Paul Thomas remembers brilliant Brooms, builders of special yachts and motor boats and his friendship with founder Martin Broom MBE
Boats have been much of my life… the apples of my eye. Here in Norfolk, over four decades I owned a wonderful sailing yacht, then also three motor boats we took abroad as well as around the UK – all created by members of the Broom family, Britain’s oldest boat-builder, 112 years of it.
I started in boats 70 years ago – at the age of 11 on the Norfolk Broads, in a holiday hire boat.
A couple of years, and holidays later, we hired the Broom cruiser Captain Five, a magnificent boat – and met Martin Broom. Nearly 20 year later, after much dinghy racing and many more boating holidays, I fell for and bought a gaff topsail sloop, Bessie Bell, built by a member of the original Broom family in 1898.
After 20 years racing and cruising the Bell, my wife Mary (introduced to me earlier as crew to the Bessie Bell) and I decided to buy a Broom motor boat… and serious coastal and international cruising began. Our first, and greatest Broom, was Cider…
