The Fife Dynasty

When people speak of Wm Fife III’s designs, you might be forgiven for thinking he had been placed on this earth by angels. In fact, he learned much from his boatbuilding father and grandfather

- CLARE MCCOMB

This 4-12 June is circled in many diaries. The Fife regatta was awaited with tangible excitement until its organisers were forced to cancel “with a heavy heart”. But the Fife dynasty weathered many disasters, and this superb event will surely rise again.

Dynasty is the keyword here. Where Watson and Mylne were the first in their families to take up the profession, Fife III’s father, uncles and grandfather before him were well-known boat builders and designers in their own right. So what was ‘Will’ the youngest Fife’s experience of growing up in an already famous yard, his career mapped out before him? He was lucky. His father, Fife II, was straightforward, kindly and modest. He excelled in his profession as a splendid manager of men with “a passionate love for all pertaining to boats, and an intuitive knowledge, amounting to a sort of genius, for what the salt sea liked in the way of a vessel”.

In October 1883, when a subscription was raised to present a portrait in oils to “honest Will Fife”, funds poured in. At the handover, the Earl of Glasgow spoke appreciatively before a large company of yachtsmen, (including GL Watson) of this long-established local family, from whose yard “have proceeded some of the most graceful, and the swiftest yachts that have ever appeared of the waters around this country ... all from the same skillful hands”. He said that English visitors to the Fairlie yard found “simplicity... skill, hard thinking and happy intuition” underlying production, rather than the industrial machinery they were expecting. A litany of Fife successes was recited, including the 60-ton Neva, 40-tonners Sleuthhound and Annasona, and the 10-tonners Ulidia and Neptune.