Maritime Link

Tucked away in a side street of Romsey, this plaque commemorates the market town’s extraordinary links with maritime history.
The Rev Edward Lyon Berthon was vicar of Romsey in the 19th century and an inventor.
Most of his projects were maritime related, but it was his development of folding lifeboats which set the company which carried his name on the road to fame.
And they were produced in Romsey on a site just a few hundred yard’s from the town’s Norman Abbey, some 20 miles inland from the present home of the Berthon Boat Company at Lymington.
The Rev Berthon developed his folding lifeboat as far back as 1849 but it was not until he became vicar of Romsey in 1873 that he began perfecting the boat, and founded the company to build them in 1877. He died in 1899 but manufacture was carried on by the company run by his son.
It was some years later in 1917 that the May family bought the Berthon company and a year later a shipyard at Lymington. The two were soon merged and the present Berthon boat business established on the present site in Lymington as one of the most prominent marine businesses on the south coast.

Yet this plaque placed by the Romsey and District Society on a wall in the town’s Lortemore Place is an important commemoration of part of the town’s heritage of 100 years ago.