National Small Boat Collection

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…

In 1961 the entire population of a tiny island was evacuated after its dormant volcano erupted. Situated in the South Atlantic 1500 miles west of Cape Town and 1800 miles east of Argentina the island – almost unknown in this country – was Tristan da Cunha. Claimed by the British in 1816, the island was…

Designed by Jack Holt in 1950, the Heron is still popular today with ownership worldwide now in excess of 10,000. In the immediate post war years people began taking to the water in greater numbers than they ever had before and, by utilising wartime technology, boat developers were able to provide a new range of…

Shrimp is the first of the Norfolk Punt class, one of Britain’s oldest high performance classes. The class evolved directly from traditional working gun punts used for hunting wildfowl in the shallow waters of the Norfolk Broads. At the end of his wildfowling, a huntsman would erect a small mast and sail home. The mast…

In 1954 a group of dinghy sailors from clubs in the Solent area collaborated with Fairey Marine’s Charles Currey, an Olympic silver medallist in Finns, in an attempt to come up with a boat that would be modern, light and able to cope with the often rough Solent conditions, but suitable for family sailing as…

On January 9th 1956 two Enterprise Dinghies crossed the Channel between Dover and Calais in the middle of the night.  This remarkable achievement rocked the sailing world and brought international recognition to the designer Jack Holt. Both these dinghies are now in the Museum’s collection. Jack Holt (1912-1995) was born into humble stock. The son…

The National 18 was born in 1938 following a design competition organised by the then YRA (now RYA) and Yachting World magazine. The original idea was for an 18 ­foot sailing dinghy, suitable for day sailing, yet fast enough to be of interest to racing sailors and at a reasonable cost. The plan was to…

The Essex One Design dates from 1919, when it was commissioned as a “one-design” boat for the Essex Yacht club together with the nearby Alexandra Yacht Club, both sailing the tidal waters of Southend on Sea. Another local and not dissimilar design, the Thames Estuary One Design, had originated a few years earlier in 1911,…

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…