Camper & Nicholsons

Camper and Nicholsons are the oldest leisure marine company in the world. The company was originally a shipyard in Gosport, today Camper and Nicholsons has become a yacht and marina management company.

In 1782, Frances Calense Amos arrived from London and started a shipyard, leasing land in Gosport, Hampshire across the harbour from the Royal Naval Dockyard at Portsmouth. In 1809 Amos apprenticed his great-nephew William Camper, and by 1821 the yard was building small trading ships.

As Amos had no children, after his death in 1824 his nephew Camper took over the lease on the yard. Camper forged strong links with the wealthy members of the Royal Yacht Squadron, positioning the business in the emergent yacht building industry. For twenty years from the launching of the cutter Breeze in 1836, Camper built up a reputation as a builder of fast yachts, particularly schooners which were favoured by a prestigious clientele. However, the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 heralded a decline in Camper's career.

In 1842, 14-year-old Ben Nicholson joined Camper's yard as a shipwright apprentice. As there was no clear male heir in the Camper family, Nicholson had risen in the yard to become chief designer, producing the innovative 1860 design for the schooner yacht the Aline. The yacht's racing success and subsequent orders prompted Nicholson's further promotion and facilitated his choice as Camper's replacement when he retired in 1863.

The company of Camper and Nicholson was formed in 1863, financed by both William Camper and the Lapthorn family, who operated an adjacent sail loft. Nicholson undertook a 30-year programme of expansion, more than doubling the size and scale of the facilities. In tonnage terms, the design and construction of large schooners dominated the firm's output, and to this staple Nicholson added an extensive refit and maintenance business which was made possible by the near constant expansion of the yard's facilities.

Nicholson vessels were extremely long-lasting. A long-lived, cruising yawl, the Florinda, proved so speedy that she became famous as the Gosport Mistake. Nicholson's last vessel was the 1887-built, 161-ton schooner Amphitrite, which was fitted with a durable teak hull; originally designed as a racing yacht, she is today owned by Germany's oldest sail-training association, Clipper, and as of 2013 is considered one of the oldest sailing yachts still sailing on the sea.

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