Excelsior

'Excelsior' is one of the last surviving Lowestoft fishing smacks. She was built in 1921 by John Chambers & Co of Lowestoft to trawl the southern North Sea. She is rigged as a gaff ketch and is the only Lowestoft smack still operated with her authentic rig and equipment.

She trawled from cod and plaice in the 1920s out of the busy English fishing port of Lowestoft. During the Depression of the 1930s she was sold to Norway. The Norwegians converted her to a motor coaster, removing her topmast and bowsprit and installing a wheelhouse on deck. She was used to transport general cargo around the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish coasts.

During the War she narrowly escaped being sunk when evacuating the townsfolk of Bodo, which was on fire. A bomb just missed her leaving her needing to be beached for re-caulking.
In 1954 she was renamed 'Svinør', after the beautiful island where she was owned. But by the 1970s the construction of new roads linking the Scandinavian coastal communities meant that the old coasters were no longer needed and Svinør's owners planned to retire.

John Wylson, when he was an architectural student, and wishing to break up the seven years of deskbound training, was looking for a former commercial sailing vessel to re-rig back to sail. Having worked up to relief skipper in the Home Trade he was helping a fellow student bring a fishing vessel back from Norway when he heard that the owners of a motor coaster called 'Svinør' were retiring. He returned to Norway the following summer to see her and bought her, sailing her back to Lowestoft just over 50 years after she had been built there as 'Excelsior' LT472 in 1921!

She is now predominately a sail training vessel working with young people and has a sailing programme that takes her all over the North Sea and beyond.