Fairey Swordsman 30

Peter Poland tests a crowd-pleasing jet boat with James Bond connections

- Peter K Poland

Willie Bewes, retired director of Transworld Yachts, had a successful career selling large numbers of Swedish Hallberg-Rassy cruising yachts to the British market. But despite this commercial success his boating passion, I suspect, lives elsewhere.

“Many years ago,” he told me, “I bought an old Fairey Marine Huntress powerboat and restored it at home. A bit later, I bought a Christina 25 – winner of the first Cowes to Torquay Power Boat Race – and then I rebuilt a Fairey Swordsman 42 (one of four built).” These are all classic offshore powerboats that hailed from a golden age back in the last century. No sign of any sailing boats here!

The early range of hot-moulded wooden Fairey powerboats started with a Raymond Hunt-designed 23ft launch. However, Fairey later decided that the Hunt design could be improved and called in Alan Burnard, who designed a new 23ft boat with a cabin.

Named the Huntress 23, this became the first of a new range of Burnarddesigned hot-moulded wooden Faireys, soon to be followed by the Huntsman 28. The Huntsman 31, Swordsman 33 and rarer Super Swordsman came later, followed by the GRP Faireys: the Spearfish 30 and its military derivation the Spear. The last GRP Fairey was the aft cabin Fantôme 32. In all, around 450 hot-moulded wooden Faireys were built, followed by around 150 GRP boats.

Stars of a Bond movie