The Peyton Way

Yachting Cartoonist Mike Peyton, Who Died In January, Touched So Many Lives With His Art And Sense Of Humour, But He Was First And Foremost A Great Sailor
 

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Not many readers of this column will have failed to come across the cartoons of Mike Peyton. Whatever branch of yachting is our choice, Mike caught us to a tee. His ability to squeeze the juice out of a situation we all have shared, while populating it with characters we know so well, was unique. He died in January at a fine old age and will be sorely missed, both by those privileged to be close to him and by a wider circle of friends who knew him through his work. Mike was one of the few men left with whom we could talk about the Second World War. He was born in a Durham mining village in 1921, lied about his age to sign up, fought in the desert with the eighth army, was captured, escaped twice, but still spent enough time in a POW camp to hone his skill at spotting the ridiculous and committing it to paper.

The early post-war years led Mike to Essex, where he became a bargain basement yachtsman. He started with no experience at all, and the creeks of the Thames and the North Sea fed his art and gave the rest of us a priceless mirror on our own efforts. The extract below is from his book, Quality Time (Fernhurst), a collection of reminiscences and cartoons describing a different world from our own. The photographs are from Dick Durham’s excellent biography of Mike (Peyton, The World’s Greatest Yachting Cartoonist - Adlard Coles). Both books are on my bedside table. On the wall next to them is a framed cartoon Mike doodled for me on the back of a cigarette packet. It shows a desert island with two shipwrecked sailors scowling at the mast of a sunken yacht. The caption? ‘If ever I meet that Tom Cunliffe…’