26' Tew Gaff Cutter (1937) - MARY HELEN

My daughter and I acquired “Mary Helen” in July 2022 and sailed her from Creran Marine near Oban in Scotland, back via the Irish Sea and coastline, to our home base in Cornwall. She’s currently out of the water and weathering the winter Atlantic winter storms that are sweeping full force across the surrounding farmland of the boatyard. Our temporary boat shelter is being battered and rocked as we begin to work on the first project of replacing her decks. At least we are dry and can make progress with the gales reminding us of the need for repairs to be strong. There will come a time when we are thinking of each fastening and plank and praying they hold. By the time she is back in the water later this year our hands will have been on everything. Each knee, butt, bolt, plank, beam and fitting will have been discussed in detail. “Do it now or can it be later?”

The story of the boat is that the design came to life on the back of an envelope while John and Helen Tew dined on honeymoon in Fowey, Cornwall. John was a yacht designer who worked with Jack Laurent Giles, and Helen was the daughter of Commander RD Graham who was the first man to cross the Atlantic single-handed east to west by the northern route in the 30’ cutter “Emanuel”. With their design loosely formed they then approached the local boat builder of repute, Percy Mitchell from Port Mellon (which is not far from Fowey), to ascertain potential costs. The outcome, in line with their funds, and their plans to sail to Canada to start life there, was a robust 6 ton (TM) Gaff Cutter that was 26ft 3ins on deck, 8ft 3ins beam and a draft of 5ft. She was launched in 1937 and was constructed of pitch pine on steamed timbers with grown oak and iron floors. On the day of launch she was wrecked and then had to be repaired, but that’s a story for another time.

The builder Percy Mitchell was largely self-taught, believed in character as the product of endeavor, was religious, hard working, and by accounts blessed with a practical genius and good measure of courage. He built and launched a magnificent variety of fishing boats, yachts, tugs and passenger launches. His contemporaries described him as “one of the finest traditional boat builders in the world”, although one wonders how far they might have travelled. Claude Worth described him as, “an artist in wood” and he did paint and there is indeed an unmistakable holding of the eye in his boats. He built in the commercial style of that time. Learnt his trade building fishing boats and adapted to whatever was asked for in order to put food on the table for his family. His early boats were well judged exercises in commercial pragmatism. Apart from his local fishing Toshers, one of which is now in a local museum, he was know for “Windstar” which was sailed by King George VI and after the war by Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret.

Helen Tew, later at the age of eighty-eight became one of the oldest people to sail eight thousand miles across the Atlantic and back, in the same 26’ “Mary Helen” that had been imagined by her on honeymoon. Her exploits and the story of the boat are covered in the book “Transatlantic At Last”.