intheboatshed.net

The Kent-built Gadfly II

Simon Papendick has written to give us an update to the earlier posts about the small cruising boat he’s currently restoring, Gadfly II, and to ask for help in finding more information. (For more on Gadfly II, click here.)

Here’s what he has to say:

Hi Gavin:

Thanks to Classic Boat, I now have some new information about my yacht Gadfly II.

It would appear that the boat was build in the 1930s in Whitstable, Kent for a local builder, and that she was the second of three boats he commissioned. I have information about her first years in Kent from the 1930s through to 1949, and then I have more details about her whereabouts in the early 1960s – but then the trail goes cold from 1964 until the early 2000’s when the last owner purchased bought her.

If anyone has any information about Gadfly II’s whereabouts in the missing years, could they please let me know?

During the World War II I gather she had a small mishap when she was almost destroyed by German bombs that where dropped near where she was being stored.

The original owner of the boat only passed away a few years ago, as did the foreman of the yard that build her.

If any of your readers can come up with more information about the boat it would be most helpful.

Regards

Simon

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Atalanta owned by Dominic Dobson. As usual, click on the photo for a larger image

A white-hulled Atalanta and a teal blue-hulled Titania photographed at
the Beale Park Thames Boat show a couple of years ago

Owners of boats made by Fairey Marine have created a new website and forum at http://www.atalantaowners.org.uk.

The Atalanta light displacement drop-keel sailingl cruiser was conceived in 1955 by Alan Vines, a senior executive at Fairey. It was developed with the expertise of Uffa Fox, and made from hot moulded agba veneers using a technology originally developed for wooden aircraft during World War II.

Although the prototype was 24ft long – named Atalanta she is is still sailing the East Coast with the sail number A1 – but by the time the finalised boat went into production, the length had been increased to 26ft in order to improve her accommodation.

The company went on to produce other drop-keel sailing cruisers using the same methods, the Titania, the larger Atalanta 31 and the smaller Fulmar.

Although the hot-moulded agba veneer proved to be strong, light, durable and repairable, the designs eventually became uncompetitive compared with GRP boats, and production ceased in the early 1970s, after some 278 boats of all four types had been built. Today, over 130 continue to be owned by members of the Association.

For a post about some hot- moulded Fairey Marine-built dinghies, click here.

I gather that Atalanta Owners’ patron is ex Fairey director Charles Currey, whose airborne lifeboat converted for racing can be seen here.

Dominic’s Atalanta on Coniston Water shows the benefit of sailing a trailer-sailer

Emma Duck, which I gather belongs to Association member Tom Lawton. Now, is she an Atalanta or a Titania? The teal-blue hull may be a clue – or not!

Mark 7 military canoes. Photos supplied by Quentin Rees
and published with permission

Quentin Rees’s recent book Cockleshell Canoes is a thoroughly researched and well illustrated celebration of a group of people who have become part of canoe history.

Some, such as Blondie Hasler and the team of commandos who took part in the daring Operation Frankton are already well known. Commemorated in a major film titled Cockleshell Heroes, it was an attack by ten commandos in canoes on Bordeaux Harbour in occupied France during December 1942. British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill believed the mission shortened World War II by six months, and Admiral the Earl Mountbatten deemed it as the ‘most courageous and imaginative of all the raids ever carried out by the men of Combined Operations Commands‘.

Sadly, most of the brave individuals involved were eventually captured and shot by the Germans, who at that time regarded commandos as equivalent to spies.

However, the roles of many others have previously remained unsung. In this book Rees has weaved together real-life testimonies from the stories of the courageous soldiers who used the canoes, their military commanders, and the canoes’ inventors and designers, and tells of an epic journey of progress that took canoe development took from Cornwall, all along the Southern English Coast and beyond – even to the tropical island of Ceylon.

The canoes proved to be valuable in many of the theatres of WWII, and thousands of the various models were sent worldwide, often being used by the various Special Forces, including by the the espionage specialists of Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Click here to buy a copy from Amazon – The Cockleshell Canoes: British Military Canoes of World War Two.

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