November / December 2025

OVERLORD

A prize of war

Text and photographs by Nic Compton

The sloop OVERLORD (ex-PELIKAN) was built in 1936 as a training vessel for the German military. Seized by the British as a prize after World War II, she similarly served British soldiers for more than a decade before becoming a club boat—a role in which she still serves. Despite the gusty conditions seen here off Portsmouth, England, she is fast and comfortable under reefed main and Yankee jib.

t’s easy to miss a small detail screwed onto the cabin side. It was only after going below on my own as we were sailing across a choppy Solent that I fully registered it. And then it stopped me in my tracks: a small wooden panel, no more than 5" tall by 3" wide, with two brass plaques screwed onto it. The top one shows an image of an eagle with wings outspread, holding a swastika in its claws: the unmistakable symbol of the German Luftwaffe.

Above the logo are the words Standort Segel Wettfahrten (Area Sailing Race); under it is inscribed 1. Preis 11.7.43 (First prize).

The second plaque reads:

PELIKAN

Regatta Greifswald-Peenemünder-Bodden

Skipper Oberleutnant Wilhelm Meyer

The indication is that PELIKAN competed in an event from Greifswald-Peenemünder-Bodden, near the border with Poland, skippered by Oberleutnant (First Lieutenant) Wilhelm Meyer, and won the race.

The plaque is a powerful reminder of the provenance of this yacht: she was built for the Luftwaffe in 1936 and used by its crews for recreation and team-building exercises both before and during World War II. It’s also a fascinating testimony that in June 1943, nearly four years into the bloodiest war in human history, the Luftwaffe found time to organize a yacht race along Germany’s Baltic coast. The following month, more than 1,500 Luftwaffe aircraft were destroyed, one of the highest tolls in its existence, and within the year it would be all but wiped out as an effective fighting force—and all thoughts of German yacht racing erased for the foreseeable future.

Yet, out of that darkness something joyful emerged. At war’s end, PELIKAN was seized by the British armed forces as a prize of war, along with dozens of other craft, collectively known as the “windfall yachts.” She was sailed across the North Sea and, renamed OVERLORD, sailed by British regiments in much the same way that she had been by the Germans, even competing in several races from 1949 onward.

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