Sheila 

An Invited Friend of the Harrison Butler Association 
Design by Albert Strange 

  
 

Sheila

Oldest Surviving Yacht To A Design Of Albert Strange 
Albert Strange is one of the great names in classic yacht design alongside Claud Worth, Harrison Butler and George Holmes. Strange was an enthusiast for the small boat sailor at the start of the twentieth century, when yachting was the pass-time of the wealthy. His early designs, of which Sheila is an example, were canoe yawls, often engineless, and with a pointed canoe-counter stern, as beautifully displayed in the above photograph. In many ways, Harrison Butler carried forward the philosophies of Albert Strange, particularly the desire to design boats 'for the common man'. The two corresponded publicly via the pages of Yachting Monthly on many issues.
Sheila has a remarkable history. She was so badly damaged in a storm in 1914 that her insurers wrote her off. She also surviving being bombed in a Scottish boat yard at the start of the second world war. More recently, for many years, she was the boat of the Burns family, based on England's East Coast. She's been extensively refurbished, and is currently having a new lease of life with an enthusiastic and sympathetic French couple. She was the first Albert Strange boat to be welcomed to the HBA website as an invited friend as part of a drive to strengthen ties between the AS and HB Associations.

Sheila in Classic Boat, November 2016
Sheila gets a mention in Classic Boat, November 2016

Sheila Statistics
Built : 1904 by Robert Cain, Pt St Mary, Isle of Man
LOA : 25' 0"
LWL : 19' 5"
Beam : 6' 7"
Draught : 3' 8"
Displacement : 4 tons TM
OGA Boat Number : 0877
Design : N° 70

Sheila Custodians & Home Ports 
Jean Paul & Veronique Deloffre (2016...) Golfe du Morbihan, France
Mike Burn (1978-2016) East Coast, England
JY Wilson MA BL (1958-1969-?) Glasgow, Scotland
JT Brown (?-1954-1957) Rhu, Schotland
Wm H Dinsmore (?-1947-1952-?) Fairlie, Scotland
James Y Wilson (?-1936-1939-?) Glasgow, Scotland
Arthur Beckett (?-1924-?) Kingstown
Captain Patrick T Walsh (1911-1914-?) Dublin, Ireland
Robert Groves (1905-?) Tarbert, Scotland

Sheila Links
Cruising the Shiant Islands in Sheila: 1910
Sheila on The Albert Strange Association website
Fran & Chris Burns, who grew up around Sheila
Sheila's history by Mike Burns (PDF)

Page last updated : October 2017

 
  

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