Fairey Marine Ltd - Power Boats

Power Boats

When Richard Fairey son of Sir Richard started the powerboat business, he had contacted US designer C Raymond Hunt (designer of the International 110) about using the designs that were proving so successful in races such as the Miami-Nassau. Fairey Marine motor cruisers began with boats being built to Hunt designs. The exclusive concessionary rights for the sale of Fairey craft were acquired by businessman Bruce Campbell. He went off to the South of France with the first four hot-moulded Fairey boats on a sales trip, naming the design Christina. The 23 ft (7m) design may have suited Hunt's local waters - or perhaps not - but being fully open boats and incorporating leaky retractable centre-boards, they were not well received. Before long Campbell returned with all four boats still in tow. Richard Fairey then employed British designer Alan Burnard to adapt Hunt's ideas and come up with more suitable designs, while Bruce Campbell severed his close ties with the company.

Burnard's first designs, included the Huntress and were far more appropriate, Fairey went on to build hundreds of boats to Burnard designs. In addition to producing its own craft, Fairey also supplied bare hulls suitable for fitting out, and Campbell, still looking to fulfil his own ideas for a luxury powerboat, acquired Huntress hulls, with the blessing of Fairey, fitting them out to his own specifications and calling them, once again, Christinas; the later models were laid up in GRP by Halmatic as is the case with this boat. Campbell's boats proved successful in British racing both in Round Britain races and the Cowes-Torquay. Tommy Sopwith won the inaugural 1961 Cowes Torquay race (powerboat-race 50th anniversary) in a Christina 25.

The most common Fairey Marine Motor Cruisers are detailed as below:

• Fairey Huntress
• Fairey Huntsman / Fairey Huntsman 28 / Fairey Huntsman 31: The design of the Huntsman and its smaller sister, the Huntress were the inspiration of Ray Hunt and designed by Alan Burnard. These boats enjoyed considerable success in 1960s power boat racing, and came to represent the classic type of the period. The planing hull design has been copied in various guises since. The hull is a relatively deep V with single chine and spray rails. The construction was of laminated mahogany, Once laminated the hulls were cooked in an autoclave to cure the glue. The engines (Twin Perkins T6354 145 hp 5.95 litre turbo diesel) were placed midships under a sloping deck to the cock-pit.
• Fairey Fantome
• Fairey Swordsman: 61 Swordsman boats were built between 1964 and 1974 at the Hamble Point factory around 40 are still in service today. Initially 33' long and with a beam of 11' 5", they came in either an aft cabin or open cockpit version. Like the Huntress and Huntsman 28 they were also available in kit form or as a hull only if required - they were the largest of the production boats built by Fairey Marine. In the middle of the production Faireys introduced an upgraded version called the Super Swordsman.
• Fairey Spearfish and Spear

Other craft produced by Fairey Marine were a total of 88 hulls for Dell Quay Productions Ltd which were used to produce the Dell Quay Ranger dell quay ranger and Christinas. The company was perhaps most renowned for producing exclusive powerboats and cruisers based on an extensive racing pedigree. Fairey Marine cruisers won 148 racing awards between the years 1961 and 1973, including the prestigious Monte-Carlo and Cowes-Torquay races. 1969 was a particularly successful year, with a tally of 54 awards.