1973 Arthur Potter Teesside Tees Mouth

I was crazy even, to think of building a Vertue, but I’d been fired as a schoolboy by a model yacht on the local park lake.
When I was a teenager When I was a teenager my father bought an ex-teeside pilot's 20 ft clinker built open boat, the Edna  May. She cost £5.00 and required  new top strakes, gunwales and seats and much more. But I soon became dissatisfied with her performance. In the mid 1930s I read all account of the building of a Harrison Butler 4 tonner  by Stanley Knowles of the Humber yawl Club in a 1928 edition of The Yachting Monthly and it inspired me to build a boat of my own  a better boat than the Edna May.

I was not exactly well off at the time. My job as a temporary local government clerk paid £3 per week, an a stipend as a church organist added another 10 6p. However Edna May was sold for £28 and a set of plans bought from the Lvmington  offices of Jack Laurent Giles for £15.00. I had considered building Eric Hicock’s Winderer lll,  another Giles design, but Jack persuaded me to choose ANDRILLOT, the 1936 boat which led to the Vertue Class. Dick Kinnersly, who had commissioned ANDRILLOT  gave me his opinion of his new boat, with witch he was very pleased.

With with Gileses ten page specification, dated April 937 and just the third set sold, Miaid of Tesa Vertue No 34 was born. As spare time was limited, and money even more so, I made slow progress much to Giles's disappointment. Beginning with two sheets of cheap ply. I drew out tile half sections from the table of offsets, then the templates for the grown frames.

The iron keel pattern was made alongside my house, and a helpful old cooper rented me part of his cooperage for 2s 6p per week. The keel cost £20 and was a good cast. When it was being delivered, the keel broke tile wagon’s chassis as it was being slid off, Using crowbars, rollers and planks The 2 ton keel was finally moved into place.

The cost of  materials in those clays will cause astonishment today, I just £25 for five larch trees, which were sawn into 1" planks and delivered to my father’s allotment to be stacked for seasoning. The oak keel, l7ft 5in long and 2f at the butt, cost £5, delivered to my house. I sawed it to size with a hand rip—saw. Copper nails were 9p a lb and 1" teak cost 2s per square foot.

About 1938 I started to set up the keel and frames with the use of a levelling pipe a Giles suggestion which comprised a length of rubber tubing with a glass tube at each end. Around the same time, Humphrey Barton arranged  for me  to see over Monie. Vertue  No 3, when he anchored in Runswick Bay on his round Britain delivery to its owner in North Wales. Barton’s trip caused quit a stir in  yachting circles at the time. For the first leg of the cruise, ,Monie covered 104 miles  between Ryde and Dover in 15 1/2 hours. Indicating a remarkable average speed of 6 3/4knots. I was inspired and depressed by the visit, for I wondered it I might ever complete my project.

Then the war came and my time was further restricted by joining the home guard. After the end of hostilities I was called up and did ny national service, serving as a lieutenant ait engineering officer until 1946.

Bu this time the boat was planked up and Giles broke a journey to stay overnight and to inspect Tesa to see if she had built true to his design. I was flattered when he commented that she was "almost professional". He fancied a pint of Northern beer so we went to a local pub where he answered some of my many questions.  

When I asked weather she was a metacentre, he said not, and added that a boat with a perfect metacentre might not be a good boat.

 On quizzing him about putting the mast on deck, his reply was: in for a penny. in for a pound. ’In his view it had every advantage.  His visit cheered me greatly — although I was disappointed to learn that a boat is  considered only one third complete when plankeded up.

The only power tool I possessed was a 1/4-inch electric drill. All 34 planks were hand—sawn and planed from the rough boards. The mast was made from a baulk of silver spruce  purchased  on Admiralty licence after the war, brackets were screwed to the outside wall of my three bedroom semi and the mast constructed from four pieces carefully levelled.

The fact that I took so long to build my boat meant that I could take advantage of Giles' modifications following ANDRILLOT I adopted the ‘slutter’ rig and built the raised dog— house and coachroof. On completion she looked just  like Vertue XXXV  Barton’s famous Vertue which made an epic transatlantic crossing.

After 13 years  with cotton sails, I ordered Terylene, I removed the bumpkin and shortened the boom.

My mentor said I should only use a  joiner’s mallet when caulking, keeping the plank seams tight on the inside, especially at the reversed turn under the transom. Maid of Tesa never leaked. Giles also advised me to stick to tile traditional and well— proven  combination of grown frames and steamed timbers.

Erecting the mast, which  I had towed for ten miles behind a bicycle from  Middlesbrough to Teesmouth, was a problem which I solved by setting up a 20ft jury mast and using an ex—governnient bomb—loading winch to raise it into place before setting up the  rigging  but it was a hazardous task made even more so as the boat was afloat (on a swinging mooring. The year was 1053 I had laid the keel 1938. it had taken 15 years to get Maid of Tesa into the water.

As Giles remarked, the  boat was one of his best designes and had nice manners. I kept Tesa for 20 years and sold her in 1973 when I retired in my early 60s. She was a  great boat.  Not only would she go well in a very light wind, but carried all her working canvas up to force 6. Nor did she take a wateter on hoard at any time. As for my self , I feel that the days of  friendly fishermen and low—cost harbour charges are over, and  that I have experienced the the best of sailing.

When I look back now ,at 85 years old, I think I must have been crazy to contemplate such a project. I must say that, without the kindness shown to me by Jack Giles, my boat would never  have been completed - He was a gentleman.