Saxonia LO32 

She was built in 1930 by Auldous Successors Ltd in Brightlingsea, built for William young and son Ltd in 1930. To augment their fleet of existing Bawleys based in Leigh on sea, working along side the likes of The Enterprise LO58. She was picked up by William young, one of his skippers, taken her straight to Leigh On Sea  and put to work, after having an engine fitted being probably the last Bawley to built with an engine. So she straddles that world of the pure wooden sailing boats and the modern motorised smacks. She was built of pitch pine with an engine and a full sailing rig.

She was fished out of Leigh On Sea for whitebait. And she was also the last of the stowboaters. She worked for young's under various skippers named Surs, principally a skipper called Ken Boundy, who had her for 10-15 years, as a payed employee of Young's until 1964, when she was sold to the Colchester Oyster Fishery Company. She was fitted out with a slightly more comfortable cabin, for cabin and also with lockers and a bunk, aft, for a skipper, to enable William Young  and his wife to take themselves and their daughter for a weeks holiday every August.

The Company (Youngs) is worth some 350M, a year as a multi national fishing conglomerate, its now based in Grimsby, not Leigh On Sea, it moved to Grimsby in 1960s.

 

 However the Saxonia worked, was sold away from youngs in 1946, when stowboating had become obsolete with introduction of a new method of fishing known as pair trawling, where you need powerful motor fishing boats, with the nets strung between them, however Saxonia carried on working for the Colchester Fishery as an oyster dredger and she dredged in the pyfleet, no more than a mile from where she was built some 30 years earlier and worked as a oyster dredge through till about 1978/79 when she was converted back to her original sailing rig and used as a private yacht. Crispin Chartered her and so did Jimi Lawrence, had Chartered her, which was about 15 years, but not on a  commercial level, he did mabey half a dozen Charters a year, to promote his business and to promote the ship and to keep her working, so he could say she has never been taken out of the trade. Crispin built the business up quite considerably, and made a full time living , taking Charter parties out on Saxonia. Crispin did 40 trips in the period of early April to start of mid October which is an average about 2-3 charter trips a week. He tried to vary what he did every time he took parties out, for him was just to go for a sail. He also did traditional oyster dredging, taking part in the 2013 oyster dredging match in Saxonia, he had a set of oyster dredges for her also trawling with a beam trawl, also having some  herring nets that he sometimes used.