Home page

Maritime Festival: June 25 & 26th 2005

Notes by Neil Foskett on the occasion of the 2005 Festival...The 2005 Fest coincided with the International Year of the Sea and Nelson's death at the Battle of Trafalgar 200 years ago.

The festival is the PREMIER EVENT in the North of England. Over 200,000 people from as far a-field as Norway, Canada, Finland and America were thrilled with the FREE festival in 2003

TALL SHIPS Liverpool's flagship the Zebu and sail training ship, Jean de la Lune, Scotland's only working square-rigged tall ship, and the Kathleen & May will be thrilling the crowds at the Whitehaven Maritime Festival. Visitors to the festival can go aboard these ships and experience the conditions that sailors were expected to endure in the past. The Zebu came to Whitehaven to take part in the last festival, choosing it over Liverpool's own maritime event. Its success in the town convinced the crew to return to Whitehaven when it took part in a BBC film later in the year.

Jean de la Lune, a 100ft French brigantine based on the west coast of Scotland, is coming for the festival on her farewell voyage before being sold. The owners were keen to take part in the festival after reading about it here on the internet.

The Kathleen & May was launched in 1900, costing around £2,700 at a time when shipwrights earned the equivalent of £1.25 a week and was among the last four vessels on trade routes in British and Irish waters.

Her home was the Port of Bideford in the West Country until her retirement in 1961. She was purchased by a private trust in October 1998 from Gloucester Docks and given a £1million restoration.

UTTERLY BUTTERLY The St. Ivel Utterly Butterly display team are Europe's only professional wing-walking display team, they entertained the crowds with a combination of the latest safety technology with the courage and daring of early aviators. Daring pilots take the aircraft though entertaining and amazing aerobatics, travelling at up to 150mph.

The wing-walkers brave wind speeds of up to 150mph, waving from the top wing as the 1940's Boeing Stearman biplanes roar through the skies. This brilliant act will leave you breathless!

60th ANNIVERSARY OF THE END OF WWII Up to 1,000 Second World War veterans and ex-servicemen were invited to the 2005 Whitehaven Maritime Festival. Cumbria's official commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War will be held on June 26 as part of the weekend-long festival.

Plans are in hand to invite up to 1,000 veterans and more recent ex-servicemen to the event, where it is hoped that bands from the Royal Marines, Army and the Royal Air Force will lead a veterans' parade through Whitehaven to the harbour area. The Kings Own Royal Border Regiment will exercise their Freedom of the Town.

In addition, the Lancaster, Spitfire and Hurricane aircraft of the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight have been booked to provide a flypast over the parade.

Back to Whitehaven's Home page