Local History

Dame Ellen MacArthur MBE. 7th February, 2005.

Monday the 7th of February 2005 has become and will remain, a day to be long remembered. Well done Dame Ellen MacArthur.

Over very many years I have personally witnessed some outstanding welcomes Falmouth has given to returning seafarers, starting with that accorded to Captain Kurt Carlson of the “Flying Enterprise”. He spent his first night ashore at our hotel. I was out on the water to greet Sir Robin Knox Johnson as he sailed in after his solo circumnavigation. He too came to Meudon that night to meet Sir Francis Chichester. The welcome I saw accorded to Dame Ellen MacArthur surpassed all others and was so very well deserved.

In a strange way single handed sailing around the world had a connection with Meudon becoming an hotel! In the late 50’s and early 60’s my wife and I were running the next door hotel, Trelawne. When we heard that Lady Worley had died and “Meudon Vean” was on the market we were interested, but needed advise. I telephoned a friend in Birmingham who had an estate management company; he I thought would guide us in the right direction. After a few minutes the conversation ended with no constructive advice! Next morning when we woke up, there was “Rusty” asleep in his car. “After talking to you last night I thought I ought to come down straight away and talk you out of it”, he said.

To say a big thank you for all his help I asked what he would like to do while in Cornwall. The answer, “I would love to sail a boat, something I have never done before”. That part was easy for me and it was soon clear that he was ‘hooked’. Within a few weeks he had bought a boat, sold his business and set off to sail around the world. That was before either Sir Francis Chichester or Sir Alec Rose! “Rusty” Webb was doing it strictly for his own enjoyment and shunned publicity. He died while leaving Port Stanley on his second solo circumnavigation, bound for Easter Island – the wrong way round The Horn. As his waving friends watched, his yacht “Flyd” turned and ran aground on a sandy shore. When they got to him he still had his hand around the tiller. Typing “Rusty Webb” into a search engine you will find the details I have provided about him. His headstone in Port Stanley reads simply:-

“Rusty Webb, solo circumnavigator”.

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