Mary Fanny the story of a Small Ship ~ A Study in Maritime History
The printed book the Mary Fanny is a follow up of the downloadable PDF The Burry Inlet Shipwrecks 1868 ~ by Ian Hugh and provides the reader with a full and fascinating history of this wonderful ship.
For information about obtaining the book Mary Fanny please email: 
See ~ Burry Inlet Shipwrecks 1868
The MARY FANNY was one of thousands of sloops, ketches and schooners which traded around the coasts of Britain and Europe in the nineteenth century; the long-distance articulated lorries of their time they furthered the growth of commerce and by carrying coal, metal ores, clay and iron in addition to agricultural and general cargoes they enabled the benefits of the later industrial revolution to be shared around the coasts of the British isles. A revolution which, by the development of the iron and steel ships and the compound steam engine, would mean the wooden sailing vessels would be made uneconomic and be replaced by the tramp steamer during the first decades of the twentieth century.
There was nothing unique about her; she wasn't the largest, smallest, fastest, or most long- serving of the small ships and so her story could be that of any of her contemporaries. This story has been pieced together from the information provided by her agreements, ship logs, and entries in the Lloyds Weekly Index with colour added by contemporary newspaper reports where events in her story stood out from the everyday trading she carried out for 56 years.
The story is as much a narrative of the men who built, owned, and sailed in her as it is of the ship itself. By analysing her crew agreements, we can build a picture of the men who crewed not just the MARY FANNY but the majority of the small sailing vessels. By studying the logs, we can understand the voyages they undertook and how these were affected by the unpredictable weather to result in a handsome profit or disappointing loss for the owners and for those who invested in the ships.
Born in Llanelli, the author was educated at Llanelly Boys Grammar School before attaining a degree in Aeronautical Engineering and a Master's in Environmental Engineering at Southampton University. Brought up with family tales about the MARY FANNY, the family ship, being passed down through three generations, he eventually began to search for documents with which to build a complete picture of her career. Starting in the days before the internet was widely available it is only now, forty years from the start that the information has been analysed and compiled to produce this book — The Story of a Small Ship — as a tribute to all the men who served on the sailing vessels and faced the danger and hardships of a life at sea.
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