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
The Tall Ships Race of 1964 leaves Plymouth Hoe with a good helping of British Pathé razzmatazz. The vessels taking part include Hoshi, Tawau, Etoile, Belle-Poule and the sailing ship Danmark.
At the time the presenter ruefully remarked that the British didn’t have a square-rigger – well thankfully we do now.
My thanks to Amy Davenport for pointing this one out.
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Smeaton’s Tower, Plymouth Hoe. As usual, click on the thumbnails for much larger photos
Today we have one of intheboatshed.net’s waterside strolls – and this time it’s a series of photos taken by my wife Julie Atkin on a recent trip to the old maritime city of Plymouth.
The town shows the scars of having been devastated by a notorious wartime bombing raid in 1941 but still has quite a few old gems of buildings left from earlier times. It also has some striking large and small monuments, many of which are rather touching.
Cattewater Harbour Commission; the impressive Royal William Victualling Yard built in the 1820s; the wonderful 1935 Tinside tidal swimming pool; and the site where they make the fabulously fragrant Plymouth Gin
Apart from the smack in the first group of photos there weren’t many interesting old wooden boats around, but she found these – the one on the left is for sale
The Sir Francis Drake monument; the Mayflower monument; a list of the Pilgrim Fathers (click on the image to see it at a readable size); Roanoke Colonies; Tolpuddle Martyrs; iron pipes!
Monuments on the wall of the Royal National Lifeboats Institution shop make loss and survival at sea intensely personal: see how the name Launder comes up several times, and the memorials to the crew of the Pescado, the last of the old time trawler skippers and the last steam trawler skipper. And don’t miss the memorial to the elderly couple whose long lives are attributed to eating a lot of fish