Boats

Finesse is one of three Finn dinghies in the museum’s collection and is the oldest surviving British registered Finn, possibly the oldest in the world. She was one of a number built for the 1952 Olympics (see early history of the class under Seawolf BAE0020) and numbers for the class were allocated internationally, with 9…

Triton is an open double ended clinker built ship’s lifeboat which previously belonged to the pre-war tug Triton, which in the 1970s was used as a seamanship school in St Katherine’s dock in London. When the school closed the lifeboat was given to the museum. Such craft have a rather colourful history, in one sense going back…

Thamaku is a less than half size replica of a design of outrigger canoe commonly seen all across the Pacific islands. This design of craft was used as a general purpose vessel with the main hull constructed of canvas stretched across a timber frame. This replica is around 10ft 6 in in length but full…

This dinghy was built by F.C. Morgan Giles at Hammersmith in 1908. It is of clinker construction with spruce planks on steamed oak frames. It is gunter rigged with a single wooden bamboo mast and spars and a cast iron centreplate and copper buoyancy tanks. It is from this design that and other similar types…

Windsurfing has become widely popular since its introduction in the 1960s, yet from the beginning a bitter battle raged over who was the legitimate inventor of the windsurfer. Americans Hoyle Schweitzer and Jim Doyle filed a patent for their design in 1968. Schweitzer later bought out Drake’s interest and went on to manufacture and sell…

Canoeing with sail and paddle became a popular sport in the last quarter of the 19th century, with the canoes used both for racing and for camping holidays at home and abroad. Kayaks of this particular type were introduced by Dr John ‘Rob Roy’ McGregor, viewed by many as the father of modern leisure canoeing,…

“Perhaps the Solomon Islands are more celebrated for their canoes than for anything else, and, if so, I think, with reason”, wrote W. Coote in his work The Western Pacific. Other writers on the Solomon Islands, a Melanesian archipelago of some 900 islands north east of Australia, wax similarly lyrical about the local design of…

Hydroplanes were developed in the 1920’s and 30’s as outboard engines became available and increased in size and power. Originally outboards were used on utility boats but as racing evolved and speed records were set hydroplanes were designed as a way of going much faster. This particular boat was designed by a naval architect named…

This coracle-like craft is an Iraqi “guffa”, a traditional form of craft used for both cargo and passenger transport on the rivers of Iraq, notably the Tigris, for millennia: the first reference is in the writings of the Greek historian Herodotus in the fourth century B.C. Photographs of Iraq from a century ago show the…