MISCHIEF yacht

[aukepalmhof]

Built by Thomas Baker at East Canal Wharf, Cardiff for Pilot William Morgan from Penarth.
21st March 1906 registered at Cardiff under the name MISCHIEF.
Built as a wooden cutter, with an elliptical stern with oak panels and beams.
Carvell built with oak and pine planking.
Tonnage 13.78 ton, dim. 45 x 13 x 7.6ft. (draught) Displacement about 55 tons.

She was used by William Morgan as a pilot cutter in the Bristol Channel till 1913 when the Cardiff pilotage authority decided to modernise the sailing pilot cutter service, and they bought three steam cutters.
The old wooden sailing cutters were bought by Cardiff Steam pilot company, and on 14 November 1914 Morgan sells MISCHIEF to the company.

05 August 1914 she was sold to Arthur William Garret a Barry pilot, but when later the Barry Pilotage authority also decide to change from sail to steam power, the MISCHIEF was sold to the Barry Steam boat company.

11 August 1919 she was sold to Percy John Henry Unna from London, who sailed her to Takoradi, Ghana.

11 August 1927 her register was closed in Cardiff.

Her history is then unclear until 1954; she did have 9 owners up to 1954 and was used as a sailing yacht.

She was then bought by Bill Tilman (1898 – 1977) a British war hero who had won a MC and bar in World War I and the DSO in World War II. He was a celebrated mountaineer, sailor and writer.
When he heard that she was for sale he bought the MISCHIEF at Palma, Mallorca.

Between 1955-56 he explored inlets along the Patagonian coast, he crossed the Patagonian ice cap before he sailed the MISCHIEF back to the U.K. via the Panama Canal thereby completing an entire circumnavigation of South America.

Between 1957 and 1958 circumnavigated Africa in the MISCHIEF.
Between 1959 and 1960 he sailed with the MISCHIEF to the Indian Ocean, visiting Crozet and Kerguelen Islands.
1961/62 Sailed with her in Northern waters around Iceland, and visited West Greenland, Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound.
1963 Went to Baffin Bay in MISCHIEF and crossed Bylot Island on foot.
1964 Sailed again on board the MISCHIEF to West Greenland, in 1965 made an other voyage to West Greenland on board the MISCHIEF.
1966/67 Tilman on board the MISCHIEF made a 20.000 mile voyage from the U.K. via South America and the Falklands to the Antarctic Peninsula, hoping to scale the unclimbed summits of Smith Islands in the South Shetland Islands.
After reaching Deception Island in a position 63 degree south on 26 December 1966, the furthest south that any yacht had then reached, he changed course north and headed for South Georgia.
It was the first visit by any yacht to the Antarctic and South Georgia.

In 1968 he sailed her again to the North.
In July 1968 she was lost after she hit a rock at Jan Mayen Island, and sank soon thereafter under tow. Tilman survived.

Major Tilman continued his Arctic and Antarctic voyages after he bought a new yacht the SEA BREESE.

He was lost at sea in 1977 when the old tug AN AVANT he was on with other mountaineers and heading for the Antarctic, they made a call at Rio de Janeiro from there she headed for the Falkland Islands, the AN AVANT disappeared without trace – it was presumed the ship had foundered with all hands.

Source Watercraft Philately Vol 42 page 57. Info received from Mr. Erhard Jung.

South Georgia & Sandwich Islands 1995 76p sg 260, scott203.

http://www.mischiefexpeditions.co.uk/in ... &Itemid=37 and various other web-sites.