Category: Traditional carvel

Traditional carvel plans and boatbuilding

Herefordshire builds a new River Wye trow for the Queen’s Jubilee

Wye trow being built at boat builders T Neilsen of Gloucester Docks for the Royal Jubilee

We’ve just heard the exciting news that the folks of Herefordshire are building a new Wye trow to represent the county during the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in June 2012.

My thanks to Intheboatshed.net regular Chris Perkins for alerting me to this story. As he says, the new Wye trow will make great company at the Queen’s rowing event for the St Ayles skiff Ulla, which is also taking part.

Not that Ulla will be short of company: the boating pageant will involve some 1,000 boats led by the Queen in a Royal Barge passing from Battersea Bridge to Tower Bridge on the 3rd June. As many as a million spectators are expected to turn out to watch.

When Herefordshire was asked if it would like to take part, Deputy Lord Lieutenant Bob Tabor recruited four retired naval personnel living in the county  together with the rowing director of Ross Rowing Club to work with him and embarked on the project to build a new Wye Trow. It will no doubt be the first such vessel to be built for more than a century, if not a century and a half.

The building work, which is being paid for by private sponsorship, is being carried out buy boat builders T Neilsen & Co at Gloucester Docks. ) Larch trees for planking, some oak for the frames and a Douglas fir for the mast were donated by Major David Davenport from the Foxley Estate, while the rest of the oak was been provided by Sir John Cotterell of Garnons Estate and Michael Stern of Ty Olchon Timber. The timber was transported by local company ABE (Ledbury).

(Sam Llewellyn author and publisher of the beautifully made Marine Quarterly has been in touch to say that much of the timber for the Wye trow was chosen and sawn by Willy Bullough of Whitney Sawmill. Thanks Sam! I’ll be reporting on the latest MQ when I’ve finished enjoying it!)

Following lofting the new boat began to take shape during December 2011. Some 36ft long and with a 9ft beam, it will have eight oars. Following the Jubilee, it will be fitted with a mast for sailing.

Trows were used to transport freight on the Rivers Wye and Severn in the 18th and 19th centuries: they were flat-bottomed barges with shallow draught, and were powered by sail, or drawn by horses or men. The River Wye trows were built at Hereford and at other places along the river used to move general cargoes including coal and wood, cider and wool up river as far as Leominster on the River Lugg. Their heyday ended with the coming of the railway. Only one complete trow still exists, a River Severn trow that is kept at the Ironbridge Museum in Shropshire.

The story of the trows is described in this interesting Village News article. I was particularly struck by the reference to the Purton hulks: a particular point on the river became a graveyard for unwanted vessels starting from an exercise in 1909 in which a series of redundant craft were placed there to stop the river bank from eroding. More and more craft, including trows, were placed there over the years and it became a tremendous repository of historic craft – and has now been recognised by British Waterways, which now owns the site. Read about the Purton hulks here, here and here.

Photographer Matthew Atkin in the Phi-Phi Islands of Thailand

Matt Atkin photographs long-tail boats in the Phi-Phi Islands of Thailand

Matt Atkin photographs long-tail boats in the Phi-Phi Islands of Thailand Matt Atkin photographs long-tail boats in the Phi-Phi Islands of Thailand Matt Atkin photographs long-tail boats in the Phi-Phi Islands of Thailand

Matt Atkin photographs long-tail boats in the Phi-Phi Islands of Thailand Matt Atkin photographs long-tail boats in the Phi-Phi Islands of Thailand

These long-tailed boats in the Phi-Phi Islands are of Thailand were photographed by my Far-East based brother Matthew Atkin a little while ago. Lovely work once again Matt – thanks!

The boats are interesting with their proud bows, canoe-like form and brightly coloured cloth charms – I bet they go well – and because they are the predominant local form of transport on islands with few motor vehicles. So here we have wood-built craft carrying people and goods by sea, and for me at least it’s a powerful reminder of a time in our own islands in the UK that we can only read about in the history books.

Rescue Wooden Boats starts restoration work at Morston

Rescue Wooden Boats Rescue Wooden Boats

Rescue Wooden Boats is a fairly new charitable trust established in 2010 with the aim of restoring and use old wooden craft, and to teach people about their history and the skills involved in their construction, maintenance and use.

The organisation, which has premises at Morston, has acquired three boats:

  • Lucy Lavers (pictured above in her heyday, and as work began in December 2011), a single-screw Liverpool-type lifeboat built in 1940 for Aldeburgh Lifeboat Station. Her first service was the Dunkirk evacuation in the early part of World War II. She later served as a relief lifeboat at Wells-next-the-Sea and elsewhere along the East Coast. She was donated to Rescue Wooden Boats by the Dunkirk Little Ships Restoration Trust
  • Black Beauty, a North Norfolk crab boat built in 1950 by Emery for Dick Davis. She was donated by Andy Frary, who used her as a crab boat until the mid-1980s
  • Bessie, a whelker provided by Trevor Farman. She was built by Johnson in the mid 1930s for the Cox family who whelked with her out of Wells-next-the-Sea for three decades. Squeakie Bishop then bought her and used her for angling parties from Blakeney and then Gorleston, where she continued to be used as a pleasure and fishing boat. She is one of only a few remaining Johnson-built whelkers but is said to be in reasonably good condition

As is the way with these things, the Rescue Wooden Boats folks need members, donations of money, materials and skills. They are currently searching for an original canopy for the Lucy Lavers – if you know about one, please contact them!