Maritime Heritage and famous sailors
The incomparable Patna After restoring the 59ft Chas Nicholson Victorian yacht Marigold (and a few other projects) in the 1990s, Greg Powlesland acquired and restored Patna - an exquisite C&N yacht from 1920. This video is from 2015 at the Puig Classics in Barcelona. [/fusion_youtube]https://youtu.be/hzHMwimnJck Greg's status as a restorer of fine [...]
Demeter at Auction. “She sails beautifully, fast, responsive, with a delightfully light touch and fine manners,” says Beccs Polden, as she shares reminiscences of this sweet 21ft canoe-sterned sloop that she last sailed in the late 1990s. Another thing that’s instantly noticeable is Demeter’s very marked resemblance to the work of Albert Strange. Although built [...]
Boatbuilding students from Falmouth Marine School have saved a little bit of Cornish History, with the restoration of a vintage Cornish post boat. The St Michaels Mount Post Boat, managed by the National Trust and St Aubyn Estates was built in 1954 and was historically used to ferry the Island’s mail from the Mainland to [...]
On 20 September 2018, Royal Museums Greenwich (RMG) opened four new permanent galleries following a major £12.6M redevelopment project, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) through The National Lottery (4.6M). With over 1,100 objects going on display, the galleries based in the National Maritime Museum (NMM) will bring the theme of exploration alive, giving [...]
By Mike Smylie One of my very favourite boats is the 18ft Suffolk beach boat Three Sisters, IH81, built in Thorpeness for a Mr Ralph. Several times I’ve been out off the coast between Aldeburgh and Felixstowe drift-netting for herring aboard this boat, with her owner Robert Simper (p60). Ok, so she’s been rebuilt but [...]
In 1952 the Hollywood actor Erroll Flynn took a group of scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography on an expedition south of California and through the Panama canal to the Caribbean, collecting samples for scientific research aboard his schooner, the Zaca. Zaca was a timber hulled auxilliary two-masted schooner of 122 tons and 118ft [...]
(for the 80th Anniversary of her World Water Speed Record) From: David Knight, Secretary, Classic Motor Boat Association; Photos Lisa Beaney After the partial rebuild of the Rolls Royce engine in 2016/17, the two-day test on Bewl Water in September 2017 was a great success. It had taken almost 18 months to get [...]
“After two years of hard work from all involved our goal of being able to show off the museum's collection of yachts and boats in such a historic and eclectic setting has been reached, there is still much work to do so I hope you will all spread the word… the classic boat museum is [...]
Nelson's fore topsail goes on display at the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth for a limited time this summer. Even as the admiral lay dying, deep below decks aboard HMS Victory, during the Battle of Trafalgar on 21st October 1805, the fore topsail of his 104 gun flagship was taking a terrible [...]
