Fairey marine

Fairey Marine Ltd was a boat building company based on the River Hamble, Southampton, England. The company was created in the late 1940s by Sir Charles Richard Fairey and Fairey Aviation's managing director, Mr. Chichester-Smith. Both were avid sailing enthusiasts along with Chichester-Smith's good friend and former Olympic yachtsman, Charles Currey.

Fairey was also a keen J-class yacht enthusiast. Fairey came to own Shamrock V built in 1930 for Sir Thomas Lipton’s fifth and last America’s Cup challenge. Designed by Charles Nicholson, she was the first British yacht to be built to the new J Class rule and is the only remaining J built in wood. Sir T.O.M. Sopwith had considerable knowledge of yacht racing and purchased Shamrock V in 1932 to gain experience in J Class racing. He challenged in 1933 and using his experience from Shamrock V went on to build “Endeavour”. Shamrock V was then sold to Sir Richard Fairey. In the pre war years, Fairey had commissioned yacht designer Charles Nicholson to build him a 12 Metre class racing yacht. To support this endeavour Sir Richard utilised the designers and engineers at the Fairey Aviation company’s design office to undertake research, design and development work. Hydrodynamic research was augmented by construction of the world’s first experimental low speed wind tunnel for racing yacht design at the Hayes factory. Although the primary use of the wind tunnel was for sails research, Fairey engineers also developed a method of experiment for measuring the component known as skin friction in naval architecture which was used in both the hull and sails research work. The resulting craft was known as Flica, in this craft Fairey won 35 flags in 39 races in 1932 and in the following year 49 flags in 55 races.

As the war drew to a close Fairey and Chichester-Smith both decided that they should produce sailing dinghies utilising techniques that had been employed in the construction of aircraft. Charles Currey was recruited to help run the company when he came out of the Royal Navy. The world air speed record holder Peter Twiss joined Fairey Marine Ltd from Fairey Aviation in 1960 and was responsible for development and sales of day-cruisers. In 1969, commanding the Huntsman 707 Fordsport, he took part in the Round Britain Powerboat Race, and included among his crew members, Rally champion Roger Clark. Boats were primarily designed by Alan Burnard.

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