The owners's story:

I found her advertised by Wooley& Wallis, the Salisbury auctioneers, on the Antiques Gazette website. I inspected her whilst on view and she appeared to me a nice model, about five foot long although I have not actually measured her. Schooner models of this style don't seem to abound and as I did not have anything similar I decided to bid for her, happily being successful. It was only afterwards in good light that I looked at her more closely. The bread and butter hull has each individual lift "stitched" with copper wire, a practice to compliment reliance on glue alone. The pine deck is quite nicely lined and the quality of fittings good, although we have all seen better. She has both a gaff and a Bermudan set of sails.

I sent a photo of her to Anthony feeling suitably chuffed with my investment and modestly saying that I thought she was quite a nice boat. His reply was "she's better than that, she is a Bassett Lowke 15 Rater Schooner", ... and to prove it he produced a copy of a page from the book, The Basset Lowke Story, where an advert from about 1910 is reproduced. The model was then priced at £20. I wonder how many they sold

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