Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter The Boats That Built Britain

Britain is an island surrounded by a cold and unforgiving sea.

For centuries it protected us from attack.

But to prosper and thrive we would need to do more than just hide behind her saltwater shield.

Britain needed brave men, willing to venture out into the unknown

and she needed good boats to take them there.

I've spent my life at sea.

Now I'm going to take passage on six boats that, together, tell the story of modern Britain.

Built for exploration, war, fishing, industry and our very survival,

these are the boats that built Britain and changed the way we live forever.

This time I'm going to be sailing aboard a Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter.

By the mid 19th Century, the country was at the centre of a shipping network that spanned the globe.

But to arrive safely in harbour, these ships needed pilots

to guide them on the last, most dangerous leg of their journey.

The Bristol Channel ports were of central importance and the Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter

was uniquely adapted to operate off a coastline that was powering not just Britain, but the world.

This is the boat that powered it all.

The Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter is among

the most charismatic of all Britain's sailing vessels.

Fast, powerful, able to withstand any weather,

she took the pilots out to the ships coming up the Bristol Channel,

which is a notoriously difficult stretch of water, at a time when the British Empire really needed them.

Without pilots there was going to be no shipping.

No shipping, no British Empire.

The Bristol Channel has always been one of Britain's most important ocean highways.

A vital trading centre for ships arriving from the West.

Hello, good morning, gentlemen. This is 7VTS, and the orders at 0900...

Today, any vessel entering the channel

is meticulously checked and identified before a pilot is put on board.

He guides the ship on what is potentially the most dangerous leg of her journey -

the final trip from the open sea into harbour.

But in the 19th Century the Bristol Channel had all the makings of a graveyard for incoming vessels.

Ships were bigger than ever before and one wrong step could mean

the loss of expensive cargo or, worse, loss of life.

To navigate these challenging waters required local knowledge, provided by a local expert - the pilot.

Self-employed and aggressively independent, the pilots were paid only when by the ships they boarded.

Their life was a constant battle to be the first pilot out there.

To make sure you won that race, you needed a boat that was seaworthy, safe and, above all, fast.

It was a cut-throat business on what could often be a desperate stretch of water.

Only one boat was up to the job...

The Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter.

This boat is a true thoroughbred.

Her design evolved from thousands of hours at sea.

The perfect combination of form and function

that many say hasn't been bettered by any sailing boat since.

But this is definitely not a gentleman's yacht.

She's a working boat, designed for working seamen.

Men like Lewis Alexander, who stopped at nothing to make sure

his pilot cutter was the fastest, most radical boat that could be built.

But you can't fully understand the world of the Pilot Cutter

until you've grasped the essence of the waters they had to work.

Even on a calm day, the tidal forces of the Bristol Channel are deceptively powerful.

To find out more I've come to meet local sailor Rob Salvidge,

a man who knows the sea here as well as anyone.

Two days after a full moon you've got big spring tides.

A massive swirling of unimaginable amounts of water coming

in and out of the Bristol Channel and it's all got to go somewhere.

And it's what it does and where it goes and how it corresponds with the underlying contours

that is the key and the secret to understanding what the tides are here

and how they can be either your friend or your enemy.

Its not difficult to understand why this tide is one of the largest in the world

when you look at the geography of where we are.

The two shorelines funnel the Atlantic into a bottleneck up by Bristol.

It comes in from over here.

Here it is. Here's the tide coming in.

And it reaches a point here between the West Coast of Wales and Cornwall down there.

Once it gets here it can't stop because there's loads more water behind it.

So it keeps going, keeps going and funnels right the way up.

And it's going sweeping right up the River Severn, up past Gloucester, up towards Worcester,

until it's got nowhere else to go and then the height just keeps rising and rising and rising.

The tide rises and falls so fast that what looks like open water one minute

can turn into a sandbank or rocky shoal the next. Lurking.

Ready to wreck your ship.

So the rock is virtually dry when the tide's out and then there's 42 feet of water.

