The oldest video footage of Flying Fifteen keelboat racing

Flying Fifteen sailing at Kircubbin Sailing Club in 1955 © UKFFA

When finding the earliest videos of the Flying Fifteen class of racing keelboat, we have a problem: British newsreels of the 50s and 60s were obsessed with royalty, and if the husband of the monarch was out in 'Coweslip' the cameras rarely focussed on anything else.

So if we ignore 20 videos that show only "The Duke", we must begin with Cowes Week 1952, as it does show the rest of the fleet (near the end).

Hayling Island in the 50s shows a fleet of Flying 15s (one with a two-digit sail number) amongst some other Hornet, Canoe, Finn, Enterprise and motor boat footage.

We cannot embed the video here, so please go to youtube.com/watch?v=e4vOIATSthY and then skip to 4m38s.

We then can show you the 1955 Championships at the Royal South Western YC, Plymouth, which is not on YouTube, at this link:
player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-yacht-races-from-plymouth-sound-1957-online (skip to 1m36 if you're in a hurry!)

Then, from the very same club where the class held its National Champs this year, we can see Amateur building of Flying Fifteens in Northern Ireland, which was taken sometime in the 1950s. You may see more steel nails than you'd like to...

Cowes Week 1963 has enough coverage of the fleet to warrant inclusion.

Cowes Week 1970 shows a different prince (now our King) but does cover the fleet a few times too (skip to 1m43s).

Finally we want to show a video from outside of the UK, and whilst the class only makes a brief appearance here, it's worth showing, as you might not have seen what a Fifteen looks like submerged full of water! Dinghy sailing at Port Hacking, Sydney (some time in the late Seventies) has a little at the start, at 0m50s and at 3m25s.

What of the rest?

Do you know the location of any F15 videos that show racing fleets from the 1940s to the 90s which we have missed? We would love to share these with other sailors. You can submit video links to us for immediate review.

Keep watching with:

• Newest Flying Fifteen videos
• The very oldest sailing videos of all
• The video search page

Uffa Fox brings the Duke of Edinburgh's boat 'Coweslip' to Kippford in 1958 - photo © Solway YC archive collection