum holds so much material on this robust local character, known world wide as a designer of genius, as well as holding a number of his own boats.  There are about 1,000 photos from his own collections dealing with the 14 ft. dinghy, with canoes, with sea cadet activities, with the building of the Airborne Lifeboat.  Additionally there are account books of his wartime dealings with the Air Ministry, a whole year’s correspondence covering the build of an International 14 ft for Douglas Heard, his many books and even his sea shanties!

Uffa Fox was born on the Isle of Wight and was raised in East Cowes

He was responsible for many of the developments which have contributed to the modern popularity of Dinghy sailing. He first introduced the technique of planing to dinghy racing, and was influential in the introduction of trapezing.

In about 1943 he designed a 27 ft lifeboat to be dropped from Vickers Warwick aircraft when rescuing downed aircrew or mariners. An example of this craft and of others built and/or designed by Fox are in the collections of the Classic Boat Museum at East Cowes, Isle of Wight. These boats could be released from under the aeroplane retarded by six 32 ft diameter parachutes. Although initially adapted for the Warwick, the lifeboat was subsequently also carried by Air-Sea Rescue Lancasters and B-17 Flying Fortresses. The museum also holds a large collection of photographs by and about Fox.

He became a friend of the Duke of Edinburgh in 1949 and they raced together at Cowes Week on many occasions. They raced on Fox's Dragon "Fresh Breeze" or the Duke's 'Royal' Dragon "Bluebottle" He also took the Royal children sailing at Cowes.

Apart from having a highly successful racing, cruising and sailing career, he ran successful boat design and boatbuilding businesses in the south of England. He designed many of the significant classes of boats around today, including the planing International 14, the Foxcub and Super Foxcub, the Flying Fifteen, the Flying Ten, the National 12, the National 18, the Albacore, the Firefly, the Javelin, the Pegasus Dinghy, the Jollyboat and the Day Sailer. Many of his designs exploited the wartime developments of moulded plywood, extruded aluminium, Tufnol etc.

In addition to dinghies he designed several keel boats all loosely based on the same concept as the flying fifteen, with separate fin keel and rudder. They were very light weight compared with other boats of the era. Huff of Arklow for Douglas Heard was 30'-0" on the waterline and Flying Fox for Fred Brownlee was 35'-0" waterline length.

Uffa Fox designed the Britannia rowboat, used by John Fairfax, used for the first solo-rowing expedition across the Atlantic Ocean in 1969.The Britannia was described as "the Rolls-Royce of rowboats, made of mahogany." It was self-righting, self-bailing and partly covered. He also designed Britannia II , used by John Fairfax and Sylvia Cook to row across the Pacific Ocean in 1971 through 1972.

His character is perhaps best indicated by an escapade whereby he led a group of Sea Scouts, without their parents' consent (they thought it was a weekend sailing camp), across the English Channel and up the Seine to within a few kilometres of Paris in a 25 ft open boat.

He was the subject of This Is Your Life in January 1963 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the Colston Hall in Bristol. He was also among the crew of the Typhoon, an account of which was written and published by William Washburn Nutting in "In the Track of Typhoon" (1922). Fox joined the crew in England for her transatlantic return via France, Spain, and the Azores into NYC.

• News & stories

Uffa Fox – a Pioneering Designer

04.05.16  –  By: Lindsey Skinner  –  In: People

One of the most prolific and pioneering boat designers of the twentieth century was Uffa Fox (1898-1972). Although responsible for fewer individual designs than some other well-known designers, such as Ian Proctor, Uffa Fox has designs to his credit covering a wide range of boat types, including sailing dinghies, racing keelboats, sailing cruisers in a range of sizes, motor boats, and rowing boats. Fox’s diversity of interests is reflected in the fact that the Museum possesses more boats designed by him than those of any other designer.

Uffa Fox was born in 1898 on the Isle of Wight and grew up on Cowes waterfront. When his school days were over he began an apprenticeship with S.E. Saunders, boat builders, who even then were engaged with high speed craft capable of over 50 knots.

His apprenticeship lasted seven years covering boatbuilding, shipbuilding and design. At the age of 21 he set up his own boat building business, adapting an aged ‘floating bridge’ which had formerly linked Cowes to East Cowes, to provide a workshop, drawing office and living space, as well as a gangway to the shore and a slipway for launching boats into the river.

