Submarines to Boat Covers
Boaters, the boating community, and even sailmakers are integral to the fabric (pun intended) that keeps the United States going. During WWII, a young sailmaker, Edward H. Fairclough, joined the United States Coast Guard (USCG) and, as a Bosun’s Mate 1st Class, was part of a team tasked with bringing together recreational boats to help defend the US shoreline against German U-boats. After the war, he returned to the marine trades and his company, Fairclough Sailmakers in New Haven, CT. This 80-year-old business is still thriving today under the leadership of his son Edward D. Fairclough and his grandson Wyatt. They still make sails but now specialize in custom boat covers.
Edward H. Fairclough
Edward H. Fairclough in the USCG
It all began when John Clayman, president of Expedition Yacht Experts, started telling me about having a new boat cover made up for his trailerable Edgewater powerboat. John has a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of boats and people in the marine industry, so his stories are usually noteworthy.
“You really ought to write about Fairclough Sailmakers. They are making me a winter boat cover,” said John, knowing that I am always looking for boating-related stories. “There is also some really incredible history there as the founder of the company was in the Hooligan Navy during World War II.”
I was intrigued. A story about a long-held family business making some great boat covers seemed fine, but the Hooligan Navy connection really sparked my interest.
The Hooligan Navy: America’s Unlikely Coastal Defenders in World War II
In the anxious spring of 1942, the United States faced a dire threat that only a few today remember. German U-boats, emboldened by their successes in the Atlantic, prowled ever closer to the American shoreline. Merchant ships burned within sight of East Coast beaches and tankers were sunk near Long Island and Cape Cod. The Navy, still building up after Pearl Harbor, simply did not have enough vessels to patrol America’s long and vulnerable coastline effectively. Into this breach stepped an unlikely flotilla: yachtsmen, fishermen, and weekend sailors who volunteered their time, their skill, and often their personal boats. This improvised fleet came to be known as the Hooligan Navy—a nickname that reflected both its scrappy, civilian origins and the professional Navy’s skepticism toward this ad hoc armada. After all, these were not warships; most were pleasure craft armed solely with a pair of binoculars, although others were hastily outfitted with a machine gun or a depth charge rack bolted to the stern. The movement wasn’t limited to the northeast. In the Florida Keys, Ernest Hemingway famously joined the cause aboard his 38’ Wheeler fishing vessel Pilar. He was said to have patrolled southeast waters with grenades and a Thompson submachine gun aboard as part of the civilian war effort.
The Fairclough Connection
The founder of Fairclough Sailmakers Edward H. Fairclough, as part of his USCG unit based in Greenport, NY, helped requisition boats for use in the Hooligan Navy, which was officially named the Coastal Picket Patrol.
Referring to his father and the crews he worked with Edward D., explains, “They did the submarine search basically off of the eastern seaboard, like Block Island, Nantucket area, to secure Long Island Sound from the approach of submarines that might want to try to get into the New York City area.”
Edward H’s unit organized small vessels into patrol groups that could sweep coastal waters for U-boats, report suspicious activity, and escort merchantmen through nearshore zones. While many of the crews were from the USCG, some consisted of volunteers, many of them yachtsmen accustomed to summer sailing regattas or offshore fishing, who now found themselves squinting at the horizon searching for periscopes. The pictures of some of these requisitioned civilian vessels that line the walls at Fairclough Sailmakers were what tipped John to Fairclough’s Hooligan Navy connection.
“They requisitioned the boats from the civilians, put the CG numbers on them, and sailed them,” explains Edward D. Fairclough, now president of Fairclough Sailmakers. “There were military crews operating sailboats. Big ones. They had like a 100-foot schooner that they worked on. I actually helped make sails for it way back when I first started. One was called Sea Gypsy. Pretty famous, carried sonar, and actually had depth charges.”
This was the first time since the middle of the nineteenth century that the US military was fighting or at least patrolling under sail. Ed D. reflected on this era, “My dad said they called themselves Rag Hangers because of all the sailboats involved in the Long Island operation. The bigger boats had Lewis guns mounted in the rigging. But most of the smaller boats were there to call in airstrikes, find the U-boats. Well, they’re under sail. The U-boat can’t hear them, but they can hear the U-boat, so they call the airstrikes in.”
According to the Cruising Club of America (CCA), many members and their boats were included in Hooligan Navy operations in New England. According to CCA historical newsletters noted participants included Chester Boles and his 71 foot schooner Nordlys (Bowles was appointed wartime OPA [Office of Price Administration] administrator in 1943 by President Roosevelt), Dr. Seth Miliken aboard his 100 foot yawl Thistle, Phil Mallory’s ketch Mystic, Steve Baker’s 60 foot fishing schooner Sunbeam, Paul Nicholson’s schooner Bellatrix, and many others including Sea Gypsy that Fairclough went out on.
Watching the Water
The Hooligan Navy became part of the rhythm of coastal life. Homeowners along the shoreline grew used to the sight of little gray yachts pacing offshore, their civilian crews scanning the water with binoculars. The patrol covered sectors in New England and Long Island Sound, where shipping lanes funneled merchant vessels and tankers into and out of New York and Boston, prime U-boat targets. While these pleasure craft were no match against a submarine, their presence made it more difficult for the Germans to operate unnoticed. In effect, the picket patrols became coastal tripwires, creating additional risk and uncertainty for submariners.
The flotillas also rescued survivors. In June 1942, a picket boat off Long Island hauled a dozen traumatized, oil-soaked tanker crewmen from the sea after their ship, the British oil tanker S.S. Coimbra had been torpedoed and sunk. They never thought they’d see land again, recalled one rescuer.