And that's all got to appear here.

And imagine that expanded across the whole width of the Channel.

It's all got to appear from nothing to that in the space of about five and a half hours.

What this means is that with every tide more than 13 billion tonnes of water pour into the Bristol Channel,

only to be flushed out again six hours later.

But those 13 billion tonnes aren't just moving up and down, they're roaring along, too.

Veritable torrents, often moving faster than a boat can sail.

And those tides could spell catastrophe for any vessel inbound to Bristol, Cardiff

or any other port around here.

No mater if you'd sailed your ship safely from America or Australia,

it was when the waters narrowed into the Bristol Channel and the tides really began to rumble

that danger lurked...and that was when you needed a pilot, a local man to show the way.

So what sort of person makes a good pilot?

For John Rich, piloting runs deep in his veins.

Tom! Nice to see you.

'It goes back more than 3 generations to the days when his great grandfather

'sailed the magnificent pilot cutters.'

Oh, my goodness!

Well, well, that was your granddad's boat?

She was...yes.

Today John's retired, but he served for 30 years as a Bristol Channel pilot

on modern diesel-powered pilot boats.

To pass for his license, he had to know that he could successfully

navigate any ship, from a super tanker to a nuclear submarine without a second thought...

and whatever ship he was boarding, egos had to be set aside.

The pilot has complete charge of the navigation and is totally responsible

for anything that happens to that vessel between the time he boards and the captain discharges him.

I piloted around about 2,000 ships.

I think on only three occasions, I can recall having any problem at all with the captain.

But at any time in the channel he could say, "No, pilot, I don't like the way you're doing this."

"Give me your note,

"I'm discharging you".

Then his ship was deemed unseaworthy.

But so severe is the Bristol Channel tide that pilots were very often greeted with huge relief.

I had one Greek and he was nearly in tears.

And I said, "What's the problem"? This was in the early 1960s.

He had a wartime chart, 1945.

-Oh, my goodness.

-That's all he had.

All the buoys had changed. The lights had changed.

He said, "It's a terrible Channel port..."

And he hugged me!

"God I'm glad to see you, pilot.

"This is a terrible channel."

Meeting John has given me a real insight into the job of piloting.

But if it was tough when John was doing it on a modern boat,

it was even tougher back in the age of sail.

And for hundreds of years pilots were striving to develop the perfect boat for the job.

There have been pilots on the Bristol Channel since records began.

And like most places, in the early days, the guys didn't have specially-built boats.

They used whatever they had.

And in this book there's a picture of the sort of boats pilots were using all the way around the UK.

This is a general purpose sort of boat, probably did a bit of fishing,

four honest longshoremen there, all of them capable of doing the job.

But when you look at what happened to her in heavy seas, you can see

that there was a limit to what you could do with a boat like that.

She didn't have a deck you see, she was open,

which made her great for a bit of inshore fishing, but not much good for standing out at sea

in the Bristol Channel on a nasty night in a gale of wind with breaking water.

It was clear, as trade increased, they were going to need a better boat.

By the beginning of the 19th century, the volume of shipping into the Bristol Channel

was increasing rapidly as the industrial revolution gained momentum.

Now pilot boats needed to be able to put further out to sea in any weather.

Slowly, the form of the boats began to improve.

We've got a lines plan here of one of the boats that was operating round about 1800.

The run, the way the water pours off the stern of the boat is...Well, it's a bit messy, quite honestly.

It's not going to be fast, this boat.

But she does look as if she's going to be comfortable. She's got a deck on her.

She's not really built for speed but she looks seaworthy and solid.

As commerce in the Channel increased, so did the competition between pilots.

To beat their fellows out to the ships, pilots were constantly developing faster, more able boats.

The competition was hotting up and to keep your nose ahead in the endless race to the shipping lanes,

performance was the key.

By the end of the 19th century, through a process of continual evolution and improvement,

the pilots had come up with the perfect boat for the job,

the Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter.