Uffa Fox was the father of the planing dinghy. Having worked on high speed power craft, he believed that if a dinghy hull were made the right shape and her crew held her upright, she could be made to plane over the surface. He was a little diffident about it but finally gave his theories full rein in the International 14 Avenger. In 57 starts in 1928 she gained 52 first places, two seconds and three thirds including winning the coveted Prince of Wales Cup. A large order book was soon built up and for many years his were the most sought after designs. Following the success of the 14s he applied the concept to other classes, gaining racing success particularly in the International Sailing Canoe class. Prior to the Second World War Uffa had established his name primarily in the world of dinghies, where his designs dominated the National 12s, 14s and 18s. During the Second World War he developed the idea of the Airborne Lifeboat, a vessel to be carried beneath aeroplanes and dropped by parachute to survivors of ditched aircraft. Lightly built, with lines that blended to the shape of the planes, the Airbornes had sails, engine, survival kit and instructions on how to sail. Many aircrews owed their lives to this invention. For all his success in the field of yacht racing he maintained that this was his most fulfilling design.

Although well known in yachting circles for many years it was Uffa’s association with royalty which made his name wider known, as he sailed with the Duke of Edinburgh on the latter’s International Dragon Bluebottle and was also involved in teaching the royal children to sail.

The 20 foot keelboat, the Flying Fifteen, was one of Uffa’s most successful post-war designs, out of which came his next wave of inspiration, producing a range of planing keelboats from the Flying Ten through to the Flying Twenty Five. Then, using similar hulls he produced a range of cruiser/racer yachts from the Flying Twenty Five through to the Flying Fifty.

In the 1960s Fox became associated with the American yachtsman and boat builder George O’Day. This liaison resulted in the Daysailer and Javelin* classes which, though less well known in the UK, are actually Fox’s most numerous classes.

Uffa Fox died in October 1972 and was remembered at well-attended memorial services on the Isle of Wight and in London. He is remembered today not just as a yachtsman and designer but also as a writer (author of 14 books in his own right), philosopher and eccentric character.

*The class name Javelin has been used by at least three different dinghy designers and in different regions of the world may represent the design of that name by Uffa Fox (North America and Japan), Peter Milne (Europe) or John Spencer (Australasia).

This article is a précis of information on the official Uffa Fox website http://www.uffafox.com/index.htm

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Born and raised on the Isle of Wight, Fox (1898-1972) is considered the father of modern planing sailboats. A seven-year apprenticeship with noted boatbuilder A.E. Saunders, a manufacturer of high-powered motorboats, led to a lifetime fascination with planing hulls. At 21, he started his own business and boats began pouring out the door. His successful designs include International 14s, the Albacore, Javelin, Flying Fifteen, and Day Sailer.

His books on sailing written mostly in the mid-to-late 1930s, are classics of the genre and are as valid today as they were then. During WWII, Fox designed a boat to be carried and dropped from rescue aircraft to survivors of downed aircraft or sunken ships. He regarded these airborne lifeboats his most significant design, although anyone that ever saw the 22-Meter Vigilant might disagree.

Fox was perhaps most famous outside the yachting world for his relationship with the Duke of Edinburgh, with whom he sailed in many regattas on Dragons and 5.5-meter boats.

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Huff of Arklow - Uffa Fox

Huff of Arklow is radical boat to look at. Some might be surprised that she was drawn by a famous British yacht designer, Uffa Fox, and launched in 1951.

Recently she was awarded Heritage Lottery Funding in order for Cremyll Keelboats to restore her at Mashford’s boat yard, Torpoint – Cornwall. Before this came to completion in August 2014 CYTV caught some of the stages of her restoration on camera and later went sailing on board.

Facts about Huff of Arklow:

Designer Uffa Fox Builder Jack Tyrell, Arklow (Ireland) Launched 1951 Bermudan sloop LOA 45ft (13.7 M) BEAM 9ft (2.7 M) Draws 6.7ft (2 M) 1. 1951 Vessel launched 2. 1962 Faulkners Cup winner 3. 1964 Faulkners Cup winner 4. 2001 Purchased by EISCA

Huff of Arklow’s fin and skeg underwater profile configuration was received as a sensational design in the early 1950s. Especially, upon her initial launch in the quaint and agricultural Irish town of Arklow, 70km south of Dublin, Ireland. Fin and skeg aside, the other major feature that makes her a perplexing sight is that stepped shear. This exceeds a foot’s difference between her deck and, the lower, aft deck and cockpit. In post war Ireland in the early 1950's, the boat builders at Jack Tyrrell’s yard in Arklow must have thought they were part of an experiment building such a boat.

