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
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What would the letters ‘PIN’ stand for on the sails of a pilot boat? Regular reader Jeff Cole wants to know because he’s considering buying a painting – but sadly he can’t show us a photo of it yet. I’m puzzled, because my understanding is that they usually show a single large number.
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‘It is impossible to assign to any one person the merit of inventing the Life-Boat’
Based on a 1910 Royal Society of Arts lecture, Sir John Cameron-Lamb’s small book The Life-boat and its Work was published in the following year, and sold for the now-laughable sum of one shilling. I promised the gentlemen who look after Southwold’s historic Alfred Corry I’d scan this book, and so here’s the first instalment!
To see the rest of this series:
The Life-boat and its Work, a history from 1911 – part I
The Life-boat and its Work, a history from 1911 – part II
The Life-boat and its Work, a history from 1911 – part III
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Access to the Port of London Authority archive – said to be one of the most significant in London – is set to be unlocked in a three-year cataloguing programme.
The archive covering 250 years of London’s water-borne history is to be catalogued by Museum of London Docklands staff. The work is expected to take at least three years and will give historians, river lovers and members of the public easy access to the archive.
The PLA was created through an Act of Parliament overseen by Lloyd George and Winston Churchill to bring order to the chaos of the busy and congested port of the early 1900s. It came into existence on 31 March 1909.
The archive includes 30 boxes of documents relating to the 19th century dock companies; 120 boxes of documents relating to the early years of the PLA; 140 boxes of documents relating to post-war PLA activities; 50 boxes of post-war PLA personnel documents; architectural drawings relating to all aspects of the docks; and a range of PLA river charts. It adds up to a lot of material.l
An entertaining historical presentation telling the story of the PLA is already available can be found on the organisation’s website at www.pla.co.uk.