By late 1943, the tide of the battle of the Atlantic had turned. Radar, sonar, air patrols, and better convoy systems were substantially suppressing the U-boat menace. Merchant sinkings off New England dwindled and the Coastal Picket Patrol lost its urgency. Boats were reassigned or quietly returned to their peacetime owners. The Hooligan Navy faded with little ceremony, its contribution sometimes overlooked in the grand scheme of the war.
The Sinking of U-853 — The Last Battle of the Atlantic (May 5–6, 1945)
In the spring of 1945, as Nazi Germany collapsed, U-853, a German U-boat, was still prowling the area that Fairclough’s USCG squadron and the Hooligan Navy had patrolled.
On May 5, under orders to fight to the end, U-853 torpedoed and sank the SS Black Point, a 368-foot American coal carrier enroute from Newport News, Virginia, to Boston. The attack ironically occurred at 1740 hours, after Germany’s unconditional surrender had been announced in Europe. Twelve of the Black Point’s 46 crew were killed, the last American merchant sailors to die by enemy action in the Atlantic during WWII.
Within minutes of the attack, the Navy and Coast Guard swung into action. The USS Ericsson (DD-440), USS Atherton (DE-169), USS Amick (DE-168), and several blimps from Lakehurst Naval Air Station raced to the scene. Using sonar, they picked up the U-boat’s contact and began a furious depth charge assault that lasted through the night.
At dawn on May 6, a massive oil slick and debris, including human remains and equipment, were seen floating on the surface. U-853 was destroyed in 140 feet of water, a few miles south of Block Island. The wreck of this U-boat remains today and is a popular, albeit eerie, dive site, as some of the German crew’s remains are still trapped inside. The sinking of U-853 is sometimes called “the last shot fired in the Battle of the Atlantic,” as it punctuated the end of WWII in this arena.
Fairclough Sailmakers today
After the war, Edward H. returned to what he knew best, making sails, including some for those same boats and owners that had worked with him as part of the Hooligan Navy. The business grew as did his family. Today, his son and grandson continue the family legacy and dedication to serving mariners at Fairclough Sailmakers. Fairclough still makes sails but now specializes in custom and semi-custom boat covers, as well as dodgers, biminis, sail covers, and other canvas work.
“I started out with my dad as a sail maker back in the 70s,” says Edward D. Fairclough, “We were sailmakers primarily then, and these winter storage covers were just a way to keep busy in the offseason, but over the years they ended up being our main business.”
The Storage Covers
Instead of using disposable shrink wrap, Fairclough builds their covers to fit the boat. Their winter boat cover system consists of a sturdy frame structure and a durable canvas cover both specially designed for winter protection. The frame uses EMT galvanized tubing to hold the covers up and help them shed snow and rain.
“We have a special bending machine that you program to bend the tubing to a specific degree set, and it’s done,” says Fairclough.
The cover itself is made from marine-grade Sunforger® canvas, which is 100% soft, breathable cotton designed to handle exposure to ice, snow, sea spray, salt, and pollution. This fabric has a high thread count of 54 x 42 in a two-by-two weave including double threads in each pass for strength. Pre-shrinking and special dyeing make it water-repellent and mold resistant. The covers have vents and the material also breathes, which prevents trapped moisture beneath the cover that can lead to mildew and other water and condensation-related damage. Zippered doorways provide access without needing to remove the entire cover.
Fairclough notes, “Typically, we get 20 years on these covers, which is pretty good. It’s a higher upfront cost, but it’s better for the boat, better for the environment. And if you do your own service (installation), you’re saving a lot of money. So, there are a lot of good things about using cotton material on a boat rather than covering it with shrink wrap.”
Because plastic shrink wrap is thrown away at the end of each season, it creates waste. Shrink wrap is also typically torched down to tighten it around the boat, which Fairclough notes can cause heat damage to the vessel. In some instances, it has even caused boat yard fires, which would never have happened with their product.
Fairclough has made a lot of covers, Ed D. explains, “We got to have 5,000 plans, over all these years, for different boats that we’ve done.”
Covers for many production boats from popular builders like Alerion Express, Sabre, Catalina, and C&C, to name a few, are off-the-shelf purchases since the boats are pretty consistent. If Fairclough doesn’t have an existing plan for your boat, they can still make a cover. For customers within a reasonable distance of their loft in New Haven, CT, or those who can bring their boat there, like John did, they will measure the boat and then build both the frame and cover. If customers are further away, Fairclough can help them measure their boat themselves. For more complicated covers, they create a PowerPoint from deck plans and the customer’s photos that provides color coded A, B, C, D segments to measure.
“We make it relatively easy for the customers to get detailed measurements if they’re at all handy,” says Fairclough. For those uncomfortable with this process, many boatyards can take the measurements needed for Fairclough to create a custom cover.
To protect his Edgewater during New England’s harsh winters, Clayman had a cover made to fit his boat. He chose Fairclough because of their reputation for quality, that comes in part from over eighty years of family ownership. The old pictures on the walls depicting the Hooligan Navy and Fairclough’s connection to one of the strangest naval operations in US history reinforced that he was working with the right people.
Freedom and Free Enterprise, the American Way
Edward H. Fairclough’s service in the USCG during the war and his involvement in the Hooligan Navy, now showcased on the walls of Fairclough Sailmakers, is a testament to the grit, determination, and enterprising spirit of Americans like him. The story of boaters willing to guard America’s waters using every means available, including their own sailboats, is compelling. In the uneasy days during the war, when the flames of burning tankers lit the horizon off Long Island, the sight of those little gray yachts meant something. They meant the coast was not abandoned. They meant someone was watching. They meant that Americans would do whatever it takes to preserve their freedom and way of life.
View of Tamaris June 1943
Navigating by sextant Aug 1942
Tamaris June 1943
Sea Gypsy under sail Oct 1942
