Category: Rowing,paddling and sculling

Punt gunning – including an interesting description of the original double-ended Poole canoe

The original Poole canoe

It turns out that Poole Harbour’s famous Pool canoes were not always flat-bottomed skiffs developed for use with a small outboard motor – in their earlier versions they were double ended rowing boats used for wildfowling.

There’s some interesting history about punt gunning here, including some stuff about the dangers of dealing with all that recoil when your boat is light and tiny, and the gunner is likely on their own, and some slightly disturbing stuff about ‘droppers’ and ‘cripples’ and ‘your man’ collecting the spoils.

PS – Retronaut has some good gun punt images here

PPS – And there’s a striking illustration of the power of these guns here. And no, it’s still not something I’d want to do.

BBA student builts Ted Moores’ Prospector Ranger stripper canoe

Keith Bowers launched his 15ft Prospector Ranger into the water at the Boat Building Academy’s latest launch day in Dedcember.

He used plans published in Moores’ book ‘Canoecraft’, but added a breasthook of his own design and a yoke. He also created two kneeling seats which can be placed anywhere within the canoe to suit the paddler.

Originally from Wales, Keith named the canoe is named Y Ddraig, the Welsh for dragon.

Keith worked in a variety of roles before joining the BBA, including working as a labourer, a bar supervisor and most recently a support officer for Worcestershire County Council – he has a BSc in computer studies.

Now, however, he is to take his new skills to the Underfall Boatyard in Bristol, which is named after a set of underfall sluices created by Isambard Kingdom Brunel to control water levels in Bristol Harbour in 1832.

The yard is a scheduled monument and includes several listed buildings.

In his spare time Keith will work on projects at his home workshop – initially building a traditional clinker dinghy and taking Y Ddraig on the river Avon and Chew Valley lake, which is a site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a national centre for bird watching, and is near where he lives.

The Thames Ironworks Heritage Trust’s grand plans

Thames Ironworks Heritage Trust

The Thames Ironworks Heritage Trust launched in November aims to bring boat building (and apprentice training) back to the north bank of the Thames in East London by restore a series of boats made over a century ago by the Thames Ironworks Shipbuilding Company, and then employing them to conduct heritage tours of the waterways in and around Stratford’s Olympic Park.

The drawing above from the Thames Ironworks Gazette published in 1899 shows some of the lifeboats made by the Thames Ironworks company at that time. The company also built ships including HMS Warrior, the first ironclad supplied to the Royal Navy – Warrior is still afloat and moored at Portsmouth.

The trust’s plan is audacious, you have to say. It already has access to a number of Thames Ironworks-made lifeboats but it can’t really get started until it has established itself a site for a new boatyard close to the site of the original Thames Ironworks company.

Once operating, it will offer offering routes to training in qualifications conferred by the Guild of Registered Tourist Guides, boatmasters licenses, and City and Guilds qualifications

The trust is confident the economics can be made to work – with over 9m tourists and others expected to visit the Olympic Park each year, it believes the heritage tour service should run at profit sufficient to support its operations and make regular contributions to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution – but the first step is to fund the project’s early stages, including educating the first group of shipwrights.

Here are some links for more information:

Thames Ironworks Heritage Trust: Homepage includes links to history, plans, lifeboats and so on

Thames Ironworks Heritage Trust: Twitter feed

Thames Ironworks Heritage Trust: Facebook page

Shipshape Network: About the Thames Ironworks Heritage Trust

Shipshape Network: Heritage Trust aims to revive Thames shipbuilding

West Ham United Football Club: The Thames Ironworks lives on!

The good folks at the Peggy Bawn Press have written to point out that the Thames Ironworks built many lifeboats to GL Watson’s plans, and have written an interesting post about one particular example: The Weekend Watson – Charles Henry Ashley 

And here’s a great map of the Thames Ironworks site from 1894:

Thames Ironworks Heritage Trust map