Absolute perfection on the water.

And there was nothing like her out there at all.

If we look at her here we can she she has a fine high bow,

which is going to push the seas aside.

The entry is now lean.

She can work to windward. Look at this sail.

There's many a yacht today can't stow a sail like that.

Those guys have got real pride in this vessel.

She's so well-designed and so perfectly balanced

that there's nobody at the helm, look.

She's sailing herself, the guys are up at the mast attending to the rig.

Getting the sails on.

There were no prizes for second place in pilotage and the owner of this boat knew

that he could go out to sea, spread his canvas and thrash any of the boats that had come before him.

He was going to be out there to windward, picking off the prime ships

and coming home with his pockets full of money.

But even with the essential parameters in place, the process of development never stopped

as pilots fought to gain the tiniest advantage over their rivals.

And in this shed, undergoing restoration is the best of the lot,

the fastest pilot cutter ever built - Kindly Light.

Here she is - Kindly Light.

Beyond argument, the fastest Pilot Cutter that ever sailed the waters of the Bristol Channel.

And when you look at her, you can see why.

Built in 1911, Kindly Light is the most perfect example of everything that makes pilot cutters so special.

53 feet of grace and power, that all begins under the water in her revolutionary hull.

A typical, middle-of-the-road pilot cutter actually had quite a, what we call a slack mid ships section.

If you looked at her from the bow towards where I am,

you would see a boat that was that sort of shape with a little bit of tip right at the bottom.

Look at this! It's like a wineglass all the way.

Dropping dead to the keel.

And swelling out here.

Absolutely sexy shape.

And that carries on right to the stern.

And if you look at her, looking towards the bow, this hollow shape goes all the way to the stem.

This is so radical she could have shown the yachts of her day a thing or two.

With her athletic lines and deep keel, her pilot had cracked

the perfect combination of speed and seaworthiness.

A boat that could sail fast in even the roughest conditions.

On deck, the same attention to detail and adaptation to a working life at sea are just as evident.

Staunchly constructed and ruthlessly efficient, there isn't a single weak link or unnecessary component

anywhere on board.

I really can't think of any boat that is better set up for short-handed sailing

than one of these pilot cutters.

All you need is to hand.

Your tiller for steering the boat.

If she makes water,

your pump is right here.

And if you want to drop the mainsail in a hurry to slow the boat down or stop her,

it's made fast right here on these posts.

All done by one man from here.

The product of generations of working seamen just developing and developing

until they come up with something that is near perfection.

All pilot cutters were good, but the reason why Kindly Light is so special comes down to her owner.

He was a great seamen but also a canny businessman

and he knew that if he built the quickest boat he'd beat his fellow pilots out to the biggest ships.

His name was Lewis Alexander, the most successful pilot of them all.

Lewis Alexander paid £500 for this boat.

That's 40% more than the average pilot cutter of this era.

I suppose if you commissioned one today you wouldn't see much change out of £750,000.

It's a huge investment for a working man, but the rewards were big.

In one year this boat turned over £1,500 -

a huge return on the investment and more money than the average working man was going to see in a lifetime.

For Lewis Alexander and Kindly Light, it was boom time.

For centuries, Bristol had been the dominant port in the area.

But as the industrial revolution got into full swing,

other ports in the Channel grew to cope with the relentless demand.

By the mid 19th century, a new trade was becoming established and it wasn't centred in Bristol.

It was here in South Wales.

And this new trade was about to change the life of the Bristol Channel pilots for ever.

This is a lump of Welsh steam coal from the Rhondda.

The Rhondda isn't very far from the coast and, when the world became hungry for this product,

it was here in Barry that the export trade really took off.

In 1881 Barry had been a sleepy village of 85 souls.

30 years later it became the centre of a shipping network

spanning the world, exporting over 11 million tonnes of coal a year.

Pilots had never been in greater demand.

And Lewis Alexander was determined to exploit this opportunity,

backing his faith in his boat no matter what the weather.

