The Bangor S-Class Archive
The Bangor S-Class Archive
The Bangor Shipyard Company in the late 1940s
THE 27-foot S-Class boats are modest classics of their time. They are sturdily built, yet they still exude an undemonstrative elegance with their swooping canoe sterns and their low cabin sides. The boats represent a blend of styles and types, but it is a judicious blend - they manage to combine a little of the gentleman’s yacht, a lot of the everyday cruiser built for an era of austerity, and just a touch of the tough working boat. They were designed by Robert Slater in 1945, and all 22 of them were built at his boatyard the Shipyard Company in Bangor, Northern Ireland. (Sorona, the twentieth boat, was actually started by Robert Slater but completed by Bruce Cowley who bought the Shipyard Company from Robert Slater in the early 1960s, Bruce Cowley building the final two boats, Shejenka and Quinsibar, with their raised cabins).
‘My father started to design the S-Class after the war as he felt there was a need for a small, seaworthy, 4-berth cruiser,’ writes Ronnie Slater. ‘He subsequently had two regrets about the design. An extra strake on the topsides would have given sitting headroom under the side decks, but in 1946 the freeboard was about as high as fashion would accept. His second regret was that he really wanted a 30-footer, but that would have been a much bigger boat. There was not much money about at that time and he was not prepared to take the gamble.’ But we need not trouble about the designer’s regrets, for his first instincts were probably right: the S-Class is a serious boat, and it feels bigger than it actually is. That is thanks not just to the quality of the build and the materials, but also to the authentic sea-going design with its uncluttered decks and intelligent allocation of space within. The S-Class is a little ship, but a ship with ambition.
The Bangor Shipyard
boats, read William Nixon’s history of the boatyard and the
boats themselves.
Launch day at the Bangor Shipyard - Robert Slater is third from left
1951: Yachting Monthly gets wind of the new yacht class.
Elias Scott - known to all as ‘Scotty’ - foreman at the Shipyard Company yard in Ballyholme was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1981