JACK CK91

Built by Charles Kidby of Brightlingsea for William Gasson in 1920. JACK is one of the surviving sailing winklebrigs built to sail to the places where winkles had been collected by hand at low tide and bagged up. The sacks would be tied up and anchored. At high tide, they would sail JACK to them and put them onboard and take back to the Hard at Mersea or Tollesbury ready for selling on.

There is a wonderful connection to her present owner Mark Farthing, who shared his family connection to this little working boat.

JACK was named after William Gasson’s grandson, John William Saye known as Jack, whose mother was Ruby Gasson. She had married Bertie Saye.

Jack’s father, Bertie Saye had a sister Ada who was Mark’s Great grandmother. If that was not enough of a connection. Years later, Mark’s mum’s father Pinky Hewes Snr brought JACK from J. Mussett. JACK passed onto Pinky Hewes Jr, Mark’s uncle, who in turn sold JACK to Mark in 2014. So with family connections threading right through Mark’s family we can only think that JACK is in very safe hands.

To be continued…