Michael Mason Esq, DL

Michael Mason Esq, DL
First name:Michael
Surname:Mason
Post-nominals:Esq, DL
Year elected:1933
Last year on list:1982
MembershipMember

A grandson of the 26th Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, Michael Mason (1900-1981) led an adventurous life.

He left Eton early for Sandhurst where he was heavyweight boxing champion, travelled in Canada as a lumberjack, prospector and bootlegger, and sailed the little-known coast of southern Chile.

He commissioned the yawl Latifa in 1935, won the Round Gotland race in 1937 (during which he noted all the German fortifications), and came second in the 1937 and 1939 Fastnet races.

Shortly before the outbreak of WWII he spent three months surveying the south coast of Ireland for possible U Boat refuges.

When war was declared, a combination of seamanship, linguistic ability, physical and mental stamina and accuracy with his revolver brought him to the attention of Naval Intelligence.  His work with them was varied: captaining a trawler on U Boat patrol, entering Romania as an undercover agent for the Special Operations Executive, training marines in unarmed combat, and commanding landing craft flotillas.

After the war he became Commodore of RORC and, in 1946, sent Latifa across the Atlantic to compete in the New York/Bermuda race with a new set of sails as the originals had been lost in the blitz.  Mason himself was unable to go with her but a number of future Squadron members were in her volunteer crew, described in the American press as "eight of England's most eligible bachelors".

In 1952 Mason commissioned a 46 foot gaff-rigged Loch Fyne fishing ketch (White Phalarope) designing his own sail plan and deckhouse, while his wife designed the interior.

In 1971 he wrote: "For the last ten years I have never gone south of Mull and I have stuck entirely to the Minches and the Inner Sounds.  One thing I am perhaps eccentric over: I detest all these modern aids to navigation.  I carry a sextant but never need it.  I have no radio telephone, no echo sounder, no Decca direction finder, and no Aldis signalling lamp.  If anyone wants to talk to me these 'aids to navigation' turn a little ship into a parrot house.  I go afloat to get peace.  For three months every year I never sleep ashore and I never hear a telephone bell."


The photo is on board Latifa.

Yachts Owned

NameRig ClassfromtoMMSI
Violeta Bermudan Sloop 1933 1935  
Latifa W Fife II Yawl 1936 1952-55  
White Phalarope Twin Screw Ketch 1953-56 1978  

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