Office Walls that tell Berthon’s Story

Photography © Berthon Boat Company

The walls of our offices in our Lymington HQ, as well as our 8th floor sales office in Palma de Mallorca are adorned with marine art, all of which are part of Berthon’s story, and which have been bought or given to Berthon down the years. Brian May, who is the Berthon archivist, knows these paintings best and he has developed and researched this great Berthon resource and we share some of this fascinating history with you.

The Lymington One Design was created and designed by Brian’s great grandfather Harry May at Berthon in 1923 to commemorate the formation of the new Royal Lymington Yacht Club and its commodore Major Cyril Potter. An order of five were launched in 1924. These were named SAPPHIRE (The Hon. FC Brownlow), DINAH (George S Burge), ARROW (Mrs Cyril H Potter), FENELLA (Miss Sheila Potter and G S Burge) and POPPET (Claud Pearce-Serocold). Other orders included five for the Argentine Yacht Club in Buenos Aires.

The painter Montague Dawson (1890 – 1973) was a personal friend of Harry’s – he lived locally on the cliffs at Milford on Sea. Many of his paintings featured seascapes looking out to sea, with the Isle of Wight and the Needles lighthouse in the background.

By 1926 twenty boats had been built and from 1927 they were registered as the West Solent Restricted Class, being sold for £600 each with different layouts on identical hulls and 567sqft of sail area. They cost substantially less than a bespoke six-metre at £1,500! The whole fleet of 39 were eventually named the West Solent One Design (WSOD). That year Lt Cdr Percy Dean VC RNVR, named his CYRILLA. The London Gazette recorded his VC citation:

“For most conspicuous gallantry. April 22/23, 1918. Lieutenant Dean handled his boat in a most magnificent and heroic manner when embarking the officers and men from the blockships at Zeebrugge. He followed the blockships in and closed INTREPID and IPHIGENIA under a constant and deadly fire from machine and heavy guns at point blank range, embarking over 100 officers and men. This completed, he was proceeding out of the canal, when he heard that an officer was in the water. He returned, rescued him, and then proceeded, handling his boat throughout as calmly as if engaged in a practice manoeuvre. Three men were shot down at his side whilst he conned his ship. On clearing the entrance to the canal, the steering gear broke down. He manoeuvred his boat by the engines, and avoided complete destruction by steering so close in under the mole that the guns in the batteries could not depress sufficiently to fire on the boat. The whole of this operation was carried out under a constant machinegun fire at a few yards range. It was solely due to this officer’s courage and daring that M.L.282 succeeded in saving so many valuable lives.”

Many of the class are still racing competitively, or being restored in UK, EU and Argentina.

The two paintings above are by husband-and-wife painters (top) Herbert Neville (1874 – 1936) and (bottom) Marjorie Gardner; they were married in Lymington in 1924 and had two sons. These delightful studies of the Berthon shipyard in the 1920s were painted by them whilst sitting side-by-side on the Lymington Town Quay.

This Berthon Boat Company headed paper was printed in the 1960s. The telephone number had recently been lengthened: to begin with the Berthon number was Lymington 3; with 1 and 2 the police and fire brigade respectively! David May and yacht designer A K (Sandy) Balfour were the directors of Berthon. David was father to the current May family directors Dominic and Brian May and built Berthon Lymington Marina, one of the first marinas in the UK, which opened in 1967. Sandy Balfour was originally from Glasgow and was apprenticed to Harland and Wolff. He later joined Alexander Robertson and Sons and worked with David Boyd, the designer of the 12 metre SCEPTRE, which was later based at Berthon for many years. He returned to Harland and Wolff as Yard Manager and in 1947 joined Berthon where he designed the 20 ton NORTHELE, built at Berthon for the International 10-Metre class. Whilst at Berthon, Sandy employed David Boyd’s son Alan who moved down from Scotland and who subsequently became the Berthon yard manager. A post that he held for 20 years.

Laurent Giles designed SHELMALIER. Built by Berthon in 1964, she was the largest sailing yacht to be constructed on the Solent that year. Berthon legend has it that on her launch, which took place straight after a very good lunch at the Shipyard House, David May, who was then running Berthon, her owners and guests ignored warnings from the yard manager that the tide would not wait for SHELMALIER, and so when they finally congregated for her launch from the slipway, sure enough there wasn’t water enough for her and she had to be pulled off the mud by a couple of local fishing boats! Nonetheless she was a lucky yacht that has provided enormous pleasure to a series of owners both in the UK and in the Mediterranean.

In the 1960s, Berthon built a chandlery shop on Bath Road where yacht equipment of all descriptions could be purchased by yachtsmen who laid up at Berthon, moored in its mud berths and later in Berthon Lymington Marina. The chandlery is now part of the offices and showrooms for BHG Marine, a subsidiary of Berthon which sells Yamaha outboards, Jeanneau powerboats and a selection of other dinghies. Berthon also had a garage on-site in the old Lymington Power Station, selling Vauxhall cars and Esso petrol. Today, the garage has been built over and is now part of the site of our big blue sheds, a 21st century facility for working in composite, as well as other methods of construction, refit and repair.

RNLI 12-001 by Dame Tracey Emin DBE RA, is a lithograph printed in blue created in 2013, in chine colle on wove, which is signed and dated. A Berthon client encouraged Tracey to produce 250 signed and dated prints of the Mersey class lifeboat which were sold to raise funds for the RNLI. Berthon has a long history of maintaining and refitting RNLI and other lifeboats and built 3 Arun class (52’), 21 Severn Class (57’) and 12 Shannon class (48’) between 1986-2015 before the Berthon production process was transferred to the RNLI’s new £30m factory in Poole. Most Berthon lifeboats are all still stationed around the UK’s roughest seas, saving lives.

‘Storm Warriors’ by Thomas Rose Miles (1869 – 1888) dominates the UK sales office. The artist mainly painted landscape and marine scenes of the North East of England, often featuring a human element. He exhibited with the Royal Academy, the Society of British Artists, the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Hibernian Society and Arthur Tooth and Sons Gallery in London. This compelling picture shows the lifeboat and her crew negotiating enormous seas to rescue the crew of a stricken ship, reminding us all of the bravery of lifeboat crews, and acting as a reminder that the sea deserves our total respect. Berthon lent the image to the RNLI for its Christmas card in 1987 when Berthon was building Arun class lifeboats.

This print of the famous painting Horn Abeam was commissioned by Frost and Reed to commemorate Sir Francis Chichester’s round the world voyage, accomplished at the age of 65. It was given to us by a lovely Berthon client when he moved to a smaller house. GYPSY MOTH IV is the stuff of which myth is made; she was sold by Berthon a few years ago. She has just completed a refit dubbed – Return to 1967 sailing state – in Ijmuiden, Holland. Artisans from Holland, Spain, South Africa and the UK repainted her interior, repaired equipment and removed her ‘Greenwich Museum’ floorcoverings to return her to her original 1967 sailing state. She took part in the 2025 RTYC 250th anniversary Pageant on the River Thames, before heading to the Solent for the rest of the summer. It’s great to see her with a new life.

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