The following is taken from an article kindly authored by John Worrall and published in Fishing News.
Summary: With completion of the Britannia restoration now assured thanks to National Lottery funding, Britannia Sailing Trust has expanded its scope by taking on river Exe salmon boat Julie.
By JOHN WORRALL
With £195,232 secured from the National Lottery Heritage Fund (FN, 28 May, ‘Funding secured to complete Britannia restoration’), Britannia Sailing Trust’s restoration of the eponymous 58ft wooden smack, built by the Worfolk yard in King’s Lynn in 1915, is moving into its final phase.
The trust’s prime movers, shipwright Sam Samuels and his wife Vicki, are restoring Britannia for the second time – now with a team of dedicated volunteers (FN, 27 November, 2025, ‘Britannia: getting shipshape’). It’s been a long story.
The work is being completed at the canal basin in Exeter where Britannia has been since her 2023 epic move from Winkleigh, 20 miles inland. Much of the specialist work to the frames, planking and deck was done there over a decade or more as money and resources allowed, often with uncertainty about whether the project could ever be completed.
But the National Lottery Heritage grant has finally removed that doubt. Britannia is now expected to be running sea trials in 2028, before beginning a new career as an environmentally-focused community education project aimed at preserving traditional shipbuilding skills through hands-on training.
The money has already given training a new focus because, with remaining work on Britannia now mostly down to general fitting out and rigging, the trust has taken on a piece of Devon’s maritime heritage – the 20ft river Exe salmon boat Julie. Her restoration is precisely the sort of project with which the trust intends to preserve skills that were widespread when working boats were made of wood, but which have declined and are in danger of disappearing. Work opportunities for younger boatbuilders and restorers are more likely to involve smaller boats, because there are more of them.
Julie, clinker-built in mahogany, dates from the first years of the 20th century and worked seine nets on the Exe. Boats of her type carried four rowers and 200m or more of seine net. They generally went out on the ebb and fished until low water, setting the seine from the shore and making three or four hauls, each taking about an hour.
In the 1920s, there were over 20 licensed boats working the Exe salmon fishery. By 2012, there were just three – and two of those were fibreglass. Today there are none, because although the names ‘Exe’ and ‘Exeter’ are derived from a Celtic word meaning ‘a river full of fish’, these days it’s a misnomer – certainly in terms of salmon in the Exe, and for that matter in many other rivers.
In 2018, the Environment Agency introduced a number of measures aimed at reversing the national decline, including a general 10-year moratorium on river seining. However, no one expects that to be lifted, so the 2,000-year-old tradition of which Julie was part has almost certainly come to an end. It is therefore all the more important that as much of the physical heritage as possible is retained.
There are three organisations in loose collaboration on Julie, each with a stake in the retention and enhancement of traditional skills in the harbour generally, and in this particular boat’s restoration as a community venture.
One is the Exeter Canal and Quay Trust (ECQT) which, since the early 1980s, has redeveloped and managed the quayside area, and was the first of the three to become aware of the boat.
The ECQT approached Co Create, which happens to be Britannia Sailing Trust’s immediate neighbour on the Exeter quayside. Co Create runs well-being courses where participants work with experts and volunteers on projects for paying customers. These very much feature woodwork – and metalwork – and generate the known benefits of shared endeavour for physical and mental well-being. ECQT’s thought was that Co Create might be able to restore her.
But boat restoration calls for very specific skills, so Co Create spoke in turn to the trust where Sam, with more than 60 years’ boatbuilding and shipwrighting behind him, can oversee a proper job.
The trust’s volunteers work a three-day week, Tuesdays to Thursdays, and there are now two trainees, one of whom, Abi, was involved for some time at Winkleigh. When funding uncertainty back then meant that the project couldn’t support her to the same extent, she dropped down to one funded day a week, but still volunteered for the other two.
“Abi was involved with the work at Winkleigh when we were doing the framing and planking,” said Sam. “But we’ve done all that specialist stuff and we’re now just fitting out. It’s more or less just carpentry.
“On the other hand, Cherry, who was already a volunteer but is now a paid trainee, thanks to the National Heritage Lottery Fund, hasn’t done any technical work, so I’m going to use Julie as a teaching platform for doing small-boat work, the sort of thing she’s more likely to be involved with in the future.
“But then for now we’ve also got Benji, who is a qualified boatbuilder after a three-year apprenticeship at Tommi Nielson’s yard in Gloucester. He’s now a full-time student at Exeter Uni, but we’ve got him for the summer and he’s very competent.
“So far, we’ve just built the shed for Julie and scraped her back to see what damage is done and what she needs. Now we’ll get on with her.”
What will happen to Julie when she’s finished has yet to be decided, though putting her on display seems to be one option. There is another Exe salmon boat, Ruby, built at Topsham in 1907, held by the Topsham Museum (topshammuseum.org.uk) – although the museum is currently closed for structural repairs.
But the important thing is that Julie will be finished, as will Britannia, both courtesy of that National Lottery Heritage funding, and that the skills involved will continue to be passed down.
In the meantime, the public is very much welcome to visit the trust on Exeter quay to see those skills in action and chat to the team.
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