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
A fabulous shot from 1895! For more from the Australian National Maritime Museum, click here. My thanks to Dale Appleton for spotting this one – and for saving my blushes at various times.
Dale (see his comment below) tells me that you can read about this race for sailing canoes on the ANMM website.
The Thames Heritage Alliance is a new organisation that hopes to become the voice for those concerned to protect and promote the heritage and of the Thames – including its historic maritime sites, boatyards and so on.
It’s still a tiny acorn – but from tiny acorns might oaks frequently grow, and I hope this one does exactly that.
It’s sorely needed. As we have seen at Faversham, Brightlingsea and elsewhere, the heritage of The Thames is under threat as never before from commercial and residential development and anything messy and noisy – such as working boatyards – being driven out, not least because they can’t compete when waterside property values are sky-high.
The Alliance says that the Thames’s historic boatyards, slipways, quays, wharves and docks were a crucial part of Britain’s remarkable maritime history. From the time of the Tudors – especially King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth – right through to Lord Nelson and Winston Churchill – sailors and boat-builders along the great River Thames have contributed so much to our national defence and pride.
By linking some of these rare and historic places together, the Thames Heritage Alliance hopes to drawing attention to their importance, and to help them survive in the age of high-rise and high-price property development.
The Alliance’s founding members are working to protect Faversham Creek, Convoy’s Wharf at Deptford and the historic waterfront at Northfleet.
Here’s a fine example of the ‘patronising bollocks’ school of film-making from British Pathé, dated 1946.
Dated it certainly is. The unblushing announcer geezer announces resonantly to his microphone placed several feet away, and is full of praise for how the girls now know everything, while the cameraman focuses on one of them attaching a line to a cleat in a way that’s unlikely to hold securely. Click in the image above to go to the site where you can see this not-quite-charming masterpiece from an age when everyone knew their place, long before feminism!