The Boats That Built Britain - The Pilot Cutter - Part 1 

Thank you.

You aren’t wrong, the benchmark some say! They basically evolved from the Pilot speaking with the shipwrights/ boatbuilders until they had the perfect fast, safe in any weather boat which could go away for weeks searching for ships with just the pilot, westernman and a boy! Over 500 years of Piloting from Pill with John Cabot being piloted down the river in 1497 by a Pill pilot called Ray.

And so are we!

But in the case of these boats, just check out Bill Tilman, He did remarkable things with them, an old school adventurer., Wikipedia list his remarkable,able life and his 3 pilot cutters.

Isn't that true of almost anything you can think of? And many of the Bristol Channel Pilot boats were sold and converted into successful cruising Yachts.

Tally Ho is not a pilot cutter. It's a custom Albert Strange design, meant for recreation.

It’s titled a Gaff Cutter, so same family, different boat.

@@TomSramekJr Gaff cutter refers to the rig. Same family in the most general sense I suppose.

Think his name is Leo Golden, he's a boatbuilder, and a sailor.....

@@TheoSmith249 hmmmm, of Sampson Boat company, no doubt I many have heard of the lad. ^~^

​@@TheoSmith249And a very good videographer.

Leo and Pancho are a treat. >_

Oh I binge-watched all of it during lockdown and I now eagerly wait for the next installation. A very impressive young man.

A similar YT series, Acorn to Arabella, is also worth binging. Btw, the guys name on Tallyho is Leo Goolden, the company is Sampson boat works.

@@a1ar127 Personally I gave up on A2A due to a milking a cow effect in their videos, aka 30min video showing placing a single plank... Leo is different.

I was the same... Tally Ho has been an epic rebuild... It took a certain kind of madness to take it on... Very impressive

Let’s try and get it sorted. Thanks.

Welsh, Gloucester or Bristol Pilot?

So was mine.

Stephen Thomas please pardon my ignorance but what book are you speaking of? From a Canadian prairies sport fisherman.

@@peterwright4647 Tom wrote a book about Pilot Cutters, and being the modest person he is, didn't give himself a plug

Yup

@@BoatYardBuilds I guess you know about Leo and The Tally Ho? The Sansom Boat Company.

Lantern Hill ⚓️

Am I getting this right. The owner was buying a boat costing well into the six-figures and yet going cheap on his charts? I wouldn't want to crew on his boat.

@@Inkling777 Yes the Malacca strait chart had an Island that the yanks blew up in 39 , Had some fun with the crew wene i plotted over it ( I knew it was no more) & the owner wasnt on board just his piss head brother who jumped ship in Singapore after an altercation in the bar with a local . We were the last sailing vessel to sail out of Malacca port before they built a bridge over the entrance , very old port .

And there’s more to come.

@@BoatYardBuilds absolutely in love with wood boats.

lame duck it’s not that simple ,even with buoys you have changing wind and huge tides to consider .local knowledge is essential.

Buoys move and are occasionally moved. It helps if one knows where it is supposed to be. There are also insurance concerns which are no small prat of shipping.But basically with modern navigation equipment it’s valet parking for ships , as one of my New York Harbor pilot colleges called it.

I quite agree, all talk about the Bristol channel and not too much about the actual vessel. I had planned to watch the whole series, but I don't think I'll bother now.

Yes...

9 times out of 10, the skippers of the large trade vessels have less than a handful of trips up the Bristol Channel. The Pilot crews were born and raised on those waters, chances are half of the crew of a single Pilot Cutter could competently guide a vessel up the channel by themselves.

