MATAWA

On a fine summer morning in 1947 I watched a sleek, white-hulled yacht come ghosting down the Blackwater [River] in the light breeze. She looked new, her Egyptian cotton mainsail and large genoa catching every zephyr of the faint north-easterly which had our chubby craft merely lolling indolently. Almost magically this vision of all that a sailing yacht should be slipped past, her crew intent on getting the best from her, and soon she showed us a shapely canoe stern. I remarked on her beauty and speed, to be told she was designed ‘by that Morgan Giles’. I remember her name in gold lettered on one of her lifebelts: MATAWA. I have never forgotten the sight of her that morning, and I realised later that I had witnessed the work of a master.”

This was the opening paragraph of the British maritime historian John Leather’s two-part article about the designer Morgan Giles, published in the British magazine Classic Boat in 2003. By chance, the author had happened to be on the River Blackwater in Essex soon after the 37' 4" MATAWA was launched at Cardnell Brothers boatyard in Maylandsea in 1947. But, while he clearly admired her lines and her speed, what he couldn’t have realized at the time was that he was looking at a piece of yachting history.

MATAWA was one of the first yachts—possibly even the first yacht—built of an innovative new material. Commissioned by W.E. Mason, a director of Flexo Plywood Industries Ltd., she was built almost entirely of plywood: planking, frames, knees, floors, cabin sides, coach roof, accommodation; even the tiller was made of the stuff. The intention was to demonstrate the suitability of the material for building boats, not just to the general boat-buying public but, more important, to the Admiralty and the Royal Air Force, which they hoped would be encouraged to place more orders for the product.