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Boatbuilding Academy staff and students are brimming with pride because graduate Marc Chivers’ full-size replica of an early 20th century pilot punt is now the centre-piece of an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, London. (See more photos of Marc’s boat here.)

The exhibition, The Boats That Built Britain, explores our island nation’s intimate connection to the sea through great maritime stories from the 15th to 20th centuries, and is running in conjunction with the BBC4 series Sea Fever.

The show’s being staged in partnership with National Historic Ships and is accompanied by a series of interesting-sounding lectures – read more about the show here. It runs from the 8th May until November, and I gather a podcast interview with Marc will appear on the Museum website shortly.

The TV series is well worth watching, even if Tom Cunliffe’s somewhat presentation is at times a bit to gung-ho and even and at times a mite misleading. (British sailors had struggled to deal with Barbary pirates whose ships went well to windward long before the Pickle see an earlier post on this issue, but TC chose to over-simplicate that point.) No doubt hyped-up presentation is the modern way and just what the production folks wanted.

These trifles apart, these shows are still well worth half an hour of anyone’s time. The Sea Fever programmes telling the story of HMS Pickle and the Matthew are on the BBC iPlayer as I write, if you can get them directly or via a proxy.

Marc’s boat, Defiant of Lyme Regis, was built as part of the BBA’s 38-week boatbuilding course. I gather Marc lives just a few miles away from us in Kent – so I must try to meet him some time. His website, which includes the story of how he transported Defiant to the exhibition, is at http://www.marcsboats.co.uk.

Particular thanks to Emma Brice at the BBA at Lyme for the story and photos.

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Here’s an interesting glimpse into the distant past – a collection of tunes from a book kept by a fiddle player called William Litton while he served aboard two merchant ships in the years 1800-2. The tunes here are played by a fiddler called Garrisson Frolick, and were recorded several decades ago.

My thanks to Chris Brady for pointing out this link.

The City of Adelaide again. Photo courtesy of Paula Palmer of
the National Historic Ships

Rather late in the day, I’ve just received news of the last chance to save the other’ last clipper, the City of Adelaide from the Australian group trying to preserve her.

There’s more information on the history of the ship and their campaign and appeal here, and also a gut-wrenching open letter to the people of the UK and our political leaders. It seems unthinkable to let a clipper from the middle of the 19th century go now after surviving so long.

This is the message I’ve received:

‘On the 22nd October, the Scottish Maritime Museum issued a tender for the demolition of the City of Adelaide. Tenders close on Monday 23rd November.

‘We are preparing an offer to submit by the deadline on Monday. Our offer will be based on removing the City of Adelaide whole and thus save her from being permanently lost to future generations.

‘We urgently seek your help to raise an additional A$200,000 to enable us to bid a lower price for our tender submission. This will improve our competitiveness against the cheaper chainsaw and bulldozer options.

‘We already have offers of in-kind support from industry for labour and materials that will be needed in Scotland and Australia but we need more industrial in-kind help. If you are in a heavy engineering industry and believe that you could supply labour, steel and/or equipment for use either in Australia or Scotland then we are most keen for you to contact us This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

‘At this time we would like to acknowledge the support of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects (London) commemorating their 150th year 1860-2010, and Aztec Analysis (Adelaide) heavy lift engineers.

‘We do need more support. Would you please consider supporting our cause to save the City of Adelaide clipper through a financial contribution?’

In publicising the Australian claim to rescuing the dear old City of Adelaide, I’m in danger of forgetting another aspect of the story – the fact that there are people in Sunderland, where she was built, who would also dearly love to retrieve her and care for her. In fact, one of that illustrious town’s councillors recently camped on board the old ship to draw attention to her plight. See the BBC’s news story here.