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Pilot Cutters:
This office now has what is possibly the most comprehensive resource of technical information and understanding of original Bristol Channel Pilot Cutters anywhere. Ed Burnett has experience of several complete and ongoing restorations and is involved in various replica and other new build projects.
The Pilot Cutter label is stuck on many boats by many people. As far as we are concerned, if an individual boat has put a pilot onto a ship, it is a Pilot Cutter. If it hasn't, it isn't.
The variation of hull form in original Pilot Cutters is rather greater than many would suggest, with each builder working to his own model in what was relative isolation gauged by modern standards of communication. We now have computerised hull models for various of the original cutters including:
- Cornubia (now reverted to her original name having been Hirta for many years)
- Kindly Light
- Marion
- Baroque
- Mischief
- Cariad (Hambly built - not the Rowles boat by the same name)
- Alpha (in progress....)
Most of these forms have been modeled from offsets lifted from the vessels themselves, although in the case of Mischief (which was lost without her lines having been taken) the lines we have are a best approximation based on the careful study of photographs and other information.
Originally, these boats were ballasted with Iron set in concrete in the bilges. The distribution of ballast was one of the contributing factors to their famed seakindliness.
Here we see some of the calculations for the ballasting of Kindly Light, currently being re-built by David Walkey and team at Gweek in Cornwall. The same calculations were made for Marion, now sailing following a complete rebuild by the same team.
With relatively few original boats surviving, there is always the possibility of a new build based on one or several of the known cutters. These are preliminary drawings for a boat based on the Hambly built Cariad. Similar projects are underway based on Mischief and Baroque (both of Tilman fame).
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