Maurice Wilmot’s wife, the story goes, was getting desperate. Her husband’s classic boat collection, each craft painstakingly restored and maintained by him, was taking up half the garden. And knowing Maurice, the likelihood of yet more old boats in need of a willing saviour appearing on the lawn was high. The collection needed a proper home.
And so it was, in 1996, that Maurice moved his beloved fleet, with the help of the local council, to Newport on the Isle of Wight. The Classic Boat Centre Trust was born.
Twenty-two years later in the Medina Yard in Cowes you can see the 1887 Bembridge lifeboat, the first International 14, a 1912 folding lifeboat designed for the Titanic, a one-time world speed record-holding hydroplane, the celebrated transatlantic 18-footer Sopranino, and too…
