About us

The Festival, along with most other events in the town have been organised for the last ten years by the Whitehaven Maritime Festival Company Ltd which was founded in 1998. Since then, this entirely volunteer board of Directors have organised several festivals, an Orchestral Concert, Continental Markets and many tall ship visits. We've been credited with entertaining around 3/4m people since 1998 and with bringing in millions of pounds of income to West Cumbria.
We could not operate without the close support and freindship of several organisations, particularly the Harbour Commissioners who let us play on their land and Copeland Borough Council whose support accross the political divide has been fabulous since we started.

The current board is:

Gerard Richardson: Chief Executive
Chief Executive and founder of the festival. One of two of the original team, Gerard is a local businessman who runs a fine wine merchants and outside catering business with his wife Dianne. married with four children, he has also been a local magistrate for 12 years. A former naval air mechanic and fireman, he started his own business in Whitehaven in 1994.

Catherine Nicholson: Company Secretary and Treasurer
Company Secretary and Treasurer and the only other member of the original team. Catherine is the accountancy services manager for Copeland Borough Council. Married with two children, Catherine's commitment to the local community is also shown in her service as the treasurer of St. Bridget's after school club in Brigham.

Colin Edgar
40, has been editor of the Whitehaven News since 2004 (and a Cumbrian Newspapers journalist since 1984) and succeeded previous editor Hilary Scott as a Director of the Festival. Colin, whose wife Christine also works in a Whitehaven town centre business. Works closely with Gerard Richardson in publicising and promoting the festival.
"To every cynic who says the press only report the bad news," he says, "I'd point them to the Whitehaven International Maritime Festival. The phrase 'feel-good factor' was surely made for it."

Sherrie Lewthwaite: Marketing Director
Sherrie has worked with the festival behind the scenes for several years, joining the board in 2005. Sherrie is employed by Copeland Council and works on the regeneration team.

Mike Little
profile coming soon...

Andrew Lennie 
Andrew is our show director and with his team at World Wide Events in Penrith, they are responsible for the Helath and Safety and physical organising of the event. It's a mammoth task which World Wide Events are especially skilled for and we're delighted have them on board.