Name Guiding Star

What is the vessel’s ability to demonstrate history in her physical fabric?

GUIDING STAR, built in 1907, is a rare surviving example of the culmination of the design of lug-rigged fishing boats in Cornwall in the years before engines were introduced and hull shapes adapted to accommodate them. Sailing drifter design in Cornwall was progressively refined during the second half of the nineteenth century after railways reached the southwest of England and speed became essential to land fish for transport fresh to London. 

With the introduction of engines and hulls specifically designed to house them, a slump in the Cornish fishing industry, and the advent of cruising under sail as an affordable pastime; the 1930’s saw working boats being converted to cruising yachts. GUIDING STAR underwent conversion to a cruising yacht in 1937 and her internal fit out remains from this period. At this time her sailing rig was also modified to make it more suitable for handling by the cruising skipper and crew.

The keel, two thirds of the frames and around half of the hull planking are original to her 1907 build date. Her internal fit out, coach roof and mainmast remain from the 1937 conversion to cruising yacht. Remaining planking, frames, deck and mizzen mast were replaced during a rebuild between 1990 and 1993. Pitch pine was used for shelves and deck beams, douglas fir for decking, and larch for replacement hull planking.

The fabric of Guiding Star shows clearly her origins as a working boat and her conversion to a leisure yacht in the 1930s. The working boat hull form remains as originally built with the addition of a propeller shaft fitted to the port quarter. Her 1930’s conversion is clearly shown in the coach roof structure, internal fit and the modifications to her mast, spars and sail configuration.

What are the vessel’s associational links for which there is no physical evidence?

GUIDING STAR is of local significance to Looe and regional significance to Cornwall as one of fewer than 20 surviving fishing luggers built before hull forms were adapted to take engines, and one of only about 30 wooden sailing fishing luggers of any hull form still afloat. She has wider national significance as one of the few survivors of Britain’s sailing fishing fleet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

She is strongly associated with two families in Looe who fished for many generations, the Soadys and the Toms. The boat was built for Thomas Soady, it was his son Jim who sold her out of fishing in 1937 after the League of Nations boycott of Italy over its invasion of Abyssinia caused a deep slump in Cornish fishing, since a large part of the pilchard catch was exported to Italy as pilgrim food. One of the crew on Guiding Star was Francis Toms, who married Thomas Soady senior’s daughter Lenora.

Her conversion to leisure yacht was completed by Uphams Yard in Brixham. Uphams was one of Brixham’s most prominent boatbuilding businesses through much of the 19th and 20th centuries. 

GUIDING STAR is also strongly associated with the late Brigadier John Belford Arthur Glennie CB DSO (1914-1994) and his wife Marguerite, a well-known cruising couple who owned her from 1960-1989 and sailed her all over Europe. She also features in ‘Lets Go Cruising’ (1949) by Eric Hiscock, a British sailor and author whose life and work illustrate the increasing popularity of sailing as a pastime in the first half of the 20th century.

How does the vessel’s shape or form combine and contribute to her function?

Guiding Star is a superb example of a strong, fast working boat built in Cornwall at the culmination of the age of sail and converted to a go-anywhere cruising yacht. Her fine, straight stem and a slender hull sweeping aft to a transom stern, conveying strength and speed from her working boat origins, this combined with her Dandy rig (Gaff main and Lug mizzen), and 1937 leisure yacht conversion make her a very pleasing sight when alongside, at anchor or underway.

She remains based in the southwest, in Plymouth, only a few miles from where she was built. Her registered home port is Fowey, as it was when she was a working fishing boat. She is a regular attendee to the annual Looe Luggers festival, as well as other traditional sailing festivals around the southwest and across the channel in France. 

Sources:

Article by Barry Jobson in Classic Boat magazine, March 1997

Information provided by Barry Jobson previous owner.

Certificate of Registry

Cornish Luggers Association website

Other sources held by vessel owner

Author:

Paul Eedle & NHS-UK