Category: Locations

A wonderful shed at Bosham – and an even more wonderful zulu skiff!

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A wonderful boatbuilding shed at Bosham - and a wonderful zulu!

This all-mod-cons boatbuilding shed at Bosham is on sale via estate agents Jackson-Stops and Staff in Chichester

A wonderful shed at Bosham - and a wonderful zulu restored by Nick Gates!

Zulu skiff Ocean Pearl restored by Nick Gates

Family matters and moving house are conspiring to keep me away from my computer and the Internet this week, but I’ve just about found time to put a post and these photos up from Chris Partridge. South Coast boatbuilders look out – this could be just the shed for you!

‘How about this for a boat shed? It has all the new technology including dust control, insulation, three phase power etc etc. Luxury!

‘It was built on the site of the old Combes yard at Bosham, entirely because the developer wasn’t allowed to cover the site with houses. The local council and the harbour conservancy didn’t want to lose all capacity for
boatbuilding in the area. Unfortunately, it seems likely that the shed will be demolished and replaced with a house anyway – an estate agent chum ofmine says it is to be sold with one of the new houses, and the owner is likely to hang on to it for a year, and make an application to replace it with a house on the grounds that no-one wants to build boats in it. So if anyone wants a cracking boatshed, apply to Jackson-Stops and Staff in Chichester.

‘I took the snap while out rowing, and coincidentally passed Ocean Pearl, a 1933 zulu skiff that originally fished out of Peterhead. She was restored by Nick Gates at Combes before it went under at the end of the last century. Doesn’t she look great?

‘There are pictures of the restoration on his website at www.nickgates.co.uk. The old Combes shed was definitely time-expired, but the new one deserves to have boats such as Ocean Pearl brought back to life in it.’

Warington Smyth’s Mast and Sail in Europe and Asia has more on the zulu, and explains how it derived from the fifie and the scaffie.

See Nick’s website at www.nickgates.co.uk.

Is Ocean Pearl a zulu, fifie or a baldie? Click here.

A successful first adventure for the paddling and sailing expedition boat Expedition Mouse

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A successful first adventure for the paddling and sailing expedition boat Expedition Mouse

http://intheboatshed.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/dsc_0060-1024.jpg http://intheboatshed.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/dsc_0060-1024.jpg A successful first adventure for the paddling and sailing expedition boat Expedition Mouse

The maiden outing for Dan Noble’s Expedition Mouse seems to have been a little more exciting than anyone intended, but even with two grown men aboard she seems to have coped pretty well. Sailing nearby the Statue of Liberty seems rather exotic from my perspective in Kent, England

I’ve said it before, but boat designers love a builder who follows the plans, builds the boat well and makes good use of it. But even those of us who are lucky in our builders have at least a little nervousness before a launch, for there’s always the danger that something about the boat might not work quite as expected.

Well, Dan Noble’s done a nice job of building the Expedition Mouse, and I seem to have got away with it – as once again one of my little boats has proved to work the way it should. Thanks Dan!

The Expedition Mouse is a stretched 14ft variant of my Mouseboat series of easy and cheap to build designs, but instead of being intended for the pond or river at the end of the road, this one is intended for real trips, perhaps involving camping. Many people would say that she’s an unusual looking craft with a surprisingly large sail are, but there is method in my madness. Her scow shape and hard chine makes her stable enough to stand up to quite a lot of sail, but her entry and exit are sufficiently easy that she’s easy to paddle much like a conventional cruising kayak. Her builder has reported that she while she sails well, she paddles ‘like a dream’.

The plans for the Expedition Mouse are available for free and can be downloaded at the Yahoogroup Mouseboats.

Henry Taunt’s photos on show at the River & Rowing Museum, Henley

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Henry Taunt guide to the Thames photo exhibition at the River & Rowing Museum, Henley on Thames

Henry Taunt and lady, perhaps his wife, on his houseboat (1886). Reproduced with permission of Oxfordshire County Council

Henry Taunt guide to the Thames photo exhibition at the River & Rowing Museum, Henley on Thames Henry Taunt guide to the Thames photo exhibition at the River & Rowing Museum, Henley on Thames Henry Taunt guide to the Thames photo exhibition at the River & Rowing Museum, Henley on Thames

(L-R) Taunt’s book and illustrated map of the Thames photographed by Graham Diprose and Jeff Robins; Taunt at the site of today’s Rowing & River Museum at Henley, with permission of Oxfordshire County Council

Henry Taunt guide to the Thames photo exhibition at the River & Rowing Museum, Henley on Thames Henry Taunt guide to the Thames photo exhibition at the River & Rowing Museum, Henley on Thames Henry Taunt guide to the Thames photo exhibition at the River & Rowing Museum, Henley on Thames

(L-R) Old Putney Bridge (1875) , with permission of English Heritage; ‘The Anglers Hotel’, Teddington (1883), with permission of Oxfordshire County Council; Temple Island, reproduced by permission of English Heritage

Henry Taunt guide to the Thames photo exhibition at the River & Rowing Museum, Henley on Thames Henry Taunt guide to the Thames photo exhibition at the River & Rowing Museum, Henley on Thames

View of Mortlake (1860-1887), with permission of English Heritage; Twickenham, Site of Popes Villa (1878) with permission of English Heritage

The In the Footsteps of Henry Taunt exhibition of Henry Taunt’s photographs from the late 19th century is about to go on show at the River & Rowing Museum at Henley on Thames. Here’s the museum’s press release:

‘The exhibition pairs the finest photographs by famous Victorian photographer Henry Taunt together with modern images taken of the exact same locations along the Thames by digital photographers Graham Diprose and Jeff Robins. These ‘then and now’ images capture the changing river over 135 years from its source near Coates, a tiny village in Gloucestershire down to the Houses of Parliament, London. Taunt’s images were sourced from the archives of English Heritage (National Monuments Record), Oxfordshire County Council (Oxfordshire Studies) and The River & Rowing Museum. River Thames Revisited, a new book, accompanies the exhibition.

‘Taunt is credited with single handedly transforming the popularity of the Thames during the Victorian era through his series of photographs, hand drawn maps and text first created in 1872. His beautiful guide to the Thames New Map of the River Thames sparked a national love affair with the river that remains to this day. The associated tourist boom radically changed the fortunes of towns and villages along the riverbank – creating a landscape and tourist scene still enjoyed today. Without this burgeoning national attraction to the Thames, Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men In A Boat and Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in The Willows might never have been written.

‘Taunt’s photographs depict an idyllic working river, with ferrymen, barges and horses moving people and goods from town to town. Diprose and Robins’ images capture a leisure based river and with it associated landscape changes and modern building. One of the most marked changes is the substantial increase in trees and riverside vegetation. During Taunt’s time the riverbank would be clear to enable horses, pulling barges, to move freely. As the goods moved from river to road, so the riverbanks returned to their natural habitat, in some cases trees and vegetation completely obscuring Taunt’s original view. The modern river is easier to navigate with more locks and fewer flash weirs appearing in the photos than Taunt’s pictures.’

The release came with potted biographies of Taunt, and the two modern photographers featured in this exhibition.

Some Intheboatshed.net posts with Thames content
•From the Thames to the Solent by Una boat, an account from 1868
•Famous Thames sailing barge Cambria comes to Faversham for restoration
•A feast of rowing boats at the Beale Park Boat Show
•Three Men in a Boat
•At last – free online designs for a skiff and a racing punt