Originally she was somewhat shorter, but like many contemporaries she was lengthened and altered slightly in breath to suit changing fishery conditions some years after her launch.
To understand the background of Pioneer CK18 and her contemporaries, we must go back to the Essex fisheries in the mid-19th century; a time of great activity and development, when every day existence at the small towns and villages on the Colne and Blackwater rivers, with their common estuary in North East Essex, depended on fishing, professional yachting, shipbuilding and other Maritime activities. There were then about 250 smacks under sail, working from the Colne alone, manned by about 1000 hands.
The Pioneer continued to sail from Brightlingsea and by 1919, Joseph Eagle, one of an old local fishing family was the managing owner. The trade slumps of the early 1920s bought further change of ownership and eventually she was laid up and became a houseboat at East Mersea, later being towed round to West Mersea on the nearby river Blackwater, where she was moored on the mud. It was not until 1998 that she was rescued from the mud and brought back to sailing condition by Pioneer Sailing Trust.
Restoration
In the dying days of 1998, in a bitter December wind, the Pioneer was raised from the mud and floated to Wyatt’s Hard, West Mersea, from there transported temporarily by low loader to Goldhanger . There she was carefully cleaned, blocked up, shored and plumbed. A three dimensional digital survey by laser assured the accuracy of her recorded lines. Finally laid up in a barn at Great Totham her restoration began.
In 2003, she emerged, restored, drawn across the waterlogged fields by five tractors, on her low loader artic, to the hard Colchester road. Manoeuvred overnight by the narrowest of margins past Colchester Castle she eventually arrived at Brightlingsea. On May the 17th 2003, she was re-launched bearing her original Colchester registration CK18. She was, and is, the very pride of Essex and our county’s great Maritime tradition.
Photographs taken by Mervyn Maggs, cataloguing the restoration of Pioneer.
James Dodds was born in the east coast fishing town of Brightlingsea, and trained as a shipwright in Maldon. He then studied painting at Chelsea and the Royal College of Art, London. He has also conceived, illustrated and hand-produced a series of artists books. More information on the artist can be found here
The Pioneer Sailing Trust was set up in 1999 to restore back to sailing condition the last remaining first class Essex Skillinger smack Pioneer. She was another example of Britain's Maritime Heritage left to perish.
Pioneer Sailing Trust,
Harker's Yard,
Shipyard Estate,
Brightlingsea,
CO7 0AR
© Pioneer Sailing Trust 2026. Registered charity with the Charity Commission for England & Wales. Charity No. 1077522.
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