Peter Hedley on Sailing

Lisa: Was there a social side to work when you were at J S Whites? Were there opportunities to do things socially?

Not a lot. They did have a cricket team and Sir James Milne, um, was very keen to get first class cricket over onto the Island and it was at the time that John Samuel Whites had a, a cricket field up at Park Road and a club, a sports club and we used to have dances up there. There were, they had a bar, yes there was that side of it.

There was a football team but other than that, no.

We didn’t join in with any of that because we had the sailing and we sailed all through the year, known as frost-biting from the Folly Inn, used to take the boats up there and leave them and race right through the winter in the sheltered waters of the Medina.

Um, Gurnard Sailing Club, we all started at Gurnard Sailing Club, then through to the Island Sailing Club where we met quite a lot of very prominent people and sailed with them.

Lord Craigmyle had a boat called ‘Norsaga’ and as lads several of us including Ben Bradley, my brothers, we were all members of the crew and at one time there was going to be a big Regatta down at Brixham and Lord Craigmyle was anxious to have us in his crew and he wrote to Sir James Milne, asking if he could let us off for a week so that we could go down to this Regatta and Sir James Milne agreed and we had a great time racing against ‘Sceptre’ and ‘Flicker’ and ‘The Vanities’, we were going eight, twelve metres racing day.

That was great, great fun, great time and, you know these people have these big boats but they had to have these young, fit members as crew and on ‘Norsaga’, Harry Spencer of Spencer Rigging, he was Skipper, a great Skipper and Ben Bradley, who’s an old friend of mine, he was a member of the crew and worked for Harry Spencer for many years in his rope loft.