Gavin Atkin's weblog for the sort of people who like looking inside boat sheds. It's about old boats, traditional boats, boat building, restoration, the sea and the North Kent Coast
Traditions and culture relevant to the world of real boating and sailors
I recommend this for its insights, entertaining salty writin and L Francis Herreshoff’s trenchant opinions (though you may not always agree), and of course Off Center Harbor’s videos are just great.
My thanks to Lew Clayman for pointing it out. He knows what I like…
The little town of Salcombe at the southern tip of Devon has a smashing, packed little community museum that’s open from 10.30am-12.30pm from April to October – it’s definitely worth a trip, as it’s full of great exhibits about shipping, boatbuilding, fishing and pleasure boating.
One of the many things I learned was that Tennyson wrote his iconic poem Crossing the Bar in 1889 after arriving at Salcombe in a very impressive and comfortable looking steam yacht.
I wonder what the bar looked like that day, and what stories he heard about it. That bar has a history: just a generation after Tennyson wrote his poem in 1916 the town experienced a terrible lifeboat disaster in which 13 crewmen drowned.
If you can take a dinghy down for a sail or a motor on the lovely estuary, I recommend that too…
The Royal Academy is celebrating the 250th anniversay of Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific with an exhibition of the art of the region of Oceania: Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.
I think it’s will be a fascinating, complex day out for those of us who can get there. Here’s what the Royal Academy says about it:
‘The year is 1768, and Britain is in the throes of the Age of Enlightenment. As a group of artists agrees to found the Royal Academy, Captain James Cook sets sail on a voyage of discovery to track the transit of Venus and search for terra australis incognita – the unknown southern continent, as Europeans called it. What Cook and his crew encounter on arrival is a vast number of island civilisations covering almost a third of the world’s surface: from Tahiti in Polynesia, to the scattered archipelagos and islands of Melanesia and Micronesia.
‘The indigenous populations they met came with their own histories of inter-island trade, ocean navigation, and social and artistic traditions. This spectacular exhibition will reveal these narratives – celebrating the original, raw and powerful art that in time would resonate across the European artistic sphere.
‘Oceania will bring together around 200 exceptional works from public and private collections worldwide, and will span over 500 years. From shell, greenstone and ceramic ornaments, to huge canoes and stunning god images, we explore important themes of voyaging, place making and encounter. The exhibition draws from rich historic ethnographic collections dating from the 18th century to the present, and includes seminal works produced by contemporary artists exploring history, identity and climate change.’
Meanwhile, there has been considerable excitement over a claim by archaeologists that they have identified what they believe to be the wreck of the Endeavour, Cook’s ship on his voyage of two and a half centuries ago.
My thanks to regular contributor Chris Brady for the interesting Royal Academy link.