wooden boat – Page 199 – intheboatshed.net

Photos of Stirling & Son Victorian cutter build

Difficult-looking housed dovetail joint

Ash and copper fastened blocks; bronze-bound bowsprit roller; finishing the 24ft bowsprit

Will Stirling of Stirling & Son has sent in some more photographs from the building of the Victorian-style cutter Integrity. Here’s what he has to say:

‘Integrity is coming on well. We are putting on her deck which has been an exercise in higher mathematics. It is tapered and swept so that the outboard planks follow the covering board yet the planks midships are on the centreline. A typically Victorian attitude of seeking the aesthetic with little regard for labour!

‘To us it seems relatively complicated; as one of the shipwrights wryly commented, perhaps that is why it died out! I shall send a photo of the sequence once it is all on.

‘Hope all continues well, best wishes,

‘Will’

Will and his colleagues are always up to something interesting, and he has a very interesting range of plans for traditional craft for sale. For more posts about Stirling & Son, click here.

Stirling & Son traditional yacht building and wooden boat repair is based at Tavistock, Devon. For more information see www.stirlingandson.co.uk.

Small boats in wartime – Survival at Sea and Dunkirk at the IWM

The jolly boat of the Anglo Saxon – sadly now badly dried out; the poster above was shot without flash

A trip to the Imperial War Museum is always moving, but those who appreciate and fear the sea will be very struck by the exhibition Survival at Sea my son and daughter and I saw this week.

The statistics in relation to merchant navy losses during World War II are impressive. I didn’t know that more than half of shipping losses world wide during the period of the war were British, or that more than twice as many merchant navy seamen were lost in WWII compared with WWI. The years 1939-45 were a very, very dangerous time to be a seaman.

Naturally many of the sailors caught in enemy attacks escaped from burning and sinking ships in lifeboats and ship’s boats, and two exhibits are particularly striking in their humanity. In one, young men in a lifeboat used a pencil and torn bits of canvas to record how their crewmates died one by one; the other the jolly boat from the ship Anglo Saxon is an 18ft open boat with 24 notches cut in the inwale near the stern – each one records a night at sea before rescue. Some crewmen survived in each case, but they were pitifully few.

By an extraordinary coincidence, our way back to London Bridge Station passed the home of another extraordinary survivor – Captain Bligh of the Bounty. Following the famous mutiny, Bligh and his loyal officers and seamen cast off in an open boat then sailed first to the relatively island of Tofua (30 miles away) and then survived a 47-day voyage to Timor in the Dutch East Indies.

He seems to have been an extraordinary seaman and leader, even if he was flawed in the way apparently described by the oddly named J C Beaglehole:

‘[Bligh made] dogmatic judgements which he felt himself entitled to make; he saw fools about him too easily… thin-skinned vanity was his curse through life… [Bligh] never learnt that you do not make friends of men by insulting them.’

I’d say that was a common enough flaw and difficult to forgive – but naturally not quite enough to justify sending someone off to near-certain death.

Another exhibit we noticed was the Tamzine – easily the smallest Dunkirk Little Ship I’ve ever seen, though there must have been many like her.

Two great postcard shots – but can anyone identify the yachts?

Click on the thumbnails for much larger images

These magnificent shots come from postcard dealer Laura Haggarty who would be grateful for some help identifying the vessels in these shots.

Does anyone know which 19th century yachts these might be please? Let me know at gmatkin@gmail.com and I’ll pass the message along. They may well be well known racers if someone has gone to the trouble of producing postcards, and it’s been suggested that the yachts in the lower photo might the J Class.

The cards will be available for purchase from Laura – if you’re interested, contact her at katydidscards@gmail.com.

PS – I have noticed the trailing line in the upper image. These embarrassing things can happen to professionals too, but it doesn’t seem to be slowing them down!

PPS – Intheboatshed.net reader Donan Raven has written in with some information relating tothe lower image of three cutters racing. Here’s what he says:

‘This was definitely shot between 1892 and 1906, and are most likely either 40-raters (for example Queen Mab if the photo is before 1893) OR 52-footers from the Linear Rating Rule such as like Penitent, Gauntlet and a few more.

‘I think it’s too early for 15 Meters yet, and they are certainly not J-Class.

‘If they are 52-footers, they could be any of the following:

Penitent, designed by Arthur Edward Philip Payne, Jr, 1896
Gauntlet, designed by Arthur Edward Philip Payne, Jr, 1901
Lucida, designed by William Fife III, 1902
Britomart, designed by Alfred Mylne, 1905
Sonya, designed by Nathanael Greene Herreshoff, 1905

‘Or they might be any of the earlier 40-raters, including Mohawk, Deerhound, Castanet, Reverie, Creole, Thalia, Corsair, White Slave, Lais, Vendetta, Queen Mab or Varuna. But I am quite sure you can omit the ones designed before 1891-1892, as they would have had clipper bows, not spoon bows as shown in the picture. Queen Mab, Lais
and Vendetta are the best candidates if this picture predates 1896.

‘See the table in the book Yachting in the Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes edited by His Grace the Duke of Beaufort KG and Alfred ET Watson for more on these boats.’

Thanks Donan – I’m sure Laura will be delighted.

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