'It oft times happened that the pilot when he got alongside

'the ship he couldn't get back to the pilot cutter.

'On one occasion I, myself, was boarding a Spanish steamer off to Poland,

'rowing very hard.

'Now the sea was sweeping the plough

'and as I went up the ship bows,

'it leaned over and threw me into the side.

'I thought, that's enough of that!'

Listening to Lewis Alexander's voice from all those years ago gives a sense of life as a pilot.

But there's a man in Barry who actually met him.

John Hart, for years coxswain of the Barry Lifeboat.

Did you actually meet Lewis?

Well, I was in his presence. But I wouldn't have dared speak to him or anything like that.

So what sort of man was Lewis?

He was very hard-working.

Deeply religious.

Would never work on a Sunday... and he would never sail on a Sunday.

He might be at sea on a Sunday, but he would never sail on a Sunday.

The blokes who worked for him worked hard but got well paid.

When he was a young pilot he invested in the best boat he could buy.

He paid almost twice as much for his boat as anyone else at the time. Yeah, he was a self-made guy.

But, for Lewis, being first out to any old ship wasn't enough.

He was only after the big ones, that paid the highest pilot's fees.

They had very good intelligence and they knew

something had left Liverpool or something had left London...

or something had left New York.

They had a pretty good idea of when it was due

and they were going seeking for the very one they were looking for. The big ones.

The big ones were the ships that paid pilots the most.

And to make sure he was there to meet them, Lewis needed more than a fast boat.

He needed information.

He was one of the first man in Barry to own a telephone,

so he could receive calls from his scouts way down in Devon,

on the lookout for ships far down to the westward.

He also paid the local butchers a shilling

for a list of ships that were coming into harbour that had placed an advanced order for meat.

Even Alexander's house was built to better his chances.

Constructed high on the hill, overlooking the Bristol Channel, so he could check on his competitors

and scan the horizon for incoming ships.

Wow, what a view.

The pilot would see it all from here. Remarkable.

And it just shows what a successful pilot could actually do for himself.

The rewards were huge.

But all the intelligence in the world wouldn't help

if you weren't master of your business out on the water.

Ultimately the best pilots were consummate seamen

who could handle their cutters without a second thought.

It'll be a while before Lewis Alexander's Kindly Light is ready to sail again.

But today we're in for a real treat, putting to sea on two of the last pilot cutters still sailing.

Olga, built in 1904, is one of the biggest pilot cutters ever.

Today, her racing crew of 8 is testimony to how competent

the two men and an apprentice must have been who sailed her for a living.

I'm going to be sailing on Cariad with her two dedicated owners, an earlier, smaller cutter.

And, on paper, a slower boat.

Putting to sea with the two together will give us a unique insight

into how these boats evolved and what makes them such special craft out on the water.

Up we go!

Faster on the slope, please!

A pilot cutter in full sail is a glorious sight and, as Olga comes level, we have a fine opportunity

to size up her sale plan, the engine room of a Pilot Cutter.

One, two, three, four sails there.

We've got the jib at the front which is not setting to well at the moment,

needs a bit of sheet on that.

We've got the staysail behind it, the mainsail, the great big one

and up at the top, that's the topsail, that's the technical one.

Needs a bit of tweaking to get it right, but the boys have got it set a treat. It looks nice.

Modern performance sailing boats can be twitchy to sail,

requiring constant attention and tweaking from a large, attentive crew.

But the great thing about a pilot cutter is that once you've got her set up right

she'll almost sail herself, making her one of safest and most undemanding boats there is.

So that is a classic gaff cutter now.

She's got the lot.

Every sail that a racing yacht would have carried

and set on a working boat, on the waters she was built to work in.

But that's enough about Olga.

She may be a bigger and faster boat, but there's a vessel out there coming up Channel,

looking for a pilot.

I'm going to give it my best shot!

Who's got the end of the sheet?

Hang on. Wait! Wait!

How's the trim up there, Ken? Looking good?

