The first Tenby lugger to be built in over 100 years took to the water in Milford Haven last week for sea trials ahead of a special naming ceremony in Tenby Harbour on Sunday.

During its heyday in the late 19th century, the Tenby lugger was one of the most recognisable fishing boat types along the Welsh coast. They were open boats varying in length from 16-28-foot and they all carried the unique Tenby rig of a dipping lug mainsail and sprit mizzen. Around 70 were registered at Tenby between 1890 and WWI.

The advent of steam-powered fishing boats sounded the death-knell for the traditional wooden sailing luggers which once filled Tenby harbour, but some survived until relatively recently, taking tourists on fishing trips round the bay or across to Caldey.

In 2011, the MITEC boatbuilding school in Milford Haven began building the first new Tenby lugger since about 1900. This was a replica of Sea Horse, a lugger built in Tenby in 1885 measuring 24-foot long by eight-foot 10-inches beam, with a depth inside of three-foot eight-inches. Fortunately, a set of detailed drawings of the original boat existed, having been made in 1936 as part of a nationwide project to record traditional fishing craft.

Of larch-on-oak construction, the new lugger was begun by students on the MITEC boatbuilding course using traditional methods. It was hoped that the replica lugger would be launched in May 2013, but only the hull had been completed when the course was discontinued.

In July 2017, the unfinished hull was presented to the West Wales Maritime Heritage Trust and moved to its HQ in Front Street, Pembroke Dock - not far from the last remaining Tenby lugger, Margaret, which the Trust has acquired from the Museums and Galleries of Wales and is striving to restore to sailing condition.

However, for the past 12 months, the Trust members have been concentrating their efforts on finishing the replica lugger, with the aid of a generous donation by a local businessman, fitting an auxiliary engine and rigging the spars and sails.

Following successful sea trials, the lugger - named Heritage - will be taken round to Tenby harbour by her skipper Rob Phillips, of Pembroke Dock, for a special civic reception and naming ceremony alongside the Sailing Club, at 5 pm, on Sunday, July 29.