This design and all its strange features came to fruition by not just the yacht designer but also, the man who daringly commissioned this boat. He is the person who gave the designer, Uffa Fox an already established name in yachting, a chance to explore the physics and engineering needed to be applied in designing and building a slightly unstable, up-scaled dinghy just five years after the Second World War.

The owner Huff of Arklow was built for was ex-RAF pilot Douglas Heard, an Irishman who’s collection of Interntional 14’s (also drawn by Uffa Fox) were not enough to feed his appetite to sail fast. Douglas Heard already had a close client-designer relationship with Fox after backing a multitude of design commissions for i14’s, the development dinghy class set up in 1928. Interestingly, Heard’s boats were all named with the prefix of ‘Huff’ that was later, affectionately taken up by Uffa Fox as his chosen name for Douglas Heard.

CYTV believes Huff of Arklow is part of an important renaissance in yacht design that occurred after the Second World War. Her underwater profile is an early example of the interlude between long keel designs that were becoming less prominent in the forefoot (in their evolution) AND fin and skeg designs.

Claims that Huff of Arklow was the “first ever skeg and fin”, as well as “first mast head sloop” published in recent yachting press articles seem to exist without their references. It is hard to find a record of who designed and built the first fin and skeg on a lightly built yacht of around 30 foot (LOA). However we are aware that Dixon Kemp was writing about designs with that sort of underwater profile in the late 1800’s. Further more, Charles Sybbick was among designers using fin and skeg, for example, Bona fide 1898 (C. Sybbick design). The important point here is that we'd like to know who built a successful lightly-built 30ft boat with a fin and skeg first?

In the early 50's, light scantalings were in vogue for offshore racing events. Technology and materials had improved over the course of the war and people wanted to re-introduced yacht racing and encourage its growth after the austerity of the Second World War. Although while looking in to this era in yacht design, it is fairly clear that it took another ten years before yachts of 30 feet or so, were able to carry a fin keel while also lightly-built.

Twelve years after Huff of Arklow's launch Olin Stephens noted in his autobiography ‘All this and Sailing Too’ that he recognized Bill Lapworth’s ‘Cal-40’ as the first separated keel and rudder design in the U.S. The year of the Cal-40 launch was 1963. Interestingly in the same year, ‘Inverness’ a long keel design by Sparkman & Stephens was launched but returned to the S&S yard in 1964/5 and re-fitted with a constellation type rudder and she had her keel re-shaped.

Most likely, Inverness’ modifications were catalyzed by the brand new trend of separating the keel and rudder (fin and skeg configuration) proven in other S&S designs like ‘Palynodie’, launched in 1962 which had a very small keel and separated rudder.

Inverness’ new constellation rudder and reshaped keel was a mere simulation of the new racy and radically fast underwater profile design of fin and skeg, then taking yacht design into a whole other era. 1964 bought ‘Firebrand’, a long (but relatively short) keel design drawn by Sparkman & Stephens and, in 1966 she had her underwater profile changed by S&S to skeg and fin. 1964 also saw the launch of ‘Carillon’, designed by S&S. She was returned after just three seasons, back to S&S’s yard to have skeg and fin replacement under the influence of ‘Intrepid’ – the America’s Cup 12mR designed in 1966 by Olin Stephens, launched in 1967 for the Cup.

1966 saw the launch of the “terrible twins”, ‘Roundabout’ and ‘Clarionet’ designed by Olin Stephens and owned by two Englishmen seeking to compete boat-to-boat in the One Ton Cup. They were similar boats but not sister ships and were ordered at the same time by two owners, Derek Boyer and Sir Max Aitken who were seperately talking to Olin on all things in vogue! And both featured a separate keel and rudder. Both came loosely from Stephen’s observations of the performance of ‘Rabbit’, that won the Fastnet in 1965 and designed by Dick Carter, which had a separated keel and rudder.

The few years between 1963 and 1966 seem to be the first real push and transitional period from long keel or full keels and attached rudder designs to separate keel or fin and, skeg attached rudders in big boats and yachts. This was all solidified by the successful America’s Cup defender ‘Intrepid’ in 1967 – deemed as Olin Stephen’s "most innovative twelve".

It looks like hanging a fin keel off a yacht of 30 foot yacht design had not really been achieved before Huff, [unless anyone can suggest different!] and it is due to her cold moulded construction that she was able to carry such a substantial weight in the form of a fin. Built with two moulded skins of mahogany with the outer skin running fore and aft, she retains optimum strength because the inner skin runs diagonally – spreading the loads.

