National Small Boat Collection

‘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.…

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…

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…

Nomad 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…

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…

Triton is an open double ended 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,…

Finesse is the oldest surviving British registered Finn, possibly the oldest in the world. It was one of a number built for the 1952 Olympics (see early history of the class…

This is one of several kayaks in the Museum’s collection from the drawing board of that prolific designer of small boats Percy Blandford. Blandford’s passion was to design ‘small boats…

Ken Littledyke was a 1950s school  woodwork teacher who was in the habit of introducing his pupils to canoeing, including helping them with building their own boats. Initially his preferred…