BACK TO NEWSLETTER 2000 CONTENTS
After fifty-ish years we met again at his home. A mill, lucky man! Not only
that, he looked only marginall older than his schoolboy self, and to cap it all
had landed a 10 1/2 pound sea trout from his mill pool the week before. A basis
for contentment, you'll say, but more deserved than many of you will maybe know.
This man is truly famous in yachting circles. He has been seen, done and picked
up an M.B.E. to show that it was good.
The cover: Yachting Monthly July 2000. "The best cruiser ever" across the page. Inside, page 40: Jeremy Rogers the Contessa man". Four pages and plenty of pictures.
I'm flying on this man's coattails, but I was there when it all began at the Prep School in the Charlton Marshall days. When I was a boy there in the early forties, we had a boat on the river. Wood rots, so she rolled over and died. I had left Clayesmore in 1949; military service was a requirement; nobody went straight to university. I was 'unfit". Dick Everett offered me a job. Prep-schooling was a recognised way of biding one's time until university places came up. Lower school English, Biology.
French and handwork/carpentry/boat-building to replace Venturer 1. We built a great fat 'flattie' from rough ration timber. She would hold a dozen boys and behave herself. Mast, sails, centreboard followed and a mooring on Poole Harbour with Saturday trips. Ever quiet, ever thoughtful, "Jel" Rogers was filing this away Came his last term he would have a go on his own. A 6ft 6in pram was devised. Made from coffin boards because that was all we could get in '51. The hull went pretty well, then came the details: Quarter-knees. Jel had finished Common Entrance and was footloose. I came up to the carpentry shop in break, demonstrated the art of the bevel and went back to teach until lunch; darted back to find he had produced a pair of the finest. Thought that if this boy could make knees to Olympic standard the sky's the limit, and so it turned out. At Clayesmore he went on to produce a National 12 in double diagonal planking. This separates the men from the boys, believe me. Not only that, he completed a 505 and sailed the school team to all manner of victories.
After Clayesmore came a period of honing skills followed by setting up a boatbuilding operation at Lymington. After a period came the Contessas, 26 and 32 footers, designed by David Sadler. Suddenly these boats were making a name in cruising and racing like no others, and so too, was our hero at the helm. Result: Contessa 32 was boat of the year at the London Boat Show in '72.
By the late 70s and early 80s Jeremy's company included five purpose-built factories in Lymington and a workforce of nearly 200 employees. Production included Contessas ranging in size from the traditional 26 to the Doug Peterson designed grand prix 35s, 39s and 43s, many of which were exported to a worldwide market eager for his innovative and beautifully finished yachts.
Apart from boatbuilding Jeremy has made a significant contribution to the
ocean
racing world. In 1974 he skippered his Contessa 35, "Gumboots"
to take the then much coveted One Ton Cup trophy, but in so doing he and his
crew took time out of one of the offshore races to rescue a family from a
sinking life-raft - for this he was voted Yachtsman of the Year (and the racing
rules were changed to allow compensatory time to yachts standing by to assist
those in distress). In 1977 and 1979 he and his crew competed as members of the
British Admirals Cup Team, and in '77 not only did the team win, but Jeremy's
Contessa 43, Moonshine, was the top scoring boat! The notorious Fastnet
Race of 1979 rendered the Admirals Cup of that year understandably
insignificant, but Jeremy's Contessa 39, Eclipse, came in second overall
to Ted Turner's Tenacious, a yacht twice her size! The following year he
received his MBE from the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
Came the recession and the merest ripple, so the bank pulls the rug and quality British yacht building is dead in the water. The Contessa moulds were sold 'up the coast" and Rogers marked off another line from Kipling's 'If' and began again from his beginnings. During the wilderness years, he was regularly paid a compliment in the yachting classifieds: Contessas for sale were described as "by J.C.Rogers", if he had the building. He was that good. In 1995 he was able to buy back the Contessa 32 moulds and resume production on a bespoke basis. He builds anything to do with boats; the keel for the Whitbread yacht Kvaerner in passing. Full circle but not so full as to have the worries that stalk an enterprise. 'We rub along" says he as we lunched by his millstream and gave me that quirky J.C.R. grin. Me? I look old enough to be his father and all I did was go for a medical career! No question, he got it right. With a recent President of the Royal College of Surgeons on the academic front and this boatbuilder extraordinaire, Lex and his dreams are alive a hundred and four years later.
Having writ all this, we must remember the pre-Rogers days, when Adlard Coles, another O.C., held sway on the post-war yachting scene. No longer alive, he lives on in his books and the Adlard Coles Nautical Publishing Co. (Coles' 'Heavy weather sailing" is a Bible). So who is there at Clayesmore today ready to take up the Rogers 'Jel" coat (ouch!) and sail into the heavy weather? Well, if not a Clayesmorian, a Rogers anyway. Eldest son, Simon, had a skiing scholarship to Switzerland for his schooling but is back as a naval architect nearby. If this young man will oblige us with a successful hull for the America's Cup, we can all go home!
Henry Teed(42-48), October 2000.
Mention of Sydney Olympics and nephew, Nicholas, younger son of Jonathan Rogers? He just missed a bronze (by one point only) in the 420 dinghy class.
Jeremy Rogers links - http://www.jeremyrogers.co.uk/