The cold moulded construction technique would have stemmed from Uffa Fox’s residence on the Isle of Wright, England. He reported in his memoirs of being saddened that his first ever design was never finished or built. What would have been a 20 foot water-line centreboard cruiser to suit an oak tree given to him by his father, Uffa Fox left redundant and half built. Due to his despondency and perhaps, slightly impatience, Uffa bought something completely different. It happened to be the first hydroplane that S.E. Saunders (Isle of Wight) had built!

Her and “Her bottom, which was double diagonal”, was Uffa’s pride and joy as he writes in the chapter called ‘Craft I Have Owned And Sailed’ from his book ‘Thoughts on Yachts and Yachting’. Uffa turned this hydroplane into a canoe to sail around the same island that the double diagonal technique was patented on – in the mid 19th Century by John Samuel White of White’s Shipyard in East Cowes. Uffa’s apprenticeship at S.E. Saunders (Saunders and Roe) gave him many more skills that fed into his Flying 15’s, International 14 designs and the flying yachts like Huff of Arklow. At the builders, Uffa would have gained boat building skills from ‘flying boats’ and fast motor boats. His time served in the Royal Naval Air Service would have given him knowledge of the physics and design parameters applied to fast, extreme vessels and aircraft designs.

Later in Uffa Fox's life, in his own design office, he greatly contributed to the war effort by designing the Airbourne Lifeboat (built with a cold moulded construction). He received a C.B.E. in 1959 for creating this vessel to be parachuted from aircraft to save aircrew and pilots as they were shot down. It is perhaps this nature of work that informed him of the necessary skills to be able to launch a yacht of 30ft with a fin keel while retaining light scantlings.

In this film we’ve, by the help of a few people, managed to interview the second wife of Douglas Heard, who cruised Huff of Arklow to the Azores and back. Ruth Delany recalls the boat’s performance, the alterations to improve the design and of course, the interesting relationship her late husband had with Uffa Fox.

Unfortunately there is not a tangible record of Huff of Arklow reaching an incredibly high speed in a log – we hunted high and low and would like to thank RORC for their time in digging out what there is on Huff in the archives.

Huff of Arklow did receive the Faulkners Cup in 1962, and in 1964 for cruising record miles in 24 hours. She does not, however, show up on Fastnet results during the 1950s, straight after her launch. This may tell us that she was not as successful as the owner and designer would have liked.  Although, this story is important; not just because of the its place in time but also because of the relationship he client and designer had for this design number. Trust, funding, and science were all elements coming into play here, where an owner is willing to experiment with a really radical idea – which has got to be every yacht designers dream. Aesthetically, the stepped shear is problematic though, it makes the design as a whole, torn between cutting edge and practical. The two strong – mustard like features – above and below the waterline are executed from two ideologies. While we all love or hate this boat for her looks, she can definitely earn her name as a “landmark boat”. Maybe the ‘boys’ you see in Jack Tyrrel’s yard in the archive footage in this film were, after all, part of an experiment in yacht design.

RESTORATION INFO:

‘Cremyll Keelboats’, a Rame Peninsula based charity set up to train young people in the art of seamanship and restoration work applied for funding to carry out a comprehensive and sympathetic restoration on Huff of Arklow in 2011. They (made up of a lovely husband and wife team, Dominic and Barbara Bridgman) successfully received accreditation from the Heritage Lottery Fund and started work in 2012. Dominic undertook significant work restoring Huff back to her original design and making her safe to sail. Upon the beginning of this venture, at Mashford’s boatyard Dominic found the strap floors along the centreline needed to be replaced. National Historic Ships came to the charity’s help by funding the new iron floor which were galvanised and painted with Hamerite. Hot pitch was pored to level the bilges as it used to in the old days. Every other frame underneath the floor was near enough replaced. Electrolysis, was a problem in most of Huff and stray currents near the rudder tube, inboard, existed. Forward of the mast, “maybe it was the anchor chain”, there was more electrolysis. He goes on to say, “when we took the skeg off – the fastenings were basically non existent which didn’t fill me with confidence”. Dom also scarfed in new timber near the skeg.

Dominic says she was really nail sick and her original brass screw were shot, weak and he had to replace them. It was at this stage that the charity successfully applied to the Future Jobs Fund, a Labour government scheme to ease young people into employment. So Dominic received four trainees to help refastening the hull over a six months period. He decided to rivet either side of each brass screw, 1 per plank per frame – definitely a two-man job – total rivets amounted to 8,000. Before driving all the rivets in, making the skin of Huff pretty tight, the planks had movement and so the seams were cut out between the planks and cedar splines were worked in. They found soft wood behind the chainplates and the top plank in the cockpit deck area.

