Launched in 1964, and owned by the same family since 1968, this South West crabbing stalwart, the Superb-Us DH 99, belies her six decades
By Mike Smylie
Built by Mashfords of Cremyll near Plymouth in 1964 for Browse Brothers of Paignton as the Superb DH 58, this 45ft vessel is the traditional larch on oak and has a Gardner 6LXB engine.
There were four Browse brothers, the sons of Ernest Browse – Maurice, Arthur, Stanley and Dennis – but it was Maurice and Stanley who created the well- known Paignton company Browse Brothers in the late 1940s. Dennis had been killed in the war, and Arthur went off to Poole to start his own lobster business.
In 1951, Browse Brothers started cooking crabs in its factory on the south quay at Paignton, where it was employing up to 50 locals at various times. Both Maurice and Stanley skippered boats until Stanley gave up skippering in 1963 and came ashore after the death of his son. They then gradually started building up their fleet of boats. The Superb was one of the earliest.
In time, they had several boats, including the Excel DH 17, built in 1971 by J Hinks & Son of Appledore, which is still working out of Dartmouth under the ownership of Ricky Mitchelmore. Another was the 1975-built Crusader DH 71, also from the Hinks yard.
A White Fish Authority grant helped to fund the purchase of the Superb, which required Browse Brothers to work the vessel for a minimum of three years. At the end of that period, in 1967, Superb was sold to two
brothers from Ilfracombe in North Devon, who re-registered her as BD 41 and renamed her,
as there was already a Superb working out of Bideford, registered as BM 183. They added the ‘us’ to make Superbus.
She obviously worked into Cardigan Bay, as there’s a postcard view of her at Barmouth. However, after a year it appears the brothers fell out, and they put her up for sale once again.
Tony ‘Winkie’ Steer purchased her and took her to Dartmouth, where he tweaked the name with a hyphen to become Superb-Us – which definitely gives it a better ring, rather than having her sound like a upmarket coach company! He also re-registered her as DH 99 – the PLN she still carries today.
That was in 1968, and she’s been with the Steer family ever since. Alan Steer skippers her today with his two crew. He started fishing in 1986 with Winkie, and took over completely in 1997 when his dad retired.
“To start with, Dad was doing some trawling, a bit of wreck fishing and crabbing,” he told me. “He’d think nothing of going up to Weymouth, or across to the Channel Islands. These days, though, we keep inside the six- mile limit and rely on the lobsters and crabs. We work 1,700 pots, usually lifting 550 to 600 a day.”
They’ve kept the boat in a good state, given that she’s 60 years old this year. Bobby Cann has maintained her, and Alan says he gets her down to Bobby’s yard each year. “Back in 2006, we did a huge refit – a new wheelhouse and gear, and down below.
“The Gardner, I took back to the factory in Manchester for a rebuild, and it was the last marine engine they overhauled before they shut down. It is still working perfectly. We fitted new fuel tanks and electrics at that time.” I read that it was a £70,000 refit, so it was certainly a thorough job!
More recently, in 2019, Bobby Cann relaid the whole deck – and when I spoke to Alan, Superb-Us had just come from his yard at Noss in Devon, where she’d had a repaint and Bobby had replaced the top of a few frames in the engineroom.
I asked about local yards capable of taking such a boat out of the water, and was told there were three around Dartmouth: at Kingsweir, Noss Creek and Galmpton. I guess with the huge number of yachts around this part of the south coast, it’s hardly surprising the facilities are there!
We spoke about the state of crab fishing in the South West. Alan’s opinion was that the decline in fishing over the last few years is mostly down to the impact of warming water on crab larva. I mentioned the sheer number of pots, but Alan pointed out that, whereas there used to be perhaps 20 crab boats in the region with 400 pots each, today it’s seven or eight with up to 1,200-plus pots. It’s thinned the fleet!
The Inshore Potting Agreement, negotiated between mobile and static-gear fishermen through the local IFCA, helps – and, as vice chair of South Devon and Channel Shellfishermen, Alan keeps a close eye on such matters. The decline of the crab stock has also seen an increase in octopus and crawfish, to add to their woes.
Thanks to Bobby Cann and Alan Steer.
Early Mashfords builds
Little appears to be known about other early Mashfords boats from the same era.
However, in 1966 the yard also built the 46ft Bosloe PH 122, which is regarded as the sistership to Superb-Us. But Bosloe was built to join Mashfords’ own fleet of vessels, which included Flete Lady PH 36, Pentillie PH 43 and the Lowestoft trawler Mastermind.
The 67ft Flete Lady was built in 1958, and there’s a story that the lady of the Flete Estate, which lies near Holbeton in Devon, swapped timber from the estate for a box of lemon sole every month. Presumably the yard named the vessel to reflect this!
Of the four boats, only Bosloe continues fishing – today from Cawsand Bay in Cornwall – under the same PH 122 registration.
This story was taken from the August 2024 of Fishing News. For more up-to-date and in-depth reports on the UK and Irish commercial fishing sector, subscribe to Fishing News here or buy the latest single issue for just £3.50 here.
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