Island Life October/November 2018

Interview
“So my life was
two or more weeks
working 7 days,
10 hours a day in
London, and then
restoring MFV119
back here on the
Isle of Wight until I
ran out of money!”
Shortly after starting the MFV119 project
type motor fishing vessel.
Labour of love
The MFV119 was a WW2
boat, built for the Royal Navy for
wartime use, and Sam later found
out that it was the last survivor of
its type used at Omaha Beach in
the D-Day landings of 1944, by an
Sam Fulford
American Special Services crew,
and as such, is listed in the Historic
Fleet of the United Kingdom.
MFV119 turned into a huge,
15-year project, which involved
completely re-designing
and re-building the boat,
to the extent that the only
remaining original part is what
sits below the waterline.
“That’s often the case with
wooden boats” explains Sam. “The
salt water preserves the timbers
while the fresh rain decays, so
they rot from the top down”.
To fund the project, Sam’s
brother Toby supplied him with
work in London, converting and
refitting barges to turn them
into sea-going houseboats.
“So my life was two or more
weeks working 7 days, 10 hours a
day in London, and then restoring
MFV119 back here on the Isle of
Wight until I ran out of money!”
Sam and Toby had such a good
amount of work in London that
they began to look for riverside
work space, a place where they
could take barges and larger
boats to be repaired and fitted
out - but nowhere was available.
And that was when Sam
started to become aware of
the big squeeze on traditional
boatbuilding sites: “It seemed
that all the derelict riverside
yards had been bought up
by developers, or set aside by
Government agencies for building
development sites” he explains.
“The places near London that
were available, were totally
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