Tag: dixon kemp

1900 edition of Dixon Kemp’s classic boating manual is online

Dixon Kemp online  Dixon Kemp online

If you’re wondering what to do this weekend, the 1900 edition of Dixon Kemp’s classic A Manual of Yacht and Boat Sailing is online at the Internet Archive, and will keep a boat nut with a sense of history busy for quite a while.

As you read, it’s interesting to note how much is still true – and how many of the craft in the beautiful drawings are still inspiring boat and yacht owners, builders and designers today.

Kindly digitised by the University of Pittsburgh, it’s available in a variety of forms: there’s HTML for online browsing, PDF and Kindle for those who prefer, and, wonderfully, the Daisy audio form for those unable to see well enough to read.

My thanks to reader Paul Mullings for letting me know about this!

Dixon Kemp’s Galway hooker

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Galway cutter from Dixon Kemp. Click on the thumbnail for a larger image

Intheboatshed readers interested in the video of Galway hookers I posted the other day will be interested in this lines drawing of a 35ft hooker taken from Dixon Kemp’s legendary Manual of Yacht and Boat Sailing.

I can confirm that it’s similar in many ways to the Boston ‘Irish Cutter’ of similar size shown in Howard I Chappelle’s book American Small Sailing Boats, but that boat has slacker bilges and slightly less displacement. It’s also interesting to compare this drawing with the Paull shrimper noted by George Holmes.

It’s difficult to get these lovely old survivals of old boat types out of one’s head, but as if to make it even harder, Daniel Newton wrote a few days ago to share some photos of a sailing model of the Boston boat that he made to sail with his kids.

Dan Newton’s model. He says it wasn’t really made for display purposes, but with those curves, I’d say it had every chance of working well as a sailing model.