Quotes about Jack

About that time Wyatts were starting to build new boats and small yachts. Jack Emeny, a young Suffolk boatbuilder recently demobbed from service in the Royal Air Force, had joined the yard and with Harold Cutts, Lewis Hewes and apprentice John Milgate was busy building a series of 21ft motor oyster skiffs for Mersea oystermen. What beamy, sturdy little boats they were, with broad strakes of clinker hull planking and deep floors of fir, a broad flat keel of elm for grounding on the hard or mud and driven by a Brit petrol-paraffin motor of low power. Jack Emeny was a master of clinker construction and the JINNY, GOLDEN CHANCE, SILVER FOAM and others came out of Wyatts shed adorned with that same attractive Mersea paint scheme of cream, green, grey and black. [Mersea Regatta 2005 Programme.]

The yard [Wyatt's] was later run by the late Harold Cutts and his wife Polly with boatbuilder Jack Emeny and today the premises are managed by Simon Cutts [Essex and Suffolk Boatyards and Boat Builders Mike Davies publ. 2009]

Gowen's made the sails for the first craft built for me, the day-sailer Blue Peter, constructed at West Mersea by Jack Emeny in his little boatshop * at the back of the village, beautifully planked, single-handedly by that patient craftsman [John Leather The Salty Shore]

* boat designer, David Cooper, remembers Jack Emeny continuing to build boats in Upland Road after Wyatts. Ron Green tells me it was Glennie Cock's builders yard and is still there as a large Mersea Homes workshop off Upland Crescent.

Biography

Ernest John 'Jack' Emeny was born on 15th January 1914 in Plomesgate, Suffolk. His father, labourer Charles Emeny, born in Brandeston, the son of a bricklayer, died young in WW1 on 8th August 1918; Jack was 4 and his brother only 3.

In WW2, living in Hasketon, Jack was assigned to the 4th Battalion Suffolk Regiment but the 1939 register records he was discharged due to being in a reserved occupation as a boat builder. Ron Green thinks Jack worked at Whisstocks Boatyard in Woodbridge. Presumably the RAF (see Regatta article above) came later in the war. Jack married Joyce H E Sutleff in Downham Norfolk in 1943.

Jack died on 23rd December 1991 aged 77. At the time of his death Jack and Joyce were living in 16, New Captain's Road, West Mersea. Joyce lived to the age of 92 and died in 2014. Joyce donated a number of photographs of Jack, handwritten details of the SILVER SPRAY (CK163) and one of Jack's paintings to Mersea Museum which are visible on the Mersea Museum website along with other photos mainly of Jack at work and with his workmates.

Read More
William Wyatt - shipwright of West Mersea
River Colne Shipbuiders by John Collins and James Dodds.
The Salty Shore by John Leather.