The Potter Ship Endowment:


The Potter Ship race

On his retirement after thirteen years as the Founder Commodore, Major Cyril Potter in 1937 presented the Club with a beautiful silver wine-coaster, fashioned as a model of a royal sailing galley.

This trophy was donated as first prize for the winner of a 'mixed-up' race: the start-line of the annual 'Potter Ship' would gladden the heart of our first Commodore were he alive today. Major Potter also donated an endowment to provide prizes for three other classes.

Every boat able to float long enough to finish the course is eligible. The 'Potter Ship' is fun and enjoyed enormously by all-, unhappily, for the first time in the history of The Potter Ship, a note of unfamiliar seriousness crept into the 1971 'banyan' and the prize was not awarded.

Hitler's War, 1939-1945/6:

The dreary blanket of wartime descended swiftly upon the river and the Western Solent. A controlled minefield stretched across the Western Solent from Sowley Sluice to Hamstead Ledge. The barrage was protected by a boom defence vessel and ships theoretically could not pass through without clearance from the Extended Defence Officer (West) whose lair was in The George Hotel, Yarmouth. The mainland extremity of the boom still remains, its Qk.FI.R. warning still evoking nostalgic memories from the less-young members.

A continuous nightly Channel patrol operated from Yarmouth. Whilst waiting for the German invasion, these little craft steamed thirty miles south every night, winter and summer, their duty being to sit on the wireless transmitter key at the first enemy sighting. In the early morning of December 17th, 1940, HMS Acheron was mined close south of the Island whilst running trials. Of the 215 in the destroyer's company only nineteen survived in the bitter cold, the proximity of the Island cliffs being a cruel mockery.

The MTBs, shadows in the dusk, their engines growling as the boats slipped through Hurst; the Inshore Patrols between The Bridge and Hengisbury; the yellow-snouted Messerschmitt 109s sweeping over Tennyson's Down, machine-gunning as they dipped; the Pompey-Dartmouth convoys trundling through The Needles on the ebb; the tragedy of Dieppe and the miracle of D-Day; though history now, these events were very real to Lymington.

And in the Town, the Berthon Boat Company constructed MLs, MTBs, minesweepers and water ambulances on Admiralty contract. Some of these 110ft. craft were fitted with auxiliary sail for their intended passages across the Atlantic.

Then, in 1945, a mushroom cloud erupted over Hiroshima.