Name One

ONE (originally recorded as NUMBER ONE or NO ONE) and her sister vessel TWO were commissioned by the States of Jersey for use as Pilot Vessels, and she was built by Thomas Silk in St Helier.  At the States of Jersey Roads and Harbours Committee meeting in April 1830, three trustees were named and appointed to register the two vessels in their names for the Customs Service, and Phillippe Renouf was named as Master of ONE.   Both vessels were registered and commenced service in early May 1830. 

After six years ONE was sold in half shares to the Harbour Master of St Helier, Thomas Lerrier, and a merchant.  Three months later she was sold again to Mary Fauvel, who had recently returned to the island from Itchen Ferry with her husband John Cantell, a ferryman who became unemployed in 1834 when the rowed ferries were replaced by a chain ferry.  Many mariners from the South East coast of England came to the island seeking employment in the seasonal oyster trade, often bringing their boats with them and living onboard.  It appears that John already owned a local oyster smack in Jersey, and this may be the reason ONE was registered under Mary’s ownership.  Marriage between mainlanders and islanders was common, and seafaring families moved freely between Jersey and the South East coast.  

ONE was purchased in time for the opening of the newly seeded oyster beds in the Bay of Grouville in 1837, and dredged for oysters with the Gorey oyster fleet until 1845 when John passed away.  Following his death she ceased dredging, and various masters were employed to deliver barrels of oysters to the mainland instead.  As the oyster industry dwindled she became more of a general ‘carrier’ vessel, departing Jersey with one cargo and exchanging it for another at various ports around the coast of the UK before returning to Jersey fully laden.  

On her arrival in Cardiff in April 1855, ONE was given her Official Number, and later that year her ownership was transferred from Mary to her eldest son Francis, then aged twenty-one.  In 1858 he sold firstly a half share and then all shares to his brother-in-law Joseph Richardson, an East coast man living in Brightlingsea who had previously worked as one of her masters.  ONE continued to work as a cargo vessel from the East coast until the winter of 1863 when she was declared a total loss after she foundered on the Sunk Sand in squally South Westerlies.  As the wreck lay in shallow water within the port authority limit and posed a hazard to shipping, it was the responsibility of the owner to recover her.  She was duly salvaged.

Some twenty years later during the economic depression of the 1880s, a time in which few new smacks were commissioned, ONE was rebuilt at the Drake Brothers yard in Tollesbury.  Allegedly, she was rebuilt when work in the yard was slow, from spare wood left over from other jobs and in the yard hand’s spare time.  She was renamed WILLIAM AND EMILY after the grandparents of the brothers James and William Drake who inherited the yard from their father, but was known locally as ‘Odd Times’ after the time during which she was built.  She was reregistered as CK212 in 1886 and once again dredged for oysters, this time as part of the East Coast smack fleet.  

WILLIAM AND EMILY was owned by the Drake family until the 1960s, and was fished for many winters by Walter ‘Navvy’ Musset, who was also master of several yachts including Augustine Courtauld’s Duet.  In 1933 she was fitted with an engine, allegedly only the second Gardner sold, and subsequently became one of the leading fishing vessels in the Tollesbury fleet as well acting as a tug to the other vessels that lacked engines.  She attended Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and many other Royal occasions until Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee in 1977. 

WILLIAM AND EMILY was sold into private ownership in the 1960s, and sold again in the 1970s to the Fellowship Afloat sail training association.  In the late 1980s the association had the mid section rebuilt and extended to return the vessel to her original length of 46ft.  She was later re-rigged for use as a houseboat in St. Osyth creek, passing through the hands of various private owners.  Her ownership was eventually transferred to St. Osyth boatyard in lieu of outstanding debt, and in the early 2000s she was sold and moved to the smack dock in Brightlingsea where she was refitted.  As of 2025, ONE has reverted to her original name once again.  She currently lies in a mud berth in Cornwall under new ownership, awaiting a full renovation in time for her bicentenary in 2030.

Source: Current owner, February 2025.