13 - 1945–1965: Home-Built Dinghies and Going Offshore

Summary

Shortly after the war, I married and tried to settle down … Like most of my generation, though, I was infected by restlessness. … too much adrenalin had gone through our systems for them to adjust easily to the routine of ‘nine to six’ … London was strange and uneasy in those immediate post-war years.

Once again, yachtsmen had played a significant part in the war. Dunkirk is often represented as the high water of their involvement – when 700 ‘Little Ships’, working with the Navy, rescued more than 338,000 British and French soldiers off the beaches between 26 May and 4 June, 1940. In fact, these vessels were mainly motorsailers from the Thames and the South Coast, volunteered, or requisitioned by the Government, and manned by Naval personnel. Less well known is ‘Little Dunkirk’, the evacuation of British troops and personnel from St Malo by nineteen yachts, mostly sailing vessels, out of St Helier, Jersey in June 1940, for which the St Helier Yacht Club was uniquely granted a defaced ensign for ‘battle honours’.

A Board of Trade Yacht Master's Certificate was an advantage for a candidate seeking a commission in the RNVR (the Wavy Navy – the RNVR officers’ stripes were wavy, while RN officers’ were straight). Captain OM Watts, later famous for his upmarket chandlers in Piccadilly, trained many yachtsmen at Burlesdon; and the Little Ship Club, London did likewise.

By the end of the war, there were approximately 30,000 ratings and officers in the RNVR. Griffiths received a George Medal for his mine recovery work. Monsarrat was appointed to the new Flower-Class corvette Campanula in August 1940, experience he drew on when he wrote the first great maritime novel by an English-born author – The Cruel Sea. He used himself as the model for Sub-Lieutenant Lockhart, a yachtsman and the son of a surgeon. After two years as an engineer on inshore anti-submarine patrol, Eric Hiscock was medically re-assessed and discharged due to his poor eyesight. Later, he joined the Admiralty Ferry Service, which was set up to deliver old and new naval vessels around the coasts to wherever they might be required, and which developed into quite a flourishing branch of the merchant navy.