This gansey is named after the Lizzie Lee, a brigantine built in Suffolk in 1856 that worked out of Knottingley, Yorkshire, on the river Aire.
The gent pictured second left, front row in the 1914 photo of the Stainforth Aquatic Sports Committee (see page 74) has a central hearts motif. Due to the poor photo quality, that’s about all I could make out, so, for the rest of this gansey, I used the Walter Fisher photograph of an anonymous girl in Filey (see page 27) in the 1860s or 70s as the girl in this photo has a gansey with lots of cables and masks (diamonds) – precisely the same as many, many inland ganseys. In the Fisher photo, the central panel is not legible but the Stainforth hearts fitted it perfectly.
Brigantines were large, two-masted ships that only worked the larger inland waterways and the coastal trade. So the gansey’s name reflects the fact that these motifs were found on coastal and inland waters, like the brigantines and the motifs on Lizzie Lee are all very common inland ones.