With her name plate barely visible forside of her wheelhouse, what was Stevenson's oldest and most historic sidewinder, Excellent presents a sorry sight as she falls into ever more disrepair against the quayside...
not so long ago she still looked presentable as she waited for a buyer...
twenty years ago she spent the last few years of her fishing career rigged for gill nets under the command of 'Mad' Joe Andrews...
a far cry from her foray into mackerel trawling back in the late 1970s when shoals of mackerel off Newlyn were so heavy that even a grossly underpowered boat like the Excellent with its ageing Kelvin engine could mid-water trawl for them...
these watercolour sketches were done to commemorate ...
her visit to the classic boat Festival in Brest in 1992...
under the command of the late Mervyn Mountjoy when she was immaculately painted up for the event...
here she is up on the slip in 1980 when still trawling...
Watch at 5m 12s in the Excellent is involved in cleaning up oil off Gwennap Head.
which was her main method of fishing from when she was brought to the port as the Efficient when she had been built as a drifter by Forbes in Scotland in 1931. She spent some of WW2 running clandestine operations to Norway - something tat still needs to be researched. Perhaps her other claim to fame was that Trevelyan Richards, cox of the ill-fated Penlee lifeboat was her skipper prior to the disaster.
Time is running out to save the boat from being broken up and yet another piece of Great Briatin's proud maritime heritage ends in the scrapyard.
