Briggs Bowl

This new arrival on the ESC trophy shelf celebrates five generations of Briggs family sailing and racing at Emsworth, from about 1963 until the present day. It is given as a sincere thank you to the club for all the support it has given, over many years, to Briggs family sailors.

The trophy is a silver rose bowl which was originally presented to Group Captain Edward Briggs in the 1920s for winning a golf match. He joined the Royal Navy as an engineer officer before the First World War, volunteered for the fledgling Royal Naval Air Service and commanded the first ever naval bombing raid, on the Zeppelin sheds at Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, in 1914. He was shot down and later escaped from a German prison train into neutral Holland in 1918, winning the DSO and the Legion d'Honneur. He then became one of the very first members of the RAF, when the RNAS and the RFC merged.

Edward was a keen sailor, cruising his 12 ton Hilliard White Goose, with his wife Violet, his son James and eventually his grandson Michael, and sailing the 12 ft clinker dinghies at Seaview on the Isle of Wight. He owned the very first one, called Tarka, built in about 1931 by Harry Feltham in Portsmouth. Now there are over 200 of them.

Edward never sailed at Emsworth, but Violet did, into her late 80s in Tarka, when she lived in Warblington Road. Their son James met his first wife Barbara at Seaview, and they moved to Nile Street in Emsworth in 1963 with their two children Michael and Sarah, later joined by Charlotte. Tarka came with them. James and his family sailed a whole variety of boats at or from Emsworth, including Tarka, in which Michael and Sarah learned to sail and race, a Leader, (winning the early national championships at Warsash), a Kestrel and three catamarans, Laa Mao Mao (a 27ft James Wharram Polynesian design), Bluefin, the revolutionary 31 footer designed by Tom Dowling, and Cavalier, a Prout 37ft Snowgoose, cruising the channel, Brittany, Ireland and the Western Isles of Scotland, and racing in the offshore Crystal Trophy multihull race.

Michael and Sarah moved from Tarka to a Gull, then Michael to a Firefly (in which he won the Public Schools Firefly Championship at Itchenor in 1972). Later Michael taught his children Nick, Jamie, Richard and Jessica to sail at Emsworth in a Wayfarer, from which they graduated into Optimists, Mirrors, Toppers, 420s and even an RS 800. Meanwhile Michael and his wife Beverly have branched out into classic boats, first the gaff-rigged 1905 Falmouth working boat Little Apple, then the 1904 Fife racing cutter Mikado (which won the Emsworth Yoke, several Cowes Weeks and trophies in Scotland and the Mediterranean). In 2019 they bought and restored the 1935 Silver motor yacht Kingfisher to be Mikado's mother ship, and a more comfortable cruising home for their old age. Their cruising in her has included the The Isles of Scilly, the Norfolk Broads, the Western Isles and the canals of France and Holland, all from a base in Northney marina.

Sarah now sails mainly from Itchenor, racing in Swallows and Sunbeams and cruising all round the UK, Brittany and Ireland.

Charlotte learned her sailing initially in an Optimist and later in yachts and now sails a Wayfarer from Emsworth with her husband Shaun and her daughter Olivia, who also sails and races an Optimist. They have also bought back Bluefin into the family and are in the process of restoring her.

Meanwhile Sarah's children Paul, Robert and Lavinia have all sailed at Emsworth from time to time, and Paul's twin daughters Isabella and Rebecca have been occasional Optimist sailors at Emsworth. They are the fifth generation!

There is nothing unique about this little history. Emsworth Sailing Club has a well-deserved reputation for encouraging family and youth sailing, which we hope will continue for many years. We are just one of many families that owe the club a real debt of gratitude.

Rt Hon Lord Briggs of Westbourne.

Charlotte Markham.