Brixham, Our Daddy, the last Looe lugger; Picture by Tricia Gurnett.
A couple of days back, when I was posting on the subject of Mevagissey Toshers, friend of Cambria and writer of “The Barge Blog”, Tricia Gurnett posted a comment that she’d seen the last ever Looe Lugger whilst down in the SW and would email me some good photo’s. Here it is, the unusually named “Our Daddy”. Thanks for that, Tricia.
This old vessel has its own space on the Mounts Bay Lugger Association website, http://www.mbla.co.uk/our-daddy.htm where Our Daddy gets the following write up. “FY 7: 45′ built in Looe 1921 by Dick Pearce for the J E Pengelly family for £435 and skippered by his son Alfred John. She fished for some 65 years in the pilchard, mackerel and later shark fishing industries.
She was the last sailing lugger to work out of Looe and is owned by Mike Darlington and Stuart Murray. She has been re-built as a yacht with Dandy rig and is used for charter.
Mike, who fished on the boat with the legendary Alfred John Pengelly said: `A J told me: “One day, she will be yours.” But he forget to say it would take 21 years…’ ”
The Barge Blog is in itself always worth a read and is regularly updated by Tricia. It’s on http://sailingbarges.wordpress.com/ which I will now nip off and add to my useful links tab. Good hunting.