Whitehaven Maritime Festival
Whitehaven Harbour ~ 25th June 2005
This years Festival is timed to coincide with the International Year of the Sea and Nelson's death at the Battle of Trafalgar 200 years ago. The festival is the PREMIER EVENT in the North of England. Over 200,000 people from as far a-field as Norway, Canada, Finland and America were thrilled with the FREE festival in 2003
TALL SHIPS
Liverpool's flagship the Zebu and sail training ship, Jean de la Lune, Scotland's only working square-rigged tall ship, and the Kathleen & May will be thrilling the crowds at the Whitehaven Maritime Festival. Visitors to the festival can go aboard these ships and experience the conditions that sailors were expected to endure in the past. The Zebu came to Whitehaven to take part in the last festival, choosing it over Liverpool's own maritime event. Its success in the town convinced the crew to return to Whitehaven when it took part in a BBC film later in the year. Jean de la Lune, a 100ft French brigantine based on the west coast of Scotland, is coming for the festival on her farewell voyage before being sold. The owners were keen to take part in the festival after reading about it here on the internet.
The Kathleen & May was launched in 1900, costing around £2,700 at a time when shipwrights earned the equivalent of £1.25 a week and was among the last four vessels on trade routes in British and Irish waters Her home was the Port of Bideford in the West Country until her retirement in 1961. She was purchased by a private trust in October 1998 from Gloucester Docks and given a £1million restoration.