Left of the main, please. Left of the main!

Ease the sheet.

Up, up, up... That's nearly it, now.

Topsail end. Topsail end.

Paul, towards you.

Paul, you've got a bit of a tangle. That's not going to work, hang on.

You'll have to go underneath that one. I was afraid that would happen.

-Never mind. We've put on a good showing.

-Let's bear away a touch.

Let the jib go.

Look at her. What a sight! Here we go. We'll see what happens on the next tack.

We'll have you next time, boys!

If you were on the slower boat your only hope as a pilot

was that the bigger, faster cutter would carry on to the West

towards the open Atlantic, looking for richer pickings.

In the end there was no way we could beat the Olga...

Fortunately she has, in fact, sailed on and we've found...

well not exactly a ship, but a motorboat wanting to be brought into harbour.

Well there she is.

She's not quite a 1905 steamer but she's the best we could get.

But before I can leave the cutter to board the other vessel, we have to

stop her in her tracks, something modern yachts find difficult.

For the right boat, it's just a matter

of setting one sail to drive ahead and the rest to drive her backwards.

It's called heaving to.

It's highly desirable and these boats did it to perfection.

Ken's putting the helm down and absolutely nothing is going to be done to these sails, nothing at all.

I'm going to duck - the boom's going to come across in a minute

and when they come across, the ones up front, the headsails are going to come aback.

They're going to try and push the boat backwards.

The mainsail is going to try and push her forwards

and the whole shooting match is going to be balanced by the helm and the boat is going to go nowhere.

Now's my chance!

The cutter is holding steady.

And remember, I'm actually climbing off the cutter here into this tiny little boat.

Imagine now, I'm doing it on a reasonable day but there's a fair swell running.

I've got some nerves about it. Imagine I was doing it in force 10 on a filthy black night.

It doesn't bear thinking about.

All I have to do is row across as quickly as I can.

The cutter's crew had to tread a fine line between leaving the pilot with an impossible distance to scull

or endangering everyone by coming in too close.

Getting this balancing act right required great skill.

-Here we go.

-Welcome aboard.

-Thank you very much, Dave.

-Boarded a ship on the Bristol Channel.

-That's fantastic.

-Wonderful.

Well this is alright, isn't it?

There we are!

Here's to pilotage and good companions.

Now the pilot's local knowledge would come into play as he guided the ship to a safe harbour.

So there you are, that's the lot of a pilot.

There's my old cutter there.

Still two, I guess the guys are probably making themselves a cup of tea and then they'll take her in -

they know I'm coming in pretty quick on this little vessel.

We've done well. We'll be in, quick turn around and then back out to sea on the ebb tide,

down to the westwards to see what we can get.

And then the process will start all over again,

every day, every week, fleets of ships arrived and left who could not manage without pilots.

No matter what the weather, these courageous men

repeatedly put their lives at risk at a time when Britain's trading vessels really needed them.

So what happened to the pilots and their cutters?

Well, their fate is tied up with the story of our old friend Lewis Alexander.

In 1914 many sailors went to war.

They returned to a world governed by steam and, increasingly, motor ships.

Changing times had finally put paid to the free market.

Perhaps the most appropriate epitaph for the pilot was found

on an otherwise empty sheet of paper on which a pilot had written his objections to this amalgamation.

He had written only five words -

'I shall lose my freedom.'

But while boats come and go, the sea never changes

and the Bristol channel remains as dangerous as ever.

Massive diesel engines, radar and GPS have changed a lot of things

but they have not removed the need for a pilot.

Today just one pilot boat serves the whole of the Barry area.

Ferrying a team of pilots in and out on a daily basis.

No-one can question their expertise and the importance of their job, but I can't help thinking that some

of the romance and free spirit that made the original pilots unique has gone.

But even if the sailing pilots have disappeared, their legacy

lives on in the beautiful cutters they left behind.

Harmonious and supremely capable, they're among the greatest sailing boats ever to work the sea.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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