Schooner Sir Winston Churchill

The windjammer awaits the start of the Tall Ships Race in Falmouth.

The three-masted schooner the Sir Winston Churchill was built to take part as the British entry in the Tall Ships Race from Falmouth to Denmark. The vessel was designed by Camper and Nicholson and laid down in 1964 in Hessle, Yorkshire and built by Haven Shipyard and Richard Dunston Ltd after a public funding appeal by the Sail Training Association. In April 2001 a farewell to Schooners party marked the selling off of this schooner and its 1968 sister yacht the Malcolm Miller.

The schooners offered sailing training to young adults aged between sixteen and twenty-one and helped them to develop life skills such as teamwork, leadership and citizen skills, with some trainees going on to naval or sailing careers. The former Prime Minister Winston Churchill had died the year before construction and the schooner was named in his honour. The rig was designed to incorporate all the main types of sail. From 2000 two new schooners the Prince William and the Stavros S Niarchos began offering sail training. The Winston Churchill was sold privately and became a luxury charter sailing yacht in Greece.