Boats

The St. Mawes One Design (SMOD) evolved as a result of a Dr. James beating Frank Peters in races off St. Mawes, Cornwall in the early 1920s. Frank, designer of the class and builder of Aileen, was part of a family firm which had been building boats locally for some two hundred years. The firm…

Sunshine was built c.1880 as a ‘foy boat’ for the River Wear in the North East of England. It was used for a range of inshore duties, such as transporting people and goods, and carrying out mooring work for larger vessels while in harbour. Sunshine is a small coble known as a ‘half-coble’. It has…

Surf life saving boats were first introduced into the UK from Australia in 1965. They have always been used primarily for competition and occasionally for rescue. Today, the equipment for rescue has changed dramatically to include jet skis and paddleboards. Surf boats are now only used for competition. Neville Glidden was built in Perth, Australia…

Swift and other boats like her were built for racing on the rivers Gannel and Camel in Cornwall and was probably built sometime between 1890 and 1910 in Padstow. These gigs were long, narrow and lightly constructed. They were predominantly family owned and raced, sometimes with a young child being employed as cox to steer…

During the late 18th century there were a number of developments aimed at creating a uniform system of measurement and rating to allow boats of similar but slightly different designs to compete on even terms. In 1887 the Yacht Racing Association introduced its LSA (Length Sail Area) rule. Previous rules had focused on hull size…

Apart from London Bridge, built in 1209, the only means of crossing the River Thames below Staines until the mid 18th century was by boat. The Thames wherry was an open rowing boat which was used to ferry passengers in much the same way as taxis are used today. Built for speed and ease of…

https://nmmc.co.uk/object/boats/klepper-folding-…uccessful-design/Boat building is a low profit margin business and as a result the history of boat building is littered with bankruptcies and short production runs. So all the more remarkable is the longevity of the German company, Klepper, which has been producing folding kayaks for over 100 years. In the early years of the twentieth…

Over the years since the Second World War, when sailing has expanded to become a sport of the masses rather than just the leisure pursuit of the rich, there have been hundreds of dinghy designs, and also many designers. Few designers have been responsible for more than a limited number of designs and fewer still…

Simple fishing rafts made from available materials, with designs adapted to local conditions, have been found across the globe: from their use in Polynesia, by Aboriginal Australians, via the Tamil coast of India, to the north east coast of Brazil. When the Portuguese arrived in Brazil in the sixteenth century they encountered very simple square…