Category: Working boats

Prawner project Three Brothers gains some history

Three Brothers

Three Brothers

Some important historical information has emerged regarding a Morecambe Bay prawner or Nobby now being restored at Newson’s, the Three Brothers. Apparently it was named after owner and skipper David Willacy’s three sons. David’s grandson Keith who passed the information on to Newson’s, along with the original specification.

The brothers are pictured at Newson’s website, together with several other old photos and more recent shots of the boat in its condition before restoration began. I gather work should be starting on the boat about now.

Like many people I rather admire the prawners; the low decks and handsome round sterns that made them suitable for prawning make them very elegant, and they seem to be pretty good performers.

Looking around, there are a few links worth looking at:

The Fleetwood Museum has this gallery and this jolly exploration sequence. Isn’t it a shame that essentially educational organisations seem to feel that the pictures they put up have to be so small that you can see few if any details?

 

National Trust replaces famous Lindisfarne Castle boatsheds

Upturned boatsheds480

Photo by Catherine Atkinson

Send this link to an interested friend: http://intheboatshed.net/?p=585

We must now be a recognised part of the meeja – we’ve received another interesting press release today announcing that the Lindisfarne boatsheds have been replaced. It’s great also to be able to celebrate some more great sheds – it’s been too long since the our last post on this important topic. Perhaps we should make sheds a category of their own?

I remember the original up-turned boatsheds from the one time I visited Lindisfarne in the 1970s, when I was a student in the area. They remind me very much of Halfpenny Cottage at Hastings, which is similarly made from an upturned half-boat.

Anyway, here’s the information the way the National Trust tells it:

Official opening of restored boatsheds at Lindisfarne Castle

The iconic upturned boats that replace those tragically destroyed by fire at Lindisfarne Castle officially open to the public.

The boats that sit below the castle are familiar landmarks on Holy Island. Continue reading “National Trust replaces famous Lindisfarne Castle boatsheds”

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