Lough Erne Yacht Club

News > EDDIE RICHARDSON RIP

Created: 1/2/2010 8:00:37 AM, Updated: 1/2/2010 2:09:11 PM

The ashes of Edward Richardson, from one of Lough Erne Yacht Club’s most ancient and historic families, will be interred in the family grave at Trory Church at noon on Friday 8 January 2010.


Eddie Richardson, whose family and ancestors lived in Rossfad, took a keen interest in his family’s strong yachting history. On paternal and maternal sides it spans three centuries of designing, building and racing in sailing boats, and organising this most historic sport on the Erne and elsewhere.

His Mother Phyllis was one of LEYC’s most successful dinghy-racing sailors ever, often with his father Henry her crew. The picture shows Eddie’s parents in an International 14 dinghy, Fillister, Sail 279, designed and built in 1932 by Uffa Fox “for owner Mrs H C Richardson” said the record in the class Handbook & History. These boats, developed pre-war for fast exciting racing, are the ancestors of a whole range of modern racing dinghies, including our Erne GP14 fleet.

His Father Henry’s diligent administration ensured the very survival of LEYC after the Great War, in which most of its active members had been killed. He prepared and published annual LEYC racing programmes for the Enniskillen Yacht Club’s Fairy fleet and others. The Richardsons when racing elsewhere flew an LEYC burgee and cited their club as LEYC. A letter survives with Henry’s drawings for a dinghy burgee, used in the late 1930s when he got LEYC to take up the new Snipe dinghies.

Henry also sought out and gathered back to the Club that remarkable range of ancient LEYC cups that it still has today. One is worth special mention, the 1890 Squire’s Cup. It was presented to LEYC by Eddie’s maternal grandfather, known as Jack Tipping in memory of his Father, known as the Squire.

Father and son, both were enthusiastic Victorian racing yacht designers and builders. After a visit to the USA in the 1830s, the Squire introduced the ballasted centre board (or dipper) used in a long series of very successful Erne designed and built racing yachts until the early 1900s. Jack Tipping replaced his Mischief’s dipper with a fixed fin to develop the first successful fin keel racing yacht and beat the best at the 1887 Royal Irish Regatta.

A century later, at an LEYC regatta, his Grandson, Eddie Richardson, awarded that same Squire’s Cup to the winning J/24, in a scene captured by a BBC TV documentary Autumn on Lough Erne and widely broadcast in the Under Sail series. Today’s Erne J/24s, part of the world’s biggest fin keel racing class, still race for the Squire Cup at LEYC Autumn Regatta.

Eddie’s son Henry and daughter Alex (Rivers) continue the interest in Richardson and Tipping family sailing history. Visiting the Club a few years ago, they were taken by water round to Rossfad Bay and ashore to see the old boat house where the family Fairy Iris and other craft were kept in winter. Each summer, Fairy and J/24 keelboats race there much as did the Richardsons from Georgian times to the 1970s. The photgraph shows three Fairy keelboats, over 100 year old, off Rossfad.

Fermanagh’s most ancient sport lives on and it's history owes much to Eddie Richardson, his parents and their ancestors in centuries past.

May he rest in peace.

Michael Clarke, LEYC Historian