by Steve and Beverley Daley-Yates
Steve and Beverley Daley-Yates, current owners of Cachalot, were the first to send their yacht’s details to the RDA ‘Boats Still Floating 2025’ project. This year-long project aims to identify boats currently on the Deben which were built during 1950 or before. During the year we will be building a database of such vessels, large or small. You can find it HERE. We will also run occasional articles giving some of their histories, as they are part of our river heritage. Thank you, Steve and Beverley, for starting us off.
Cachalot came back to the River Deben in September 2005 and made her home in the Tidemill Yacht Harbour, Woodbridge. She had certainly visited the Deben prior to this and possibly spent some of her neglected years sitting in the mud of the Woodbridge Town Dock. Built in Folkestone in 1898, she has spent most of her life on the East Coast. Her major restoration took place ashore at the Tidemill, 2007 – 2017. She regards the River Deben as home.
2022: Felixstowe [Josh Masters].
The early years
Cachalot was built in 1898 by Robert Sanders in Folkestone, Kent and advertised for sale in The Yachtsman magazine. Perhaps this was a speculative build for the newly emerging class of ‘gentleman sailor’. She’s a 30′ gaff cutter, 10′ beam, drawing 4′ 6″ with an elliptical counter stern – which we think is very distinctive and beautiful. Her registered gross tonnage 6.37. Her original construction was pitch-pine on oak, and she has had an interesting variety of owners, interspersed with periods of neglect, including at least two sinkings.
Between 1906 and 1927 Cachalot was owned by Bertram Edward Dunbar-Kilburn. He lived in Hyde Park, London and belonged to sailing clubs in Fambridge and Mersea. Cachalot was known locally as the ‘full-rigged ship’ due to Dunbar-Kilburn’s frequent use of a large tops’l.
“A noted sailor, Mr Kilburn, born in 1872, was a proper Victorian polymath. As well as an MA from Trinity, Cambridge, he was President of the Chartered Institute of Patent Agents, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Fellow of the Royal Meteorology Society, Chairman of the Junior Institution of Engineers and Companion of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He worked with a number of the truly great engineers of the first half of the last century including Sir Harry Ricardo, Major Frank Halford (designer of the Gypsy Major, Napier Sabre, de Havilland Goblin and Ghost engines) and Sir Richard Fairey, all respectively Presidents of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers or the Royal Aeronautical Society. His daughter, Lady Cecilia, married William Forbes-Sempill. Apart from being appointed High Sheriff of Oxfordshire, I think Mr Kilburn’s most endearing feature was his monocle.” Jim Miller, Partner, Kilburn & Strode, 2019
1907: owner BE Dunbar Kilburn at the helm [Kilburn and Strode archives].
The war years into the 1950s: Dunkirk, Scotland and the Mediterranean
Perhaps her most illustrious owner was Sir Lancelot Henry Elphinstone who owned Cachalot from 8 April 1936. He was a barrister and was related to Queen Victoria. We know a little about his military career but nothing about his interest in sailing as he sold Cachalot in August 1936 (after only four months) to two stockbrokers; Herbert Charles Norton, from Amersham, Bucks, and Hugh Leycester Bedwell, Stock Broker from Warwick Square, London. Cachalot’s home port became Ipswich.
In February 1937 Norton joined the RNVSR (Royal Naval Volunteer Supplementary Reserve). This was known as the Yachtsman’s Reserve. Yachtsmen were invited by the Admiralty to add their names to list indicating their willingness to serve as officers in an ‘Emergency’ (ie war). They were given no prewar training (unlike the ‘regular’ RNVR) but many of these keen volunteers got together to improve their theoretical knowledge and also their boat handling. Norton was part of the London Division which was particularly innovative in finding ways to develop its members’ skills. It’s even possible that Cachalot could have been involved in providing such training, as East Coast yachtsmen Augustine Courtauld and Frank Carr gathered groups of Orwell yachtsmen together to go out to sea and practice station keeping and signalling. But this is speculation.
Cachalot had her first auxiliary engine, a Stuart Turner, fitted just before the Second World War. In 1940, she took part in Operation Dynamo as one of the 700 ‘Dunkirk Little Ships’ sent to the beaches of northern France to evacuate allied troops 26 May – 4 June. As a member of the Association for Dunkirk Little Ships (ADLS) she joined the ‘Return to Dunkirk’ in 1990 and is planning to go again this year, 2025, the 85th Anniversary.
