Matthew has three skippers. Martin Pick was one of the crew who saild the Atlantic with the ship in 1997. Skipper Rob Salvidge is a qualified Offshore Yachtmaster with around 30,000 miles of ocean sailing under his belt. His father taught him to sail in a variety of boats both in the Bristol Channel and Cornwall where he also learnt a lot from fishermen in the tiny cove of Cadgwith near the Lizard.  Ben Jones is a recent and enthusiastic addition to the roster and his story is told in an interview with Chloe Banks on www.guide2bristol.com website (reproduced here)

"If you've spent any time down on Bristol docks you can't have failed to notice the Matthew. The replica of the sailing ship that took one of Bristol's favourite sons, John Cabot, to mainland America in 1497, it's a familiar sight on our local waters. Now in its thirteenth year, the Matthew is involved in all manner of exciting projects and is crewed by all sorts of interesting people. I spoke to Ben Jones, one of the three skippers (or ‘masters') of the Matthew, to find out more about the ship.

I started by talking to the man at the helm about his personal love of the high seas. Originally brought up in the middle of Wales, how did he get into sailing in the first place?

"I moved to Guernsey with my mum when I was about thirteen. That's how I got into sailing - we did it at school. I did dinghies at first. I got my dinghy instructors certificate at sixteen and then, when I was eighteen, I went out to Australia planning on doing my Yacht Master out there. I thought I'd do it as a career but then realised I didn't really want to, so I came back to Britain."

For someone who had decided that they didn't want a career in sailing, it seems odd that Ben should have ended up as one of the Matthew's masters. After moving to Bristol to study theology, how did he end up on the water once more?

"I had to get some work and so I got a job driving ferries for the Bristol Ferry Boat Company. The Matthew was on its way back from London at the time and it ended up very short-crewed in Brighton. So I went down to help sail it back to Bristol and was asked if I would go to France, as first mate, for a festival later that year."


Having taken part in that event - one of the largest maritime festivals in the world - Ben is planning on taking time out from studying this year in order to devote more time to the Matthew, developing its everyday activities as well as looking for more opportunities on a bigger scale.

The construction of the Matthew was completed by 1997, in time for it to undertake a voyage across the Atlantic celebrating the 500th anniversary of John Cabot's original crossing. On its return it was sold to the SS Great Britain to ensure it remained in Bristol, but it is operated by ‘Shipshape and Bristol Fashion', whose MD is Rob Salvidge, one of the other masters. Although the three skippers do a lot of the work, the Matthew is run mainly through the help of volunteers.

"There are about forty or fifty people associated with the Matthew. It wouldn't be viable to pay everyone, so the volunteers are really critical. The guides know more than I do about the history of the ship; some of them have been involved in it since it was built. They're great, they're there every day and they have the ship open every day too."

It is here that I have to admit that I have never been on the Matthew, despite admiring it from across the harbour many a time. How would an ordinary landlubber like me ever get to set foot on deck? Luckily the Matthew is available to look round every day, except Monday, as part of the SS Great Britain. One ticket to look round both ships seems a pretty good deal, especially considering that tickets are valid for as many visits as you want over the course of a year.

"We also do corporate events and public events, such as two hour charters with fish and chips, or private parties for birthdays, anniversaries, things like that. We have a regular chef we use who writes medieval themed menus for us. We've also just been reclassified this year to be able to go places with forty passengers, instead of twelve, which will make a big difference to what people can do and means we can charge a lot less. For example, the fish and chips we'd be able to do for £16 per head now."

As events go, that's a whole lot cheaper and more original than heading to the cinema and a local restaurant for your next birthday get-together! While all that sounds pretty exciting and I am preparing to drop unsubtle hints to my husband about our next date, what I really want to know is whether the rumours are true: has the Matthew been used as a pirate ship in a television documentary?

"It's been used for all sorts really. It was used in The Colour of Magic, with David Jason, last Easter. That's been the biggest thing recently, but it has had quite a lot of media attention."

As one of very few seaworthy replica medieval ships, the Matthew is often called upon to take starring roles. It has played Columbus' ship the Santa Maria, and this autumn it is set to star in a BBC documentary about the impact of the navy on British culture, ‘Masters of the Sea'. Ben will appear too as the skipper of the ship, although, to my disappointment, he hasn't been forced into medieval costume! Still, being skipper in a documentary with such a title surely earns him the label 'Master of the Sea'? He laughs a little nervously - he's not too sure about that!

So what does the future hold for a man who has battled hurricane-force winds off the coast of Australia and recently returned from sailing in the famous Fastnet race with Tony Bullimore?

"I'm pretty determined to focus on the Matthew. I feel if I stopped working there now, I would have done half a job. We're going to Cardiff in a couple of weeks, but apart from that this year is all about Bristol."

By the end of our conversation I've become completely captivated by the idea of sailing off into the sunset on a medieval tall ship. If you have too, or you want to host a party or corporate event with a difference, or if you're just running out of ideas of things to do with the kids by this stage in the holidays, it's easy to get involved. The Matthew's website (www.matthew.co.uk) has information on volunteering onboard, visiting the ship, private charters, corporate events and much more besides. Or you can contact the SS Great Britain for tickets (www.ssgreatbritain.org). After all, it's not often that you have the opportunity to get up close and personal with a film star!

