Maritime Heritage and famous sailors
Schoolboy Cathal gets a hands-on history lesson A bored schoolboy who abandoned his homework to go paddling in a lake uncovered an ancient boat that could be more than 4,000 years old. The 17ft longboat was lodged in the mud in the lake at the back of 12-year-old Cathal McDonagh's home in Lisacul, Castlerea, Co [...]
An elegiac film on Cdr Bill King RN who entered the 1968 Golden Globe race in his cold-moulded two masted junk rig schooner Galway Blazer II. With no shrouds or guard rails it looks a frightening boat to be on deck, especially looking at that camber but King rigged a wire jackstay from stem to [...]
The boat that inspired Arthur Ransome. Peter Willis talks to Dan Houston about his lifelong passion for the children's author Arthur Ransome and his 1931 Hillyard cutter Nancy Blackett. Peter was recognised in the 2019 Royal Yachting Association Volunteer Awards with a Lifetime Commitment Award for his 22 years with the Nancy Blackett Trust, [...]
ACTIV OF LONDON Polar legend has it that the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen dreamt up the ideal Arctic ship by gazing at an olive stone. Pressed laterally, its curves would slide its body upwards. So, he thought, a vessel could escape ice by getting pushed up and floating above it. This was the principle behind [...]
Short film showing the scuttling of the 18th century wooden-wall 74-gun ship HMS Implacable by the Royal Navy in 1949, after she was towed from Portsmouth out to Saint Catherine's Deep, a spot east of the Isle of Wight on December 2. Charges were placed in her bilges and in the film she sinks quickly [...]
Having hosted his own Museum of Knots and Sailors' Ropework in his Ipswich back garden since 1996 the red-capped sage-of-sennit Des Pawson had another knotty problem to solve... Namely what to do with the hundreds of exhibits when he gets too old to look after them? The collection spans decades of dedication to all things [...]
Waldringfield Sailing Club, River Deben, Suffolk By Julia Jones. The weekend of September 5th-7th 2019 saw Waldringfield Sailing Club celebrating 70 years of its 14ft (4.3m) one- design ‘Dragonfly’ class (1949). And in a return match for when Waldringfield boats attended the Irish Dinghy Racing Association's 70th celebrations at Clontarf in 2016, there were three [...]
The full-rigged or fully-rigged ship was an excellent example of early industrial standardisation, writes Dan Houston. With the trade of the sailor being international there was a need to rig ships in the same way, so that when new crew came aboard they needed little time to familiarise themselves; all the rigging, sheets, buntlines, haliards, [...]
Trafalgar Day, 21 October, not only marks one of Admiral Nelson's great sea victories, in 1805, but also his demise and the beginning of a tradition known as the Immortal Memory – where basically you toast him and his deeds. Without advocating any drunkenness on watch at sea, the proposal to splice the mainbrace to [...]
