William Fife

Model is hand-crafted from hard wood with planks on frame construction. Here is the history of the real boat:

William Fife: Master of the Classic Yacht

William Fife (1857-1944), also known as Wm. Fife, Jr., was the third generation of a family of Scottish yacht designers and builders.

Fife was born in the small village of Fairlie on the Firth of Clyde. His father and grandfather (both also named William and often referred to as Fife I and Fife II) had also been designers and boatbuilders in Fairlie. The family business operated from a yard on the beach in the village. Fife began building yachts in 1890 and soon surpassed the achievements of his father and grandfather and became known as one of the premier yacht designers of the day.

As the third generation of a venerable Scottish boat building family, William Fife inherited a rich legacy but was quick to establish his own reputation as one of the top designers in the yachting world. Often dominating his chief competitors, Fife was a master of his trade who received commissions from European royalty and from clients as far away as Australia. Following on the heels of the success of his design Dragon (1888?), Fife adopted a stylized Chinese dragon as his trademark. Thereafter, those yachts that took shape on the shingle at Fairlie were known throughout the yachting world by this distinctive scrollwork.

Launching Shamrock III in 1903 at Dunbarton, ScotlandFife designed two America's Cup yachts for grocery and tea magnate Sir Thomas Lipton who challenged for the cup a total of five times. The Fife designed Shamrock I lost to Columbia in 1899 and Shamrock III lost to Reliance in 1903. After the establishment of the first International Rule in 1906, Fife became a prolific designer of meter boats, designing and building several very successful 15- and 19-meter yachts in the years leading up to the Great War.

�ric Tabarly, the famous French sailor, two time winner of the OSTAR and owner of the Fife design Pen Duick (ex Yum, 1898), writing on the designs produced by Fife during the first few decades of the century noted that: "the great designers of the period were Herreshoff, Watson, Nicholson and William Fife. Amongst these, Fife has acquired a particular reputation thanks to the sheer artistry and balance of his designs. Furthermore, those of his designs which took shape in his yard were of unmatched construction."

While Fife established a leading reputation on the yacht racing circuit, his work also included a number of fine cruising vessels. Dr. William Collier of Fairlie Restorations in Hamble, UK, writing on Fife's work in the 1920s, noted that during this period, [Fife] designed and built not only smaller Metre boats but also a series of fine cruisers. This combination typified the inter-war era of the Fairlie yard. Like the schooner Altair, many of the cruisers echo his turn of the century designs such as Cicerly or Suzanne; similarly there were few fundamental differences in his ketch designs spanning this era. Perceived by some as anachronistic, these yachts were considered by many to represent some of the greatest refinements of the auxiliary cruising yacht ever achieved. Id.