National Small Boat Collection

Drawing by “Rob Roy” McGregor Modern day enthusiasts of kayaking probably do not describe their on-water activity as ‘canoodling’! Yet that was the term employed one hundred and fifty years…

There is nothing new about the idea of a folding boat. Some of the Titanic’s lifeboats were folding boats and were successfully launched before the ship sank, but any lifeboat…

By the late 19th century boating and picnics on, or near, the river were gaining in popularity and social events such as the Henley Regatta saw large gatherings of pleasure…

The SMOD evolved as a result of a Dr. James defeating Frank Peters in races off St. Mawes, Cornwall in the early 1920s. These defeats led to Frank Peters designing…

Sunshine is a Sunderland Foy Boat, known locally as a coble. The distinctive hull shape of these clinker built beach boats has been traditional along a stretch of the north…

Surf life saving boats were first introduced into the UK from Australia in 1965. They have always been used primarily for competition and only occasionally for rescue. Today, the equipment…

Swift and other boats like her were built for racing on the rivers Gannel and Camel in Cornwall. Probably built sometime between 1890 and 1910 in Padstow, Swift is unsuitable…

Articles in this series about the Flying Twenty and its more famous development, the Flying Fifteen, have described racing sailing boats developed in the last half century in response to…

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…