Year: 2009

Ella skiff – drawings for making a model of the stitch and glue 12ft skiff

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Panels for model-making

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Ella dinghy, lines and internal arrangement

The Ella skiff has made a bit more progress this evening. I’m pleased to say that we’ve now got a pdf file of the drawings needed to make a simple model ready to be downloaded and printed out.

The boat’s become a little simpler than the initial drawing showed. There’s no forward rowing position, for example, because I couldn’t find a way of fitting it into the panels above – and I didn’t want to go beyond three and a half sheets of ply for this boat.

If you’re interested in her, all you need to do to make a model is to take a printout, stick it to a piece of cereal packet, cut out the various panels and make up the model with sticky tape. Here’s one example of how this kind of model can look; here’s a second example made by the excellent Ben Crawshaw; and here’s a third example made by Woody Jones, and complete with little wire figures made to scale.

If anyone out there makes a model of this little boat, I’d be very grateful to see them, and to be able to post them here at intheboatshed.net!

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Keelman and war hero Jack Crawford nails his colours to the mast

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Jack Crawford climbs the rigging

Searching a few weeks ago for information about a quite different Jack Crawford, I learned about the one pictured above.

He was a keelman from Sunderland until he was press-ganged into the Royal Navy in his early 20s, and found himself on board HMS Venerable under Admiral Duncan, the Royal Navy Commander-in-Chief of the North Seas. The story of this Jack Crawford’s fame, though, begins at the battle of Camperdown, in 1797, when the British and Dutch navies met in battle off the coast of Norway, near Camperdown, close to Bergen.

Instead of forming a line of ships, Admiral Duncan split the British fleet into two groups, which broke through the Dutch ships, firing broadsides. Although a daring move, it was successful because the Dutch ships were not yet ready for battle, and it prevented the Dutch fleet from joining the French navy in order to invade Ireland.

HMS Venerable’s main mast was broken in the fighting, but while under heavy fire the young Jack climbed it and nailed the Union Jack to it. This was the command flag of Admiral of the Fleet, and was both an  important identifier and a symbol of British power.

The loss of the flag could be a great blow to morale and could affect a battle, and the phrases to ‘nail your colours to the mast’ and ‘show your true colours’ are believed to refer to the importance of these flags.

In recognition Jack was later formally presented to King George III and granted a pension.

For much more on this story, the monuments to this local hero and information on material in Sunderland’s museum, click here.

Jamie Poynton and friends build a stitch-and-glue runabout

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Jamie Poynton and friends built this 14ft vee-bottomed stitch and glue
marine ply and epoxy runabout at the Boat Building Academy

Boat Building Academy principal Yvonne Green has sent us still more great photos from the Academy’s  student launch day in December, this time of a stitch and glue runabout built by Jamie Poynton and friends. Thanks again Yvonne!

Jamie lives in Axmouth, near Lyme Regis and for a while commuted weekly to Eel Pie Island in London to work with his grandad, who was renovating a 1950s tug.

City & Guilds awarded him a full bursary to enable him to join the course at the Boat Building Academy.  With help from fellow students Seb Evans and guitar maker Rob Murphy, Jamie built a  14ft vee-bottomed stitch and glue outboard runabout in marine ply, based on a V-shaped ski boat.

Yvonne calls this the Chanel boat because of it’s clean, simple look, posh laid mahogany deck and beautifully finished black and white paintwork, black carpet and white leatherette seating, and adds that the photo at the top (Jamie in the back, Rob and Seb in the front) sums up the atmosphere in their particular part of the workshop during the course.  ‘It was fantastic seeing them thrilled by their own achievement and looking cool on launch day’, she says.

The form of the boat was created by Academy instructor Mike Broome, who also designed Bob Hinks’s boat Cirrus. Jamie wanted to build a ski boat, so Mike produced a lines drawing (14ft  loa, 5ft 4in beam, 22 degrees deadrise, 12ft lwl). The bow was a conical development and the panel shapes were generated by first building a panel half model at 2in:1ft from modelling ply. The finished design in terms of deck layout and interior evolved as the boat was built.

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PS Don’t forget to ask for a pdf copy of the Academy’s prospectus for the coming year, as it makes interesting reading. Email Yvonne at office@boatbuildingacademy.com and I’m sure she’ll send you a copy.

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