Category: River boats

More on the book Cockleshell Canoes by Quentin Rees

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Mark 7 military canoes. Photos supplied by Quentin Rees
and published with permission

Quentin Rees’s recent book Cockleshell Canoes is a thoroughly researched and well illustrated celebration of a group of people who have become part of canoe history.

Some, such as Blondie Hasler and the team of commandos who took part in the daring Operation Frankton are already well known. Commemorated in a major film titled Cockleshell Heroes, it was an attack by ten commandos in canoes on Bordeaux Harbour in occupied France during December 1942. British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill believed the mission shortened World War II by six months, and Admiral the Earl Mountbatten deemed it as the ‘most courageous and imaginative of all the raids ever carried out by the men of Combined Operations Commands‘.

Sadly, most of the brave individuals involved were eventually captured and shot by the Germans, who at that time regarded commandos as equivalent to spies.

However, the roles of many others have previously remained unsung. In this book Rees has weaved together real-life testimonies from the stories of the courageous soldiers who used the canoes, their military commanders, and the canoes’ inventors and designers, and tells of an epic journey of progress that took canoe development took from Cornwall, all along the Southern English Coast and beyond – even to the tropical island of Ceylon.

The canoes proved to be valuable in many of the theatres of WWII, and thousands of the various models were sent worldwide, often being used by the various Special Forces, including by the the espionage specialists of Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Click here to buy a copy from Amazon – The Cockleshell Canoes: British Military Canoes of World War Two.

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Chris Old and Chris Stone build a glued-clinker Whitehall at the Boat Building Academy

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As promised, Boat Building Academy principal Yvonne Green has sent us some more photos from the big student launch day at Lyme last month.

This is despite being frantically busy setting up a new eight-week course on  woodworking skills – the course needs a new workshop, and I gather the Academy’s short courses in particular are attracting huge numbers of enquiries.

Here’s what she has to say about the boat in these photos:

‘Chris Old, a doctor of oceanography from New Zealand, and Chris Stone, and aerospace industry computer engineer by background, built a very elegant glued-clinker Whitehall skiff. The offsets and lines were taken from a book by John Gardner, founder of the Mystic Seaport Museum’s boatbuilding courses.

‘White paintwork was highlighted by varnished khaya gunwales, thwarts and trim. Lyme Regis’ Mayor  Sally Holman was particularly taken with this boat, as am I.’

I gather the  boat was built to a set of offsets for a 14ft Whitehall included in the Gardner compendium volume Building Classic Small Craft: Complete Plans and Instructions for 47 Boats, which includes plans for an impressive 47 boats and is currently available for the knock-down price of £19.99 from Amazon. See more Gardner books at Amazon here.

For more posts relating to the Boat Building Academy, click here.

I think we may be seeing an increase in interest in Whitehalls in the UK. For more posts relating to these boats click here, and for posts relating to John Gardner click here.


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Yachting archive to preserve sailing’s heritage launched by Clare Francis

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Growing concern about loss of historically significant information has prompted the formation of a new charity, the British National Yachting Archive.

If you can remember web addresses, it’s at: http://www.bnya.org.uk.

The launch itself took place at the London Boat Show yesterday evening and was announced officially by Association of Yachting Historians president, novelist and sailor Clare Francis.

The new organisation says it hopes to:

• Promote the preservation of sailing’s heritage
• Establish a knowledge base of yachting heritage and provide public access
• Facilitate the presentation and display of yachting heritage at appropriate museums and other organisations
• Provide grants, bursaries and scholarships for those who would advance knowledge and understanding of yachting heritage

It also hopes to find homes for private collections, many of which have no future once their owner passes on and are frequently lost.

‘It also hopes to find homes for private collections,
many of which have no future once their owner
passes on and are frequently lost.’

The Archive will represent a broad definition of sailing including dinghy sailing and motor boating, as well as all the support industries. It will be a a virtual archive with web-based resources that identify and link to information wherever it resides, including clubs, classes, museums, businesses and the media.

As much of material is not stored or catalogued to archival standards, help and advice will be provided where necessary, and in the longer term, the BNYA hopes to digitise large amounts of material to facilitate easy access.

The BNYA is a membership-based charity, with membership fees used to further the work of the Archive and jointly fund grant-aided projects – chairman David Elliott says that there is a great deal of catching up to do, so membership needs to build quickly.

Some of the first research projects will be to collect oral histories, and the BNYA has a growing list of people it feels should be interviewed as soon as possible. That makes a lot of sense to me, as it seems clear that too many people have passed on without having their memories recorded.

Download a pdf explaining the BNYA’s background here.