Category: Restoration and repair

Standard Quay cause makes the national press

Standard Quay story in The Guardian

The developers planning to turn the Standard Quay area of Faversham into a yuppie flat and restaurant area seem to be gaining momentum with their project. We gather have given the traditional craftsmen of the area notice to quit.

It’s desperately sad to see such an important maritime centre ruined for the sake of the awesome but stupid god Mammon, but it’s heartening too that the opposition is also gathering strength, and this article published in The Guardian this week is an excellent example.  I hope the developers and more particularly the Swale planning authority read this, realise what they’ve done and do something urgent to improve the long term position.

The issue has also been covered by the local TV station’s news team, as the The Quay website explains.

Read an earlier post to find out more about Standard Quay and the issues involved.

PS – One of the reasons why Standard Quay is important is that it is one  of very few places where the skills and facilities exist to maintain Thames sailing barges. I’ve been asked to tell readers that there’s a new film in production about Thames sailing barges, and that a trailer can be viewed here. I’m sure I recognise Bob Roberts in it by the way, so it probably also features Cambria, which is arguably the most famous Thames sailing barge of all. And guess which barge is currently at Standard Quay for a major overhaul? Yes, it’s the Cambria…

Great finds discovered and restored: two Macgregor canoes and a Salter’s rowing gig

Macgregor canoe

Salter's skiff before restoration by Adrian Morgan Salter's skiff restored by Adrian Morgan

Adrian Morgan wrote a couple of weeks ago to remind me of some treasures that I might have missed. He’s right, I need to make amends – though in my defence nobody mentioned them to me at the time!

(Note to traditional boat builders: please tell me what you’re doing, as this website gets seen by a lot of people!)

One important find was two rare and very beautiful MacGregor canoe found in the Marquess of Aberdeen’s sawmill loft a year or so ago – Macgregors are very rare and Adrian says the canoes came with full documentation. Adrian says the canoes were like Bugattis found in a barn: complete with chicken poo and swadust, they had been untouched for nearly 100 years.

Naturally, the Royal Canoe Club were over the moon and the canoes have since been restored by Colin Henwood.

There’s more about Macgregor here and here.

Another discovery at the same site was a half-rigged rowing gig made by Salter’s, which Adrian went on to restore – there’s more about this boat at Adrian’s website, but he says the colour of the Brazilian mahogany that appeared after weeks of stripping the gig was amazing. After treating the splits, liberal doses of Varnol brought the timber back from dry lifelessness to rich, deep colour.

Traditional boat builder Adrian Morgan is based at Ullapool and has a website at www.viking-boats.com and a weblog at www.thetroublewitholdboats.blogspot.com. The weblog is certainly interesting: recent posts argue for working with your hands rather than a mouse; praise the Jumbo, the Solent and the work of  Fair Isle boat builder Ian Best; and appeal for plans for longish gun punts.

PS – I’m reminded that informative notes on the Rob Roy canoe are included in Macgregor’s book The Rob Roy on the Baltic, which is available from Dixon-Price Publishing. There’s also some material in the book Practical Boat Building For Amateurs.

The mystery of Gadfly II – Simon hears from the builder’s daughter

Gadfly II on the water pic 1

Gadfly II back on the water in August this year

Simon Papendick has written to remind us that he’s still looking for information about the history of his gaff cutter named Gadfly II, and to bring us up to date with what he’s learned.

For more on Simon’s Gadfly II project, click here.

If anyone can help fill in the remaining gaps, particularly in relation to the 50s and 60s, he would be very grateful. He’s known for some time that she was built by Anderson, Rigden & Perkins of Whitstable, but in the last few days has been in touch with a lady called Tisha – it seems her boatbuilder father, Bob Anderson, constructed a small yacht for himself, Mandamus, to a design of his own, and that Gadfly II was built as a sister ship and launched in 1946. Mandamus had a teak deck, Gadfly II did not, and Tisha believes there were some differences of detail between the rigs of the two boats.

Searching on the Internet for ‘Mandamus’ and ‘yacht’ reveals this obituary for Mr Anderson, who died only a couple of years ago at the grand old age of 100.

Tisha also confirmed that there were at least three Gadflies, which may explain why Simon has collected some widely different stories in relation to Gadfly II, but this one was built for and owned by a Harold Doughty, who Tisha believes was from Thanet and did some building work in Whitstable, including the rebuilding of the Anderson Regden & Perkins yard following a fire in the 1950s.

She doesn’t  know whether Mr Doughty had any children, but if there were she says she did not meet them crewing Gadfly II in her time.

Apparently, Gadfly II and Mandamus regularly raced each other at the Royal Temple Club, Ramsgate for a cup, which Tisha describes as ‘a huge silver thing, and it was later stolen’. She also told Simon that Mandamus usually beat Gadfly II – my guess is that might well be true, given that  Mr Anderson had spent his life on or by the water, while his opponent was an amateur sailor with a busy building business to keep him from practising his sailing.

Tisha remembers that Mandamus had two sets of figures carved into a beam, which she thinks were her Thames and Lloyds measurement tonnages, and that Mandamus was modified after Mr Anderson sold her: a bowsprit was added and the doghouse was moved more amidships. Both Tisha and her father were present at her re-launch.

The last Tisha heard of Mandamus, she was berthed at Cowes, but does not know where, which has led Simon to wonder whether she might be somewhere in the archives of Beken, the legendary local photographers.

So does this story ring any bells for intheboatshed.net readers? If it does, please let me know at gmatkin@gmail.com, and I’ll pass the information on to Simon.