People

In 2003 British Explorer Pen Hadow became the first person in history to walk solo and unsupported to the North Pole. He dragged his entire supplies including all his food, clothing and shelter with him 480 miles across the floating, disintegrating sea ice of the Arctic Ocean from the Canadian coast. His sledge weighed 19…

During the 1950s and 60s the British population was discovering new leisure activities: people had more time and a bit of money to spare, package holidays and outdoor pursuits were becoming popular. Boat designers found a ready market in the thousands of people who wanted to get on the water in a well-built, cheap boat.…

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…