- Description of contents
DUES LON So est EIT! Nai iia an Arun ISSN 9 0144-25910 770144°291 | 4 015 his month will be a rather more disjointed collection of jottings than usual, as I seem not to have done anything particularly noteworthy recently, so I shall just have to spin something together from the photos that I have by me that have not been used so far. They seem all to be of boats that are smaller and less ‘serious’ than the class racing yachts that are the normal fare for this column. There is an increasing interest in superior toy boats and more of the older style are coming to light, so just for once an unserious collection of toys. Richard. The bermuda rigged boat is a 24 inch solid hull model from a currently available kit and is fast and graceful on water according to the notes that Richard sent with the photos. The sails are in ripstop and look very large even for a boat with so deep a fin. The construction and rig are very basic and this is about as near to the out and out toy boat as we are likely to find commercially available these days. The gaff rigged boat was built to a plan that was found in an old book of home Contemporary American kit for a toy boat. Photo: Richard D. Cohen. made toys. The hull is bread and butter and the sails in cotton. The hull form owes a lot to the small American sloops that were popular as full size pocket cruisers from the turn of the century to quite recent years and there is a substantial fin and bulb addition which will make her a practical model in spite of her big sail area and scale-ish hull form. Richard doesn’t give a date for the design but I would think that it may come from as late as the 1960’s. Small gaff sloop built from a US toymaker’s plan. Photo: Richard D. Cohen. New toy sailing boats I had hardly written the piece on the absence of modern toy sailing boats than the August edition of Model Boats arrived with adverts for the Delta Craft models. The photo on page 59 of the August edition shows hull forms and rigs not dissimilar in concept to the Start Point boats that I mentioned last month, though the range of styles and sizes is greater. The Delta craft range are supplied in both ready to go and kit form, which should help them to cover both the modeller’s market and the more traditional toy market. Kit presentation will greatly ease the task of those who want to tinker with the design and try radio installations. From the photo they look as though they are always going to be light weather boats, but the larger sizes should make possible radio conversions at least as practical as sailing models as the 1920’s tinplate model, American, probably homebuilt. Photo: Richard D. Cohen. amazingly popular 575. USA toys Photos of three boats from the collection of Richard Cohen in Florida have been with me for some time, waiting for a suitable opportunity to use them. The obviously elderly model is a tinplate hull, unusually with a canoe stern and elaborately painted with a simulated wood grain deck. The sails are original and are marked ‘T/8’. The rudder is clearly designed to move, but there is very obvious steering mechanism, not evena tiller visible in the photo. The deep fin and quite substantial ballast suggest that she may have béen able to hold up her rig in a decent breeze and give quite a good account of herself. Richard found her in an antiques fair and had not started on restoration when the photo was taken. I should think that this boat dates from the 1920’s. Whether she is a commercial model is open to question. The difficult Another view of the gaff sloop. Photo: Richard D. Cohen. hull form and elaborate painting suggest to me a ‘one off’ built by someone with metal working skills and a lot of time to spend on finishing the boat to a high standard. The other two boats are recently built by 58 MODEL BOATS Other toys Photo 5 shows a toy of unkn own origin that turned up in a local auction house. The date of this is uncertai n as she is almost certainly a homebuil t ‘one off.’ The original hull with its fixe d ‘rudder’ built onto the rear of the fin sugg ests a relatively easy date, but the bermuda rig, if it is original, puts the boat after 1920 and probably a good bit later than this. I don’t think that the boat can have had a gaff rig as the mast posit ion is too far aft for a gaff rig to balance over the hull. The later addition of a spade rudd er cannot be dated but may be quite recen t. Photos 6 and 7 show a rather superior toy boat built for competit ion in the children’s races at Sout hwold in the 1920’s, probably by a local fisherman. The hull form is elegant and very similar to fishing smacks of East Angl ian rivers and the hull and keel depth are only slightly exaggerated. The rig however is clearly adapted for model use and is both small and simplified by comp arison with the big sail areas that sail fishing craft tended to carry. This example in a remarkably good state of preservation is now a few miles down the coast at Woodbrid ge. Also at Woodbridge is a Southwol d boat of similar vintage in the style of a Yarmouth beach yawl with a pair of lug sails. I hope to borrow this boat to sail at Southwold in August and will report furt her on how we get on. Photos 8 and 9 show a pair of hulls in an even earlier style. Both are typical of top quality toy boats of the turn of the century, though they could have been built many years after that. Both are cert ainly commercial products and both would have had gaff cutter rigs. One has a rudder mounted in full size styl e with, so far as can be determined, prov ision only for a series of fixed position s controlled by a serrated horse on whic h the tiller would have run. Below: Southwold mode l in form of a fishing smack. 1920’s fishe rman built. Note that though the rig is reduced to mode l Proportions, the lug headed topsail, fussy and impractical in a model, is retained. Photos: Ralph Smith. Toy boat of uncertain origin , probably Bermuda rigged from renewed. The rudder is a latter addition. Photo : Peter K.elly. the outset, though the sails have been ICTOBER 1989 59 This boat is very similar in form and details of construction to two that have turned up in different parts of the country recently. Both are in the process of restoration and one of them, shown in photos 10 and 11, still has its original maker’s transfer on the deck. It shows the boat to be a product of Frank Sugg Ltd. of Lord St., Liverpool, who appear to have had branches in Sheffield, Cardiff and possibly, (the transfer is very worn), London. I would date the boat, from style alone, to the turn of the century, but I have so far been unable to find anything about the Sugg operation. Does anyone know anything about them? The boat in photo 8 has a definite skeg form on which a rudder was hung. I would have expected this to be linked to a Braine gear or some simpler form of automatic originating early in the Above and below: commercial model by Frank Sugg of Liverpool. Again, double sheets on century. Note the scale like fittings, including parrals on the gaff and boom jaws and a topsail, but is the headsails. | am restoring another example of this boat which has provision forpenny ‘print your otherwise identical. The nameplate is a later addition and comes from one of the steering, but another photo, not reproduced, shows that there is no rudder post through the hull, so the steering must have been weighed by a weighted swinging rudder. This probably would not be too effective mounted on a vertical skeg like this. A weighted rudder needed a raked sternpost to give a centring effect name’ machines that used to be found on railway stations. Photo: David Trippe. when the boat was upright. Next time, we return to bigger boats and probably a report on both the Southwold regatta and the Vintage day at Poole, which are now due in the next few weeks. Contact address, R. R. Potts, 8 Sherard Road, London SE9 6EP, Tel: 01 850 6805. —e walt Another commercial model of similar date, but with a hull form more closely resembling a full size craft, the design may be of earlier date, but the construction is likely to be about the same time as the boat in the Commercial toy boat from the early years of the century. Weighted swing rudder, gaff cutter rig. Photo: David Trippe. photo adjacent. Photo: David Trippe. MODEL BOATS