It seems almost certain that her involvement would have occurred because her part-owner HC Norton had been commissioned as a RNVR Lieutenant in November 1939 and was posted to HMS Wildfire, Sheerness. This was the base from which so many of the Little Ships were gathered together to support the larger ships – destroyers, minesweepers, troop carriers and the like – ferrying men from the beaches or the Mole out to the larger ships which would take them home. (Norton later served on the St Tudno – the minesweeper depot ship, usually based in Queenborough, which was also at Dunkirk. He finished his war service as a Lieutenant Commander working in the Second Sea Lord’s Office in the Admiralty.) By 1946, however, Cachalot had been sold and with a few years she was sold again.
Retired Brigadier E E Nott-Bower, her owner in the 1950s and contributor to Yachting Monthly Magazine, sailed her on the west coast of Scotland and Ireland. When tiring of the rain and clouds, he sailed south with his wife and daughter, taking Cachalot through the French canals and into the Mediterranean, leaving the boat in Majorca, August 1955. The full, illustrated story of his cruise is told in Yachting Monthly, May 1956 (and at the time of this article’s publication in RDA Journal, Steve and Beverley are in France and Spain visiting some of Cachalot’s ports of call. See https://www.cachalot.org.uk/gironde-1955/)
Early 1950s: off the west coast of Scotland [Edward E Nott-Bower].
1955: Edward E Nott-Bower and wife Angela pass Old Head Lighthouse, Kindle, June 1955.
The ‘lost’ years
The Nott-Bowers left Cachalot laid up in the Mediteeranean, where she was once again sold. She then had several owners between 1956 and 1976, one of whom must have brought her back to England in the early 1960s. Each owned her for only 2-3 years.
One of these was Tom Corbett who sent us an email via the Cachalot website in 2001. A schoolmaster from Hockley, Essex. Tom owned her between 1970 and 1975; “Would appreciate seeing Cachalot again. I sailed out of Bradwell-on-Sea until my health prevented the sheer physicality of sailing her! I will be 90 this year and still on the water, albeit the Norfolk Broads.” We promised to arrange a meeting as soon as the Covid-19 restrictions permitted. On Saturday 26 June, 2021 we had a most enjoyable afternoon aboard with Tom who had not sat in the cabin aboard Cachalot for nearly 50 years!
2021: Tom Corbett back aboard, 50 years on.
A new lease of life, 1975 – 1995
As with many old boats going through a period of neglect, Cachalot at last found the right owner in 1975. Jenny and Ian Kiloh purchased her and spent many years restoring her and researching some of her history. They lived aboard from the mid-1970s in Brightlingsea, Essex, moving to Heybridge Basin and Suffolk Yacht Harbour, Levington.
“We’ve had a major task involving new carlins, doubling up the main beam (which was broken), new covering boards, several new half beams, new bulwarks, hatches, cabin trunking, interior, the list goes on, and on . . . However, the end is at least in sight and although we do not expect her to be really A1 until next year we anticipate having our first sail in her in May this year, all going to plan. She is a really lovely little yacht and has been well worth all the effort. My wife and I purchased her in November 1975 in Wivenhoe after her having been sunk – and run over by a coaster!” Ian Kiloh, writing in the OGA Newsletter, 1977
Ian and Jenny took her on the Return to Dunkirk in 1990 and she was sold to Julia Webb and Martin Davy in 1992. Three years later she was sold again and suffered several years of neglect once again, ending up for sale on eBay.
1990: return to Dunkirk [Tom Cunliffe].
Cachalot returns to the Deben: restoration & sailing again, 2005 – 2025
Her current owner, Steve Yates, fell in love with her counter stern when he found her on eBay, apparently for sale at The Suffolk Yacht Harbour, Levington in 2005. Living in Derbyshire meant that a swinging mooring was not convenient and he brought her to the Tidemill Yacht Harbour, planning a programme of winter maintenance as advised by the surveyor.
