Chris and Marie Bedford tell John Hobbs the stormy tale
of how their Brixham-built Mule Class sailing trawler Regard was restored to thoroughbred status.

In this pose of the same wagon, the photograph was aimed at the millers and corn merchant trades.

On the waterfront in Brixham, go in search of the port’s boat-building history and all that you are likely to find, sadly, is a plaque that marks the spot where JW & A Upham was located. This company was one of two major yards there until it gave way to the operational centre of Brixham Coastguard and the more modern dwellings that are a feature of the Devon fishing port’s environment.
But all hasn’t been lost, for several sailing trawlers that were built by Uphams and others in Brixham and on the River Dart at Galmpton have been rescued and restored. At least two – Pilgrim and Provident – have been featured in the pages of Old Glory and this is the story of a third, the Mule Class Regard. Although this vessel differs from the others in that she was built in 1933 as a ‘trawler yacht’, there is no evidence that she ever actually fished for a living. Built along the lines of the Brixham trawlers, but not as long or as substantial, the Regard is, however, sleeker and faster than these vessels.
Originally named Our Boy after Stewart Upham, the vessel, 54ft on deck and 75ft overall, was completed in pitch pine planks on grown oak (naturally formed and shaped timber), and later purchased by a former Grimsby trawler skipper John Guzzwell, then resident in Jersey. He sailed the vessel to South Africa ostensibly to fish for snoek, although there is a strong suggestion he was actually trawling for alluvial diamonds! Whatever, he later decided, for reasons best known to himself, to make a dramatic run from Table Bay to Penzance in 65 days – leaving his wife and son to return by liner!

Chris and Marie take time out from attending to the vessel’s bottom at Mashford’s Yard.

In 1939 Our Boy was purchased by Lord Stanley of Alderly, who wanted a boat that would be capable of going anywhere, for he believed that Chamberlain’s Government would cave in to Hitler’s Germany, and that he would then need a vessel from which he could start a resistance movement from ‘Amongst the more robust spirits that still existed in England and France’.
After the war he sold Our Boy, and she then passed through the hands of several owners experiencing changes of name in the process, including Regard, Thankful, and a later reversion to Regard by Dick Young, before she ended up with the late Michael Pearson of Loughton, Essex.
He chartered the vessel to various sail training organisations over the 40 years she was in his ownership. During that time she was to be seen in several south coast locations including Shoreham and Gosport, from where Regard crossed the English Channel to Alderney and Cherbourg, before a spell on the Medway and finally the River Blackwater.
In 1999 Marie Bedford, herself a fully qualified yachtmaster, happened to be working in Brixham for one of those sail training organisations – the Trinity Sailing Foundation – when it was invited to consider the purchase of Regard. The vessel was deemed too small for the foundation’s needs, but Marie mentioned Regard to her husband, Chris, a yachtmaster examiner, and they decided to drive up to Brightlingsea, Essex to inspect it. Their first reaction to its exterior was ‘pretty’, but they were in no way impressed with its interior when they eventually went on board.

Brixham arrival: home is the sailor, home from the sea.

In spite of general appearance, Regard was in a particularly poor state below deck. Chris and Marie believed that it could be restored to a condition that would attract up to 12 passengers for a day cruise and six (and two crew) for overnight cruises. The die had almost been cast, and tentative plans were made to return the vessel to her home port, where Lord Stanley had laid her up during WWII, suffering damage at the hands of Canadian troops during preparations for D-Day.

End of the On-line article.
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