Nostalgia: The voyage of the Spitfire – a family legacy

Salt in the Blood

The air in Brixham always carried the tang of salt, the whisper of gulls, and the echo of creaking ropes. Generations had lived and died by the rhythms of the sea, and for the Coyde family, the ocean was not a choice—it was a calling. In a weather-worn cottage tucked among the winding streets of this Devon port, Richard Henry Coyde—known to everyone as Harry—was born on 28 April 1896. His parents, Samuel Webber Coyde and Malara Minnie Bubeer, raised their children beneath sails and storms. Harry was one of six, all born with sea legs before they could walk.

Harry, like so many Brixham boys, apprenticed on the big sail trawlers. His hands calloused young, learning to hoist and haul under skies that turned violent without warning. He came of age during the First World War, serving in the Royal Navy, a teenager with the weight of war pressing into his bones. But when the armistice came and silence fell over the battle-scarred seas, Harry came home. Not to peace—peace was a foreign word to a fisherman—but to purpose. Back in Brixham, the trawlers awaited.

Harry’s story might have ended there, just another name among the countless etched in salt-stained ledgers. But fate, it seemed, had one last voyage in store—a voyage wrapped in secrecy, danger, and a touch of rebellion.

By 1923, America was dry. The Prohibition Act had swept across the States like a Puritan storm, outlawing the production, transport, and sale of alcohol. But laws on land did little to tame the sea. Off the coast of New York, beyond the reach of U.S. jurisdiction, an armada of floating liquor stores—known as “Rum Row”—had taken shape. Fast motorboats darted to and from the mainland, ferrying forbidden spirits to thirsty Americans. The trade was booming, the money irresistible, and for the right men in the right boat, the risks were worth it.

Enter the Spitfire.

A 40-foot fishing ketch, she was 47 years old—well past her prime. Built in Ramsgate, once a proud smack plying the English coast, she had long since finished her honest days. But in Swansea, South Wales, someone had a different idea for her retirement. She was to make a final journey—across the Atlantic to Nova Scotia, Canada. Her mission? To smuggle liquor into America’s forbidden shorelines.

Harry Coyde signed on as crew.

Into Rum Row

They left Swansea on June 25th, 1923. The Spitfire, tired in her timbers but defiant as ever, set her bow toward the cold horizon. Harry stood at her rail alongside his shipmate W. Langdon, another Brixham fisherman, both grim-faced beneath their caps. Their captain, an American by the name of Henry Joseph Fenwick—born in Galveston, Texas—kept his eye on the wind and the contraband lashed below. With only four crew aboard, there was little room for error and none for cowardice.

The voyage to Nova Scotia took weeks. The Atlantic was no gentler for smuggling ships than it was for warships or whalers. But it was beyond Halifax, near the notorious Rum Row, that the real test began. There, twenty miles off the American coast, vessels anchored in international waters waited like wolves. Fast motor launches zipped out under cover of darkness, ready to barter or steal the liquor aboard.

The Spitfire had already proved her mettle in rough seas. But nothing in Harry’s seafaring past—not the gales of the English Channel nor the black squalls off Cornwall—could have prepared him for what came next.

Aboard the Wyke Reggis, a small steamer that had taken on the Spitfire’s liquor for delivery, Harry and Langdon experienced firsthand the cold brutality of the underworld. For three days, they waited for a motorboat to unload the liquor. When it finally arrived, it left without taking a single crate.

A blind. A trick. Harry would never forget the sound of boots on deck that night.

Three men came aboard. Smiling. Friendly. Like any other seafaring crew. “Just tell your men to step out here a moment,” said the leader, knocking gently on the forecastle door. Harry, ever the practical joker, thought it was a lark. He called the crew forward.

“Do you mind putting your hands above your heads?” came the request.

It wasn’t a joke.

The men whipped out pistols—automatics, lightning-quick. They were pirates, ruthless and armed. Harry’s crew froze. No one wanted to test the odds of dodging a bullet in the dark Atlantic.

The raiders herded them into the forecastle, then moved below. At breakfast, they burst into the officers’ saloon, pistols drawn. The captain and crew were overpowered without a shot fired. Pirates on the high seas in 1923. It seemed impossible. But this was Rum Row. Lawless, merciless, and profitable.

The pirates bargained with the crew for assistance—promising money to help move the cases of spirits into their motorboat. Some old hands were promised six months’ pay. Harry, newer to the operation, was offered three. He never saw a shilling. The liquor—12,000 cases of it—vanished over the next five trips. The schooner anchored offshore received each load like a ghost ship, hidden beneath the veil of fog and sea.

The pirates never paid. They looted everything. Even the stevedores, the men who helped shift the heavy crates, walked away with empty hands. Harry watched as they slipped away, their motorboat slicing through the waves, taking with them the cargo—and the profit.

It was not just theft. It was betrayal.

And still, the Spitfire had to return.

The Sea That Tried to Take Them

When the last of the liquor was gone and the pirates had vanished into the American night, the men of the Spitfire turned their faces east. It was time to go home.

They refitted, loaded modest supplies, and said farewell to the shadowed harbours of Halifax. But as the Spitfire pushed into the Atlantic, the sea turned against her. Sixteen days out, she was caught in a storm that would test the resolve of even the hardest sailor.

It came out of the northwest like a fist. The wind howled through the rigging like a banshee. Waves rose in monstrous ranks—walls of water that loomed over the vessel and smashed down with a force that jarred the bones.

The mizzen sail was reefed tight, but it barely held. The canvas above them tore like paper, and the sea anchor was lost early on. For thirty-six hours, the Spitfire lay helpless, broadside to the waves, rolling and pitching as the crew fought to stay alive.

Harry Coyde, who had braved winters off the Cornish coast, called it the worst he had ever known. Even the old hands—men who had seen the dead hauled from the surf—had never faced such fury. The crew pumped water constantly. There was no rest. No sleep. Just cold, salt, and noise. The howling of wind through broken canvas. The groaning of the old hull. The prayers whispered through clenched teeth.

At one point, she drifted 80 to 90 miles—no heading, no rudder control. It was a miracle she wasn’t lost. They tried and failed to get the mainsail hoisted. The wind knocked down every effort before it could rise. The sea was simply stronger.

They stuffed oil bags at the stern to break the waves. It helped—just enough to keep them upright. It became a battle not of ship versus sea but of life versus death. There was no thought of cargo, or money, or glory. Only the will to survive.

When the storm finally broke, they looked around the deck in silence. Lines were frayed. The Spitfire was battered—her ribs groaning under the strain—but she had survived. And so had they.

Not a single ship had been seen during the ordeal. No shipping lanes. No rescue. Just waves and wind and the threat of death in every swell. Worse still were the icebergs—silent, drifting mountains that loomed out of the fog like ghostly giants. Harry wrote of them later in his log: “Close proximity of huge icebergs—many and dangerous. Thank God we passed them.” The Atlantic had thrown its worst at the Spitfire and failed to break her.

Seven weeks later, they returned. Not to fanfare or recognition. But to the quiet understanding among fishermen: they had braved the impossible and come back.

But the voyage had taken its toll.