‘Steve, your boat has sunk!’ was the phone message in January 2006 from the harbourmaster at the Tidemill. They had hoisted her onto the hard but following careful inspection rot was discovered in the archboard and beam shelf. She had also suffered from over-enthusiastic re-fastening of the planks. Closer examination revealed the extent of the problems and she was declared a major project in May 2007, moving round to ‘death row’ at the Yacht Harbour overlooking the mounds of Sutton Hoo. The restoration took place under a large tent and included a new ply deck, 90% new planking in larch, new sternpost, stem, rudder, bulwarks and replacement or sistering of most of her frames. Her bowsprit, featured in Tom Cunliffe’s book Hand, Reef and Steer (1st edition) was replaced and a new set of gaff jaws were crafted from the shattered remnants of the original and fitted to her gaff spar. The renowned sail loft, Ratsey & Lapthorn, Isle of Wight was chosen to make her new suit of sails and her Yanmar auxiliary engine was fully reconditioned. New boards for the sole and cockpit were crafted using some of the reclaimed teak deck.
Ten years later, she emerged from her tent to be re-launched, 4 August, 2017 on the banks of the River Deben at the Tidemill Yacht Harbour, Woodbridge. The interior fit out was completed afloat between 2018 – 2022.
As members of the OGA, there was plenty of local support during the restoration project from the friendly, helpful membership on the East Coast, Netherlands and other parts of the UK and Ireland. Living in a campervan during the summer we made Woodbridge our ‘home from home. Visiting yachtsmen, berth holders and OGA members called by to provide encouragement and to marvel at how much progress had been made ‘since the last time we visited xx years ago!’
In 2009 she received a restoration award from the Transport Trust and in 2019 was nominated for the ‘Classic Boat Magazine Restoration Award (under 40’)’. In 2022, she won the Concours d’Elegance Trophy at the East Coast OGA Annual Summer Cruise.
2022: Concours d’Elegance Trophy at the East Coast OGA Annual Summer Cruise.
125th Birthday Celebrations 2023: Suffolk Yacht Harbour & Ipswich
In order to look the part we invested in some crew kit: t-shirts and caps for the Suffolk Yacht Harbour Classics, 2023. Spending Sunday night at Felixstowe Ferry we watched a lovely sunset, with water lapping gently under the boat looking out to the sandbanks we’d be crossing in the morning. Early on Friday, four Deben Cherubs sailed down from Waldringfield and were gone before we got up, on the early morning ebb tide. Ben on his Bermudan classic Tannhauser had come down with them but decided to wait until the flood. The wind wasn’t as bad as forecast and we enjoyed a great weekend racing off Harwich Harbour with other River Deben boats.
We left the Tidemill on 31 July to meet up with Dutch OGA members Edgar and Else, anchored at The Tips with Windbreker. After an enjoyable few hours rafted up, we cast off and stayed overnight at Felixstowe Ferry. It was a quiet night, but the forecast was westerly 15 knots, gusting 24 in the morning. Dropping the buoy at 1015 on Tuesday the sea state was lumpy crossing the Deben entrance, with a bit of surf, but not nearly as bad as expected. We’d watched the OGA60 Round Britain Cruise fleet on AIS leaving Lowestoft and as we passed Woodbridge Haven Buoy ‘Recipe and Hilda were ahead of us with the others stretched back up the coast. We motorsailed in a heavy swell, the morning sunshine disappearing behind an overcast, cloudy sky but it didn’t rain and the wind dropped. By Wednesday evening, the dock was full as 100 boats gathered for the OGA60 celebrations. We gathered on Tannhauser for a shared supper with Champagne all round to celebrate 125 years for Cachalot. That year we also produced a fully illustrated book, telling the story of our ownership of Cachalot and her restoration.
2025: 85th Anniversary Return to Dunkirk
Cachalot will be lifted out of the water on 3 March, 2025 at Larkman’s Boatyard on the Deben and made ready for her busy summer schedule. She will hopefully join the 75+ members of the ADLS fleet as they cross from Ramsgate for the 85th Anniversary Return to Dunkirk.
The Cachalot website (www.cachalot.org.uk) documents a full history of ownership, illustrated record of the restoration, fit-out and sailing adventures past and present. Copies of Cachalot: the story of a Kentish smack yacht are also available.