Down below again, the horn timber needed attention, the centerline fastenings were steel, they’d degraded. Re-riveting the whole boat meant Dom could access everything but it also meant that he would have to start again with the interior fit out and importantly, the layout. The engine was moved forward, nearer the centre of gravity to improve for-and-aft trim. The new interior was lighter, made out of mahogany marine ply and more practical for taking people sailing commercially – part of the work Cremyll Keelboats exists for. Huff’s spars were changed, her boom was made longer and the main sheet track moved aft to give more room in the cockpit as sometimes he would take up to 6 people sailing. Rope halyards replaced wire – back to her original spec. Cremyll Keelboats, have also followed on in the foot steps of Uffa and Douglas’ decision to steer by tiller, not by wheel – watch the film for more details.

Please take note of the following people involved in the project. Thank you to David Branigan who shot the Ruth Delany interview!

HLF EISCA Mrs. Ruth Heard David Branigan John Kearon Bill Weldon Royal St.George YC Transport Trust National Historic Ships UK Worshipful Company of Shipwrights Mashfords Boatyard Falmouth Marine School Maker Junction CIC Mt. Edgcumbe Estate The Rame Peninsula Community The Plymouth Waterfront Partnership All volunteers close by & far away

Recommended read: ‘All This And Sailing Too’, Olin J. Stephens (II). Mystic Seaport Museum Inc. 1999 ISBN 0-913372-89-7

Published on April 26th, 2021 | by Editor

Uffa Fox: Celebrating the legend

Published on April 26th, 2021 by Editor -->

To mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Uffa Fox in 2022, one of the most highly regarded naval architects and enthusiast of all aspects of sailing, a series of events in England are being organized for August 18-21 to celebrate the life of a man so ahead of his time.

Born in 1898 on the Isle of Wight, Uffa grew up on Cowes waterfront where at the age of 21 he set up his own boat building business. He was the father of the planing dinghy, having worked on high speed power craft, and believed that if a dinghy hull were made the right shape, and her crew held her upright, she could be made to plane over the surface.

He was a little diffident about it but finally gave his theories full rein in the International 14 Avenger. In 57 starts in 1928 she gained 52 first places, two seconds and three thirds including winning the coveted Prince of Wales Cup. A large order book was soon built up and for many years his were the most sought after designs.

Uffa even sailed Avenger 100 miles across the English Channel to Le Havre – three-up – in a mere 27 hours. He then proceeded to claim a victory over the French on their home waters, then promptly turn around and sail Avenger home in another 37 hours.

Prior to the Second World War Uffa had established his name primarily in the world of dinghies, where his designs dominated the National Twelves, Fourteens and Eighteens.

During the Second World War Uffa conceived the idea of the Airborne Lifeboat, a vessel to be carried beneath aeroplanes and dropped by parachute to survivors of ditched aircraft. Lightly built, with lines that blended to the shape of the planes, the Airbornes had sails, engine, survival kit and instructions on how to sail. Many aircrews owed their lives to Uffa’s invention. For all his success in the field of yacht racing, he maintained that this was his most fulfilling design.

Immediately after the war he was closely associated with Fairey Marine of Hamble who built hot moulded boats to his design. Included in the impressive list were International Fourteens, Firefly, Swordfish, Albacore, Jolly Boat, Duckling and the cruiser Atalanta.

Although he had been well known in yachting circles for many years it was Uffa’s association with royalty which spilled his name over on to the broad mass of the British public. He and the Duke of Edinburgh raced together on the Dragon Bluebottle.

The royal helmsman, with Uffa as crew, was also prominent at Cowes Week in the Flying Fifteen, Coweslip. This 20 foot keelboat was one of Uffa’s most successful post-war designs.

Out of the Flying Fifteen design came Uffa’s next wave of inspiration, producing a range of planing keelboats from the Flying Ten through to the Flying Twenty Five. Then using similar hulls he produced a range of cruiser/racer yachts from the Flying Twenty Five through to the Flying Fifty. (The Flying Thirty and Thirty Five designs actually planed in the right conditions!)

In the 1960s Uffa became associated with the American yachtsman and boat builder George O’Day. This liaison resulted in the Daysailer and Javelin classes. The last boat Uffa designed for his own use was a 25 foot launch Ankle Deep.

