A late 18th century smuggler nears completion on the stocks.

"...Will Stirling builds traditional larch-on-oak clinker craft which could have come from Chapman's Architectura Navalis" Watercraft Magazine, 50th Issue Jan 2005

Having initially started in antique furniture restoration with Mark Dickinson Will Stirling completed a course at the Lowestoft based International Boatbuilding College before being taken on by Working Sail, traditional pilot cutter builders in Cornwall.

On Sept. 1st construction of Alert began on an old slipway at Morwellham Quay. This living history museum is beautifully situated on the upper reaches of the river Tamar, the border between Devon and Cornwall, Great Britain.

 
To give a brief history:

The highest navigable point on the Tamar, Morwellham served as a port to export copper and arsenic. In 1844 the largest copper lode in Europe was discovered nearby, Morwellham Quay being hailed as ‘the greatest copper port in Queen Victoria's empire.' It is said that at one time there was enough arsenic on the quay to kill every soul in the world. Railways and quays were built and the ships came pouring in on the tides. By 1970 a thousand years of bustling activity had been reduced to bramble covered ruins. The buildings derelict and the docks silted up. The Morwellham Valley and Tamar Trust has authentically restored the site and mine shafts, right down to the period dress of its employees. A large wooden ship of 1900, a Westcountry trading ketch, built two miles down river lies in one dock. This important open air museum strives to give an accurate depiction of a C19th port and busy copper mine.

Will Stirling is currently undertaking a part-time MA in maritime history at Exeter University in order to lend an academic qualification and organisation to his knowledge of the period 1785 to 1840. The family connection with maritime history is strong. A very great grandfather Admiral Sir Robert Barlow ‘cruised with very great success against the smugglers' from 1786 to 1789 when commanding the Barracouta cutter; ‘Captain Barlow...captured several fine vessels laden with contraband goods, one of which was a new cutter of 150 tons, with a cargo of one thousand ankers of spirits.' In his next ship the Childers brig in the first act of decided hostility against Great Britain the Republicans fired on him at Brest. Although a heavy crossfire only one shot hit the ship, striking a canon and splitting into three. These pieces he took to up London. In putting to sea again, being off Gravelines, he captured Le Patriote privateer, the first armed vessel taken from the French Republic. Through various adventures, including capturing L'Hazard laden with spices and ivory from Senegal and taking L'Africaine frigate in an extremely bloody action off Ceuta, North Africa he was knighted and appointed to Triumph (74). In this ship he served on the Mediterranean station until 1804 when he was nominated first Captain of the North Sea Fleet. Having been Deputy Comptroller of the Navy he finished his career as Commissioner of Chatham Dockyard.

Admiral Sir Robert Barlow's daughter, Hilare, married William Nelson, Horatio's younger brother. His son Robert Barlow served with the East India Company and named his own son George Nelson Barlow. This illustrious connection has been carried through the eldest son of the family since. George died in 1886, his son Nelson William Barlow was a prisoner of the Germans in the Great War and Hilaro Nelson Barlow was killed in action at Arnhem in 1944. Hilaro's issue was female as was that of his younger brother Brigadier Vernon William Barlow. Thus no male carries the Barlow surname. Will, as William Nelson Charles Stirling, the only male of the next generation, still recognises the connection in part of his name, through his mother Emma Barlow.

Little is known of Barlow himself. Correspondence to his brother the, Governor General of India, has survived; he was often sad at going to sea as he missed his family. It is inspiring to think of him as a young man at sea, commanding an enormous cutter during a West country winter…chasing the distant lugger, recognised as the Provident of Fowey known to be pierced for 12 guns...