Category: Small boats

More dreams of sailing canoes

Shadow

Shadow

Life is full of surprises. One of the biggest surprises I’ve had during the short life of intheboatshed.net has been the level of interest in sailing canoes and canoe yawls: posts on these attract more attention than almost any others.

It’s an interest that I can certainly sympathise with, so the news in Classic Boat that George Holmes’s iconic Eel is currently for sale at Alan Staley’s yard at Faversham in Kent (tel 01795 530668), I thought I would Google for more information on the boat and similar boats.

Here’s what I found: Continue reading “More dreams of sailing canoes”

Three Men in a Boat

Jerome K Jerome

Jerome K Jerome

It seems a little odd to post a link to an eBook of a classic Victorian English novel, but that’s what I’m going to do tonight.

Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat… To Say Nothing of the Dog describes a journey on the Thames by three young men and a small dog in a Thames skiff equipped for camping. It’s a classic of boating literature and of Victorian English life, and seems to me to be a prototype for every road movie I’ve ever seen. If you haven’t had occasion to read it yet, I strongly recommend it Continue reading “Three Men in a Boat”

The wonderful Architectura Navalis

Chapman

Here’s something delicious for those of you who love to see great draftsmanship. And I do mean great – some of the work here is enough to pin back a fella’s eyelids and make him dribble.

This is Frederik Henrik AF Chapman’s Architectura Navalis. Published in 1768, it is a compendium of drawings of what Chapman, a prominent Swedish naval architect, considered to be the best and most interesting ships and boats of the time. Best of all, you can see them here:
http://www.sjohistoriska.se/

For a timeline and a list of Chapman relics, click here:
http://www.bruzelius.info/

Finally, here is one more postage-stamp sized image from the collection. I should warn you that the downloads held by the museum are in the tiff format and they’re also pretty big – you’ll need an image editor or viewer with a tiff facility to see them, and you’ll need something a little newer and with more memory than the old Windows 2000 laptop wordbox I use to view them easily.

Chapman