Teignmouth and Shaldon Museum opens Morgan Giles exhibition ‘Launched in Teignmouth’

Morgan-Giles exhibition at Teign and Shaldon Museum 1 Morgan-Giles exhibition at Teign and Shaldon Museum 2

A special exhibition at the Teign Heritage Centre is celebrating the people and work of the Morgan Giles shipyard from 1921 to 1968.

The exhibition will be held at the Teign Heritage Centre from Friday 8th March to Friday 5th April 10am to 4.30pm from Tuesdays to Saturdays.

On display will be some Morgan Giles plans including some from pre-1914 days, racing yachts in the ‘20s and‘30s, and luxury motor cruisers of the ‘50s and ‘60s.

Other items will be specialist craftsmen’s tools, archive photographs, models and oral histories. There will be a featured display about the Lady Cable built in 1923, and other important boats, such as the Hispania yacht built for the King of Spain.

On Saturday 23rd March at 11am there will also be a free talk about the Lady Cable from Lyn Yeoman of the Lady Cable Trust. The Lady Cable is a pleasure boat that went to Dunkirk and was apparently the last small boat to leave the beaches.

Morgan Giles were internationally famous for the elegant design of their boats and very high quality of workmanship, having employed highly skilled craftsmen, shipwrights, engineers, joiners and riggers, many of whom are remembered in Teignmouth today.

For visitor details please see the Teign Heritage website www.teignheritage.org.uk or phone 01626 777041.

I’m grateful to the Boat Building Academy folks for letting me know this was going on. Never ones to miss an opportunity (good for them) they added that BBA student Benjamin Charny is currently building a Morgan Giles-designed clinker-built dinghy – there’s a photographic record of the boat going together here.

Benjamin’s project was recently mentioned by a piece in the Western Morning News: ‘In another corner Benjamin was making a tiny rowing boat: ”It’s eight foot long and I have taken it from a West country design by Morgan Giles. He built the original in the 1930s for his kids and I got the lines from the Falmouth Maritime Museum.

”This will be the only copy around. I have loved doing it.”

Before leaving Beale Park – try to see the museum!

 

These are scenes from a wet and windy Beale Park Thames Boat Show today (Friday) – the weather was so bad the public were turned away for safety reasons, the security folks said.

I gather tomorrow is expected to be much better!

However I have an urgent message for show attendees. On your way out, if you get a chance to see it don’t miss the World of Boats permanent exhibition curated by ex-Boat Building Academy student Michael Tyler. The exhbition is not yet complete, but nevertheless it’s equipped with some very interesting craft, and well worth half an hour or an hour of anyone’s time. I’ve posted a couple of photos below:

 

Jörg Nadler’s museum of ancient fishing gear


Ancient fishing equipment 7

Jörg Nadler's ancient fishing equipment Jörg Nadler's ancient fishing equipment Jörg Nadler's ancient fishing equipment

Jörg Nadler's ancient fishing equipment Jörg Nadler's ancient fishing equipment Jörg Nadler's ancient fishing equipment

Jörg Nadler’s museum of ancient fishing gear was one of the treats of the Nordhorn Fest der Kanäle in Germany last weekend – as was his demonstration of hemp rope making – but I’ll post on that later.

The first three photos show samples of eel spears – eel-catching tridents – through centuries. The first photo starts with the Stone Age on the left, while the second photo takes us up to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The spears laid out on the tanned cloth look very much like similar implements I’ve seen from Norfolk. The remainder are of various kinds of nets.

Jörg is a very practical historian, and makes his living fishing by ancient techniques in a German fjord that  runs from the Baltic Sea to the town of Schleswig.