People

The story of Donald Campbell’s death on Coniston Water, whilst attempting the world water speed record in Bluebird, is well documented. Less well known is that, up to the time of his death in 1967, Campbell was commercially developing a 13ft (4m) fast runabout, using the latest water jet technology. The prototype craft Jetstar was…

The tradition of boat building in Cornwall goes back many centuries. Generations of boat builders and shipwrights have used their skills and imagination to create boats that have become works of art as well as functional vessels. Born in 1927 Vic Angove, master shipwright and traditional boat builder of Falmouth, started his apprenticeship at the…

Offshore cruising in an open boat can be hard, cold, wet, lonely and occasionally miserable, but it is exhilarating too. To take an open dinghy across a hundred miles of sea, taking weather as it comes; to know that you have only yourself and your mate to rely on in an emergency; to see the…

Ian Proctor (1918-1992) possibly did more to influence small boat design and small boat sailing than any other designer. His innovative designs and ideas in hull shape, mast design and manufacture, production methods, and yachting equipment modernised the whole concept of small boat sailing and made a vital contribution to the popularising of the sport.…

Born in 1901, Percy Mitchell, of Portmellon, near Mevagissey in Cornwall, was variously described by some of his more technically qualified contemporaries as “one of the finest traditional boat builders in the world” and as “an artist in wood”. He left elementary school at the age of 14 just after the outbreak of World War…

One of the most prolific and pioneering boat designers of the twentieth century was Uffa Fox (1898-1972). Although responsible for fewer individual designs than some other well-known designers, such as Ian Proctor, Uffa Fox has designs to his credit covering a wide range of boat types, including sailing dinghies, racing keelboats, sailing cruisers in a…

Although a distinct design in her own right, in many ways Sea Queen looks like a smaller version of the better known Looe Lugger or Falmouth Working Boat. Mevagissey Toshers (Tossers or Toshers is a name generically applied to small fishing boats), were built in Mevagissey and nearby Portmellon for use by Cornish fishermen for…

During the early part of the 20th century, post war Britain was pursuing high speed technology. Between 1922 and 1936, for example, Sir Malcolm Campbell broke no less than twelve land speed records in a series of increasingly powerful cars. In 1929 at the Miami Regatta Sir Henry Segrave became the first Englishman to beat…

Commander John Watkinson, an experienced and accomplished Naval Officer, left the Royal Navy in 1958 and bought a boatyard, Kelly and Hall, to try his hand at a new venture. In 1964 he sold the yard and moved to Drascombe Barton in Devon, where he set about designing a family-friendly sailing boat. In his own…