Comment by James Wentworth Day. Winifred Hone - Sailing and Social Club, West Mersea. From East Anglian Magazine, February 1971 page 147

... notabilities who praised her food and adored her wit. There were dozens of others.

The unpretentious, wooden-fronted, converted boat-house which, dwarfed by the ship-building shed of Clark and Carter's yard on the West Mersea foreshore, peers almost shyly across the shining tides and islands of purple saltings to the bird-musical wilderness of Old Hall Marshes which I rented for enchanted years, was her home. There dwells the Social and Sailing Club which she founded. It more than justifies both descriptions. At one time half the Savage Club, writers, editors, cartoonists, wits, poets and dramatists used to descend at weekends. They mingled with oystermen, winklers, wildfowlers, yacht hands and officers and men of the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy, the Colchester Garrison, White's Club and an occasional Carlton Club politician. When the Club burgee was flying Her Majesty was at home.

I once addressed a letter to: 'Her Majesty Winifred, Queen Mother of Mersea Island, Essex'. It got there. No postal code nonsense was needed.

The Commodore of this remarkable, exclusively classless club was that other great Essex character, the late 'Admiral' Bill Wyatt, smacksman-extra-ordinary, boatbuilder, poacher and champion beer-drinker. He fitted the picture perfectly.

Sitting at the bar under the stuffed heron and the flying fish, he wagged his torpedo beard at me and declared solemnly: 'Beer! I've drunk a masterful lot. Had a gennleman down here t'other day with an arithmetitical mind. "Wyatt," he say, "how many gallons of beer do you drink a week?" I towd him. He totted that lot up, multiplied it by my age and sez right prompt: "You drunk tharty-six thousand gallons o' beer in your life." '

'Blast boy,' I sez. 'I count that'd float a tidy-sized smack.'

Continued in EAM_1971_002_014
Date: February 1971