'Masters of the Sea' is scheduled to be broadcast on BBC Two at the end of January 2010."


Chloe Banks is a freelance writer living in Bristol.

Before Rob Salvidge became Master of the Matthew most of his deep sea sailing was in modern fast racing yachts. Here he explains how he switched from plastic to wood – from fast to slow!

“I sat in the baking Portuguese sunshine. Sipped a cool beer, gazed across an azure sea, Africa somewhere over the horizon.

I’d sailed - raced, down here on a 68 foot yacht. Biscay was messy, didn’t see France or Spain, when the nice warm Algarve air kicked in, it started to feel right; I started to remember why sailing is good.

The waitress brought us another beer. We talked about - Why is sailing good? When does it feel right? My discussion partner was Kiwi yacht racing superstar Grant Dalton. An offshore rock god, a Bono of boating.

He said “what makes sailing fun is doing it very fast”. He was preparing a giant cat for a quick purr round the globe. I said I liked fast but also enjoyed traditional, wood and creaking spars. Heavier sails, not rigging so tight it feels like it will snap.
The sun sank slowly in the deepening, navy, autumnal, sky.
He looked at me with pity.

Salvation drifted slowly into view. A three masted barque. Topgallants, stuns’ls, all canvas up, beautiful. We chatted some half hour or more. The ship moved right to left slower than a fisherman in a dory could row. “Wow” I said “that’s what I mean, no plastic, just the wind in the canvas, the smell of the tar, the singing of the shanties …..”

“Yeah but too frigging slow” he drawled “anyway see you guys in the casino later”

Immaculate in sailor stripe polo vest and fawn shorts, he bounded up the steps of the hotel terrace. At home in this glittering modern marina, gleaming white carbon fibre racing machine on the dock,  constant 25 knot breeze by day,  fish restaurants, cocktail bar, gaming tables by night. Very alluring, a very faraway life for a Bristol boy like me, but brought close by a chance encounter with a confident sailing supremo who bothered to share his thoughts with a racing novice from the other side of his world.

That night the casino, the glitz, the glamour of the yacht racing world crowded out all my romantic thoughts of big square riggers ploughing the seas.  I thought “OK maybe fast is the thing”.

Back in Bristol it was dark and wet and cold, the only traditional ship in the harbour wasn’t going anywhere till the spring, I was keen to sail more now.

Don't get me wrong, life ashore was good. I'd never been forced to do an unpleasant days work in my life, the BBC had been good to me, a fair voice and an idea of what makes a good story had combined to create a charmed existence where business and pleasure mixed seamlessly.

But my lady was on her big life adventure, somewhere down near Panama by now and bound across the Pacific to Hawaii by way of Galapagos. Somehow, imbibed with a new sense of freedom from the stormy trip down to Portugal, I wasn't relishing a Bristol winter on my own and was ripe for being charmed by the next available fix.

It came with the offer from maverick seadog Tony Bullimore to join his team for a spin around the world. He was fixing up a lean speed machine just like Grants. A catamaran as wide as it was long, a mast looking too tall, raked like it might fall, living space too small, nowhere to store your books, hardly anywhere to eat -  but fast.  

Long story, short story, sailed to New Zealand, too much in a hurry to stop anywhere on the way much, apart from Gibraltar, odd place. Few people have sailed so far, so fast, 35 knots at a stretch when wind and yacht and sea all heading in roughly the same direction.
Saw lots of Albatross and seas as big as the rolling Mendip Hills back home. Never saw an iceberg, but they were there. You’d rather see them than not, hit one at night at that speed and welcome to a recreation of the scene after Titanic sunk.

Even for a traditionalist at heart it was a life changing experience. A great way to grasp the contrast between the era of the mighty clippers and sailing trading ships and today’s fast efficient seafaring world. Now Deep South ocean passages are only for madmen who can’t find enough thrills on dry land.

So Job done, I could now call myself a sailor. I’d been across an ocean or two pretty quick, run the galley, run the communications gear, fixed a few things, made the boat sail fast. I’d be able to tell Grant Dalton a thing or to next time I ran into him!

After a bit more racing and modern yacht cruising, the amazing opportunity came to command that, wooden, creaky, sometimes leaky and frigging slow traditional ship.

Matthew is not quite like the brigs and the barques, the schooners and the ketches, the cutters and the yawls, the prawners, the crabbers and the herring picarooners. Matthew is the pirate ship, the explorer’s ship, like Narnias Dawns Treader taken to the dark place at the bottom of the world by Prince Caspian.
In its day Matthew was as awesome and as breathtaking for speed as the maxi cats of today. The explorers who headed the great 15th century voyages into the unknown, Cabot, Columbus, Vespucci, De Gama were like a cross between Isambard Brunel, Neil Armstrong and Grant Dalton.

They travelled far and fast by methods few understood, to end up somewhere no one else had ever really been.

They charted the world we now know, they brought back exotic souvenirs, they shrunk the world. They made the impossible and the unfathomable, possible and comprehensible.
Matthew, our modern recreation, does just that too. It connects with that time long ago when to most people a white knuckle ride and a great adventure was a donkey ride to the next village. So to be the master and commander of this lovely little ship is to fuse Cabot’s world with Grant Dalton’s world. They’re not very far apart at all really, just 500 years.”