The Bristol Pilots were from Pill, Somerset which is where it all begun really… 1497 is the date used when Pilot Ray of Pill piloted the Matthew to sea….so the way it was done was the cutter (or skiff known locally) would leave the creek with the pilot, westwardman and a boy, sometimes the boat would be owned by more than 1 pilot so another pilot could be onboard. They would head down along and out looking for ships heading to Bristol, they would have shipping news daily sent into the village, so they had some idea. Once they found a job the pilot would be put on in a small punt with the boy and then then it was the responsibility of the westwardman and the boy to get the skiff back to Pill… sometimes they would put them under tow but this wasn’t something the crew liked as it put massive strain on the boat. There’s a account of a Pill boat being off the foreland and a ship hailed them to take a Cardiff pilot off, the boat was owned by Mr Wilde of Pill and the only crew on her were George Marshal, also of Pill and a boy.. as they came alongside the ship a wave washed George Marshal over the side and he was never seen again! The boy took the boat all the way from the Foreland, in heavy seas and on his own back to Penarth Roads where he found his father on another Pilot boat.. the boy was William Berry of Pill and he was aged 12. That’s a distance of nearly 40nm! Pill was renowned for making excellent seaman and were all very protective over the job and didn’t take kindly to anyone getting involved in Pill business!

You raise a very good point. We will make sure we use those drawings next time.

@@BoatYardBuilds I know I was harsh but when I watched the video I was expecting more documentary and exploring the ships themselves. Why were they the best design for the job? Were they based on local fishing boats or racing boats from elsewhere? These sorts of things and not the 'crank the danger to 11' style that treats the viewer like a child to be entertained. Good luck.

honor harrington my family on both my father and mothers side were Bristol Pilots and Westernmen, they all lived in the village of Pill which is where the Bristol Pilot cutter evolved from...the cutters (or skiffs as they were known to the Pilots of Pill ) were basically built by a few builders from Pill and Bristol, Pill had shipyards from hundreds of years, names like Morgan who were building in the 1700s and later in the 1800s we had Cooper who had his own dry dock in the top of the creek, then the famous Cracker Rowles who’s yard was at the entrance of the creek near the customs or watchouse! The boats themselves evolved over hundreds of years with the Pilots and crews reporting back to the builders on how they could be made faster and more seaworthy...a Rowles built cutter was normally faster but the Coopers built boat was better in heavy weather, the pilots took all this into account when having their boats built or modified, it was a very cutthroat business hence the reason they needed to be fast and built for any weather! The boats we see in this video were the design of the late 1800s, before this they would have been using what’s known as a Pill Yawl or as you’ve already mentioned, just a simple gaff rigged fishing boat, so open boats with no cover, many of these were lost including the pilot and crew mainly in the top part of the channel.. I believe the earliest photograph of a Bristol pilot cutter is the “trial” which was around 1840/50 from memory and was owned by a Mr Vowles of Pill, she is laying in the Mud near Pill and isn’t the sleek looking Cutters we see in this video! My family tree proves how dangerous the Bristol Channel was for these brave men, I’ve lost a couple of members, one was my great x3 grandfather who was lost of Ilfracombe when his cutter sank in 1839, the village of Pill lost two pilots and 4 young men that night! Hope this helps...

@@PillSharks Thank You, very worth the reading. :)

honor harrington glad it helped...in all honesty, when I first watched this I wasn’t very impressed by the film, they spent more time talking about the Welsh pilots and ports rather than Pill, which was where it all started.. when the Welsh ports started to thrive with the coal, many Pill families moved to Wales and set up new lives around the pilot boats, many old Pill names are still in Barry, Newport and Cardiff, names such as Dungey, Thomas, Gilmour and many more! The gentleman in the film is Mr Rich, he’s still alive but isn’t very well unfortunately, he was one of the last Pill pilots, his great grandfathers cutter or Skiff has just been totally rebuilt and the current owner has done a fine job...she’s called the Letty and her Pilot number was 22..

Like you I find his tone rather adrenal, having said that during her peak Britains literally did rule the world and was the first country to invent a whole new economic structure, industrialisation. Like it or loath it Britain built the modern world, right down to the legal system, having invented modern commercial contract law and insurance. See Nial Ferguson “Empire” extraordinary when you see we have returned to a more modest role!