Uffa Fox

Not afraid of courting controversy or causing offense, he is remembered for his eccentric behaviour and pithy quotes, as much as for his original boat designs.

[2] In July 1921, Fox and a crew of nine sea scouts departed for the western Solent in a 27-foot (8.2 m) open whaler under the parental expectation that they were on a camping/sailing trip.

[5] Philip said of Fox in a foreword to his biography, “His life was one long campaign for the freedom of the human spirit and against the foolish, the stupid and the self-important, the whole conducted with a cheerful breeziness that disarmed all but the hardest of cases.”[2] About 1943 he designed a 27-foot (8.2 m) lifeboat to be dropped from Vickers Warwick aircraft when rescuing downed aircrew or mariners; its deficiencies led to the more sturdy American A-1 lifeboat.

An example of this craft and of others built and/or designed by Fox are in the collections of the Classic Boat Museum at East Cowes, Isle of Wight.

[7][8] In addition to dinghies, he designed several keelboats all loosely based on the same concept as the Flying Fifteen, with separate fin keel and rudder.

[10][8] Uffa Fox designed the Britannia rowing boat, used by John Fairfax for the first solo-rowing expedition across the Atlantic Ocean in 1969.