Item  #  William Fife-20V

William Fife 25"

• Sold Fully Assembled - Just pull this model ship out of the box and display, there is no rigging to tie or mast to assemble.
• 35" H x 4" W x 20" L.
• Built with rare, high quality woods.
• Plank on frame construction (a painstaking process where each individual plank is added to the hull of the ship model one at a time).
• Hand painted the actual colors of William Fife yacht.
• Fabric sails with detailed stitching.
• No plastic parts.
• To build this model ship, extensive research was done using various sources such as museums, drawings, copies of original plans and photos of the actual yacht.

William Fife III (1857-1944), also known as Wm. Fife, Jr., was the third generation of a family of Scottish yacht designers and builders.

Fife was born in the small village of Fairlie on the Firth of Clyde. His father and grandfather (both also named William and often referred to as Fife I and Fife II) had also been designers and boat builders in Fairlie. The family business operated from a yard on the beach in the village. Fife began building yachts in 1890 and soon surpassed the achievements of his father and grandfather and became known as one of the premier yacht designers of the day.

As the third generation of a venerable Scottish boat building family, William Fife inherited a rich legacy but was quick to establish his own reputation as one of the top designers in the yachting world. Often dominating his chief competitors, Fife was a master of his trade who received commissions from European royalty and from clients as far away as Australia. Following on the heels of the success of his design Dragon (1888?), Fife adopted a stylized Chinese dragon as his trademark. Thereafter, those yachts that took shape on the shingle at Fairlie were known throughout the yachting world by this distinctive scrollwork.

Fife designed two America's Cup yachts for grocery and tea magnate Sir Thomas Lipton who challenged for the cup a total of five times. The Fife designed Shamrock I lost to Columbia in 1899 and Shamrock III lost to Reliance in 1903. After the establishment of the first International Rule in 1906, Fife became a prolific designer of meter boats, designing and building several very successful 15- and 19-meter yachts in the years leading up to the Great War.