HUGH (JIMMY) CLIFFORD
World Record Marathoner
By Phil Collings

Hugh (Jimmy) Clifford had several claims to fame. In his youth, he sailed from England to the West Indies to go shark hunting where he had many adventures at sea. Late in his life he became a marathon runner and set the world record for the over 80’s age group.

Jimmy Clifford's date of birth is variously given as 1907 and 1910, but at any rate he was a teenager or a little older when in February 1928 he joined the crew of the schooner Red Riding Hood at Shoreham-on-sea in England, bound for British Honduras (now Belize) in the West Indies. The skipper was Frank Milton: the crew J.V. Grey, Geoffrey Baxter and Joe Billoux. Hugh Clifford (then known to his friends as Jimmy) was engineer. The Red Riding Hood displaced 12 tons and while she had an auxiliary engine she had no radio. The voyage had a commercial purpose. Skipper Milton had been informed that a recent technical development had made it possible for sharkskin to be used “for the industrial manufacture of shoes and other accessories”, and to utilize almost every part of the carcass. The plan was to sail the Red Riding Hood to Belize (then British Honduras) and use her as the base for a commercial shark fishery.

On February the 14 1928, they put to sea from Shoreham–on-sea, on the south coast of England. The English Channel is notorious for its bad temper and sure enough the crew was sick, they shipped a heavy sea, the engine stopped, and they had to put in at Newhaven, only a short distance from Shoreham, for rest and repairs. Their next leg to a Falmouth in Cornwall was covered in 2 days and on February 25th, having completed their last minute preparations; they struck out into the open Atlantic...