Part 2

I visited Brookhouse Farm in 1994 and got on well with the owner, Bernard Ellis. He told me that in the early 50’s he had considered knocking down the farmhouse and starting afresh. He later changed his mind and only altered the building. We had many get-togethers talking about the Woods. I then decided as the year 2000 was getting near that maybe we could set up a link with Brookhouse-Bury and Woodbury, New Jersey, America, since by now I had found out there was a city in New Jersey named after the Woods from Bury.

Around 1998 I enlisted a great friend, Roy Melluish, to help me in my quest to find a contact in America. I had been asked to speak to the Tottington Town Woman’s Guild meeting in the library. Waiting to speak, I wandered amongst the books and spotted a book written by an American about the Woods in America, which gave us contact numbers. What a find!

Our next step was to approach Bury Council to find out if they would be interested in my idea. I had a meeting with the Bury mayor who then arranged a meeting with the leaders of council. They expressed interest and, when Adrian Frost of the council came back to Bury to report about a meeting with the Millennium commission, this became Bury’s millennium project. Roy was able to make contact with a Woodbury official, Tom Bowe, whom he finally convinced that Bury citizens would be coming to America in 2000.

I asked Sir Jeremy Black to be our patron and this was to be the plan: more than 400 people including youth from Bury Grammar School choir and Tottington Brass Band, accompanied by British TV, would come to Woodbury, New Jersey. I was to sail in a tall rigger called the Phoenix with the young people to Philadelphia, having been given pride of place on Penn’s Landing. Our youth were to take part in competitions against the youth of Woodbury. The choir did sing, the band did play, and our kids won almost every sporting event. Friendships were made, but, unfortunately, the Phoenix did not come to America. It had been indicated that I was to receive £250,000 from the millennium committee for the tall ship. Its final port of call was to be the Millennium Dome for Bury’s  day in London on our return from America. Because a bid went in for nearly £1,000,000, we lost the lot.

So the sailboat Henry Wood then came into the story. The next part is not about all the voyages of the Henry Wood, but about its three attempts over six years to finally sail up Woodbury Creek. That was my goal. I had many adventures along the way, but without the help of the best of the human race it would never have happened. Now we have to get back to England. It looks as if this will also take three attempts, the third one coming up in 2009.