For the 50th anniversary of his death, the Classic Boat Museum will be organizing a series of events including seminars and an exhibition of Uffa’s various dinghies.

The Uffa Fox celebrations will be followed by the Flying Fifteen European Championship organized by the Cowes Corinthian Yacht Club on August 20-26, 2022.

It is appropriate that the Royal London Yacht Club should be chosen to organize the sailing as Uffa was a stalwart of the RLYC and, as Chairman of the Sailing Committee, was instrumental in the resurgence of sailing after the Second World War.

The 2022 Uffa Fox Regatta will be for 100% Uffa Fox designed dinghies, keelboats and classic boats, with some classes’ racing areas along the shore to attract spectators.

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• Sailboat Guide

Foxcub 18 is a 18 ′ 0 ″ / 5.5 m monohull sailboat designed by Uffa Fox and built by Copland Boats between 1972 and 1984.

Rig and Sails

Auxilary power, accomodations, calculations.

The theoretical maximum speed that a displacement hull can move efficiently through the water is determined by it's waterline length and displacement. It may be unable to reach this speed if the boat is underpowered or heavily loaded, though it may exceed this speed given enough power. Read more.

Classic hull speed formula:

Hull Speed = 1.34 x √LWL

Max Speed/Length ratio = 8.26 ÷ Displacement/Length ratio .311 Hull Speed = Max Speed/Length ratio x √LWL

Sail Area / Displacement Ratio

A measure of the power of the sails relative to the weight of the boat. The higher the number, the higher the performance, but the harder the boat will be to handle. This ratio is a "non-dimensional" value that facilitates comparisons between boats of different types and sizes. Read more.

SA/D = SA ÷ (D ÷ 64) 2/3

• SA : Sail area in square feet, derived by adding the mainsail area to 100% of the foretriangle area (the lateral area above the deck between the mast and the forestay).
• D : Displacement in pounds.

Ballast / Displacement Ratio

A measure of the stability of a boat's hull that suggests how well a monohull will stand up to its sails. The ballast displacement ratio indicates how much of the weight of a boat is placed for maximum stability against capsizing and is an indicator of stiffness and resistance to capsize.

Ballast / Displacement * 100

Displacement / Length Ratio

A measure of the weight of the boat relative to it's length at the waterline. The higher a boat’s D/L ratio, the more easily it will carry a load and the more comfortable its motion will be. The lower a boat's ratio is, the less power it takes to drive the boat to its nominal hull speed or beyond. Read more.

D/L = (D ÷ 2240) ÷ (0.01 x LWL)³

• D: Displacement of the boat in pounds.
• LWL: Waterline length in feet

Comfort Ratio

This ratio assess how quickly and abruptly a boat’s hull reacts to waves in a significant seaway, these being the elements of a boat’s motion most likely to cause seasickness. Read more.

Comfort ratio = D ÷ (.65 x (.7 LWL + .3 LOA) x Beam 1.33 )

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• Beam: Width of boat at the widest point in feet

Capsize Screening Formula

This formula attempts to indicate whether a given boat might be too wide and light to readily right itself after being overturned in extreme conditions. Read more.

CSV = Beam ÷ ³√(D / 64)

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AVENGER is Uffa’s most famous design and was the biggest single break through in yacht design as the first planing dinghy. In 1928 in the highly competitive National Fourteen Foot development class Uffa had the incredible record of 52 firsts from 57 starts including the Prince of Wales Cup. Uffa's story of Avenger is told in his 1934 book Sailing, Seamanship and Yacht Construction or an abridged version in The Best of Uffa edited by Guy Cole (still in print with Adlard Coles Nautical, London).   Length Overall 14'-0'' Length WL 14'-0'' Beam Max 4'-8'' Draught 5'-0'' Sail Area (sq feet) 125 Displacement (lb) 800

The original plans were of poor quality and have been redrawn. The following are included: Lines Plan and Offsets Hull Construction Sail Plan Mast Plan  

  Original plans available on request  

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Gavin Atkin's weblog for the sort of people who like looking inside boat sheds. It's about old boats, traditional boats, boat building, restoration, the sea and the North Kent Coast

Uffa Fox’s great and lasting memorial – the Airborne Lifeboat

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Uffa Fox’s Airborne Lifeboat rigged for sailing – image from Wikipedia Commons via Ian Dunster

Keith Muscott recently wrote this entertaining short history of Uffa Fox’s Airborne Lifeboat for members of the excellent Yahoogroup Openboat , and has been kind enough to give me permission to publish it here. Many thanks Keith!

