Gavin Atkin's weblog for the sort of people who like looking inside boat sheds. It's about old boats, traditional boats, boat building, restoration, the sea and the North Kent Coast
Brian Pearson has sent over some of his photos of the Boat Building Academy’s student launch day on 7th December. Thanks Brian!
He seems to have had a good time: ‘It was a very joyful occasion, so thanks for the heads-up.’ He added that his party voted the Gartside-designed Skylark their boat of the day, though njo doubt others will have their own favourites.
Ranjan Mitra took these photos of fishing boats on the coast of Goa, a small and relatively affluent Indian state with an Arabian Sea coastline.
Ranjan is a colleague of my brother Matt Atkin and seems to have been inspired by Matt’s habit on business trips of slipping down to the nearest beach or harbour to take shots for intheboatshed.net. Thanks Ranjan! (Matt’s photos can be found by following this link.)
The motorised fishing boats take the classic form of a high bow for dealing with rough water and low sides aft to allow the fishermen access to work with nets and gear, while the outrigger dugouts seem to be a fascinating link to prehistoric times.
Goa bears many signs of its domination by Portugal from the 16th century, including a city named after the Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama. The state was annexed by India in 1961.
There are a couple of interesting articles online including this paper, which describes the local craft, and another describing a visitor’s experiences in the mid-1990s, including ancient types such as dugouts and sewn plank boats caulked with tar.
Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1914-17 expedition was an attempt to cross Antarctica from one side to the other via the South Pole, but in January 1915 the expedition ship, the Endurance, became locked in the ice of the Weddell Sea, which slowly crushed and finally sank the vessel over the following months, while Shackleton and his men camped on the ice.
The photos above by expedition photographer Frank Hursley are from this period – a much bigger selection can be seen at howtobearetronaut.com.
Eventually they were able to travel with their boats to Elephant Island, from which a small group led by Shackleton sailed one of the Endurance’s ship’s boats, the Sir James Caird, over a distance of 800 miles to the the inhabited island of South Georgia to get help.
For more posts about Shackleton’s Endurance expedition and about the celebrated Sir James Caird voyage to South Georgia click here; for photos of South Georgia itself, click here.