Category: Boatbuilders and restorers

Professional and amateur boat builders and restorers

A 12ft boat in a car boot

Packboat

Pacboat Packboat

This interesting and unusual little boat caught my eye at the Newson’s website. A label says it’s a 12-ft flat bottomed canoe, though I imagine our American cousins would call it a pirogue.

It’s not exactly traditional, but it has been around for quite a while: an old licence plate suggests it was last used on the Thames in 1962. Now cleaned up and re-varnished its ready to be used again.

Can anyone say whether the builders are still around, and has anyone else got anything like it?

See the Packboat at Newson’s website here; also, while you’re there take a peek at the Maurice Griffiths Golden Hind they’ve begun to offer after buying the moulds last year here.

Intheboatshed Search

Weblogs about traditional boats, restoration and boatbuilding

Tonight, I thought I should take a cue from Chine bLog and others, and write a little about some of the other weblogs that I link to in one of the panels on the right-hand side of intheboatshed.net.

I’m going to do this partly out of politeness, as some of them have kindly linked to these pages, and I’m always grateful for any help I get in preventing my weblog sink into WWW anonymity. More than that, however, I’m hoping to show you some material of genuine interest out there.

The Invisible Workshop

The Invisible Workshop is a great favourite at the moment, not least because Continue reading “Weblogs about traditional boats, restoration and boatbuilding”

Prawner project Three Brothers gains some history

Three Brothers

Three Brothers

Some important historical information has emerged regarding a Morecambe Bay prawner or Nobby now being restored at Newson’s, the Three Brothers. Apparently it was named after owner and skipper David Willacy’s three sons. David’s grandson Keith who passed the information on to Newson’s, along with the original specification.

The brothers are pictured at Newson’s website, together with several other old photos and more recent shots of the boat in its condition before restoration began. I gather work should be starting on the boat about now.

Like many people I rather admire the prawners; the low decks and handsome round sterns that made them suitable for prawning make them very elegant, and they seem to be pretty good performers.

Looking around, there are a few links worth looking at:

The Fleetwood Museum has this gallery and this jolly exploration sequence. Isn’t it a shame that essentially educational organisations seem to feel that the pictures they put up have to be so small that you can see few if any details?