‘Uffa Fox became obsessed with the notion of a ‘droppable’ lifeboat following the capture of his stepson Bobbie Sach after a ditching. His first idea was a folding boat that could be dropped straight from a low-flying aircraft. He soon realized the impracticality of this, and moved on to consider parachuting it into the oggin. It was to be made of small panels of plywood, which would be opened up by the parachutes as the whole parcel descended. Legend has it that he dropped the first model from a top floor window and converted the drinkers in the Duke of York to teetotalism when they saw it float down. Folding plywood panels were soon discarded in the light of experience.

‘That idea was dropped in favour of carrying the complete craft in the belly of a plane, which was to be an American Hudson (already in use for air-sea rescue). Subsequently they discovered that the bomb door jacks took up too much room for the boat to be carried in the bomb bay, so it was back to the drawing board to design a boat which was streamlined enough to hang outside like a torpedo without completely ruining the air flow. Uffa secured the go-ahead from Lord Brabazon , who subsequently got a rocket from those above for allowing himself to cave in so quickly under the influence of Fox’s silver tongue.

‘Uffa designed the final version one-eighth full-size, 1.5 ins to the foot, and ran off dozens of copies so that many draughtsmen could work on it simultaneously. The lines were lofted then the builders set to work: three weeks in all from pencil lines to waterlines. The hull was built with traditional diagonal planking – two layers of opposing diagonals, one straight planks fore and aft separating them, if I remember correctly. There would probably have been oiled silk or some such material between layers.

‘The test pilot in the Hudson would only fly the first test with the boat attached if Uffa went along too – which he did, including during the final stall tests. The streamlined boat hardly affected the airspeed at all and the plane kept up easily with another Hudson carrying RAF photographers. A secondhand Britannia Middy engine was reconned by the manufacturers for the tests and proved to be exactly right, delivering six knots and good endurance – but it was no longer in production. This led to a call going out to pleasure boat operators up and down the land, including many municipal boating lakes, to strip out engines and return them to the manufacturers (the British Motor Boat Manufacturing Company). June Dixon , Uffa’s neice, describes this bizarre situation beautifully:

“These valiant little engines, cast aside by the exigencies of war and no longer responding to the peacetime call of ‘Come in number twelve, your time is up’, were destined to find themselves chugging gaily along, homeward bound, offering new hope to men whose time but for them might well also have been up.’”

‘The air-sea trial took place during an air raid, with Uffa, and others, bobbing up and down in the Solent in a rubber dinghy. The pilot had been instructed to drop the boat from 600 feet at 110 mph, aimed right at the dinghy, whose occupants were duly soaked by the splash. It descended as the designer intended, nose down under several chutes at a thirty degree angle. The chutes were blown away by a charge when the boat hit and floating lines were fired outwards by two rockets.

‘The boat – a world’s first – was equally as successful in practice and Uffa was eventually presented with a certificate saying as much by members of the Goldfish Club when he became the subject of the television programme This is Your Life many years later.

‘It has been suggested that if the old rogue ever did get into heaven before the Devil knew he was dead, then this design above all others would have been the one that tipped the balance in his favour.

‘Keith Muscott’

The Airborne Lifeboats were used in as many as 600 rescues, but after WWII was over, many were converted for use by yachtsmen and dinghy sailors, and I’ve heard reports of a racing class being created around them. They would certainly have made good, big cruising boats for sailing schools and so on.

Click here for more on Fox at intheboatshed.net and click here to read about his life at the Wikipedia .

There’s an interesting and affecting postscript to this story. Family and friends at the end must have regarded the Airborne Lifeboat as Fox’s finest creation, for an engraving of one appears on his gravestone.

Uffa Fox’s gravestone on the Isle of Wight, from Wikimedia Commons

Keith’s interest in Fox is long-standing, and he has this to say about his hero:

‘I have always been interested in Uffa Fox for a variety of reasons. Born in 1898 and winning races almost as soon as he could climb into a boat, it seems to me that he bridges the old world of sailing and wooden boat construction and the new one of Olympics classes, moulded hulls, GRP and so on. Not only that, but he made himself a master in most aspects of both, and became a tremendous designer and craftsman and a sailor of international ability and reputation.

‘Then there is the attraction of his larger-than-life-personality. It probably would have been too wearing on the nerves to live next door to the man, but his provocative opinions, his ideas about boats – which veered from genius to eccentricity – and his entertaining personality, which shines through his designs and his writings, have few parallels.

‘He was such an uncompromising designer in that his craft do not suit lazy sailors – hard work and ability are always rewarded with exhilaration.’

‘But for me, the breadth of his sailing interest has always been the paramount inspiration – I can’t recall where he published it, but his account of the seaworthiness of the Bounty’s overloaded launch in which Bligh navigated successfully for thousands of miles is a case in point.’

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10 thoughts on “uffa fox’s great and lasting memorial – the airborne lifeboat”.

My wife's uncle was in Air-sea Rescue after damaging his ears in fighters in WW2. I remember him talking about trials in the Thames estuary but at the time Uffa's name didn't come up. In 1956, at the Melbourne Olympics, as a Sea Scout, I believe I was introduced to him on the officials boat, the detroyer Warramunga. I was only 13 and 'working' at the Olympics as a message runner before portable radio's and mobiles.

I'm a Brit living in the US. I am preparing a DVD, mostly still images, of my local boatyard. One segment will describe an elderly man who lived in the yard in one of these Uffa Fox airborne air sea rescue boats. The boat was alleged to have been sailed here from England on two occasions.

I would like to have a digital image of one of the boats to include in my DVD. If you have one, or know where I could get one, would you email me a copy, or give me directions to a source?

Keith White

The Wikimedia Commons has the small one above, but if you use it you must include a credit for the source.

Otherwise, I'd try the museums, perhaps starting with the boat museum at Cowes on the Isle of Wight.

Hi to Keith White, I owned an Uffa Fox airborne lifeboat in the eighties and have a good picture of it in New Zealand. If he emails me I can send a photo or two of it.

The Classic Boat Museum is on the Quay at Newport. Isle of Wight

The Museum opened in 1996, and houses an exciting collection of sailing and power boats, of both local and national interest and importance.

We are a Charity and Registered Museum, and run entirely by volunteers, Our aim is to preserve and present the best of those boats that demonstrate the workmanship of past generations for the delight of the present.

As well as the exhibitions in the Museum, we have a restoration shed where work takes place all year round, restoring to their original condition boats that are part of our maritime heritage.

Our collection contains not only classic boats, but also tools, artefacts, books, photographs, film and archival items that relate to much of the history of boat building, sailing, yachting, cruising and racing over the last century, in the Solent and beyond. Our boats also include an airborne lifeboat that was dropped to aircrew who had been shot down during the last war. This is a Mk1a and was No Q11. She was found on the outskirts of Colchester, Essex in a very sad state. Restoration has brought her back to how she would have been in WW2. Complete with Middi engines, sails and several artifacts of that time.

We have several Uffa Fox designs, including Prince Philips Coweslip. All the boats in the exhibition are in a seaworthy condition and are sailed or driven as often as possible. Some are available for special occasions. Pleasew visit out website at http://www.classicboatmuseum.org

Yes, you are right about them being used long after the war by sailing schools, and about them being raced as a class.

For part of the summer of 1963 I taught at Plymouth Sailing School, who had a fleet of three of them. Ballasted with concrete in the bilges if I remember correctly, which allowed one to walk around on the decks and gave them the stability of a yacht of comparable hull form, and with Flying Fifteen rigs.

They were also raced as a class in Plymouth Sound, and I remember that one Saturday – which was the changeover day for our weekly courses and thus a non-teaching day – we entered all our three Airbornes in a local regatta, which had a class for them. I don't remember just how Airbornes many raced on that occasion, but it was certainly significantly more than just our three.

Oliver L. Shaw

In Adlard Coles' book "More Saling Days" (pub. 1947) there is the story of Uffa Fox racing "Airborne" under her original rig in a race from Cowes to the Chirstchurch Ledge buoy and back, on September 1st. 1945,with a big crew and a barrel of beer – and doing remarkably well!

i have a restored airborne lifeboat that had been stationed on the Isle of Man during the second world war

There is a dismantled lifeboat lying at the Cape Town military airforce museum at Ysterplaat. The boat is complete, but in pieces, and the engine – a rare 6 cylinder 4 sparkplug Villiers motor has been completely restored.

Does anyone now know where a 30ft mark 11 airborne lifeboat is.? We believe we are about to restore the last surviver but that might not be so??

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Uffa Fox sailing boat (Toy Works)

Wooden sailing boat designed by Uffa Fox, with original packaging.

Made for Toy Works of Marlow, England

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