Old Broads Boats

[Broads01]

I see it's been modified to add a fixed enclosed wheelhouse. It always baffles me when people do that to boats. Give me the option of an outdoor helm position any day.

[CambridgeCabby]

But what a true shame to have (IMHO) spoilt her gorgeous original lines , she was a stunner !!!!

[trambo]

47 minutes ago, Broads01 said:

I see it's been modified to add a fixed enclosed wheelhouse. It always baffles me when people do that to boats. Give me the option of an outdoor helm position any day.

Spot on Simon. I did have the privilege of being allowed on her when we hired Cederwood from Woods Dyke B.Y.. She seemed to be being fitted out as a residential, so I suppose there is a logic there. It was the only good thing about the week. Cederwood was a great design of boat but we have never had so many breakdowns in week, Broads or Canal. The best was on complaining the gas taps would not turn. No problem for the boatyard, each tap was hit with a mallet at some force and off we went!

Fred

[JanetAnne]

Old boats, just like old cars and the old houses we live in, evolve over time. I love my boats to be original... ish. Lots of original mahogany and varnish surrounding a modern fridge, shore power, epoxy'd decks, battery banks and clever charging systems. I'd like to shake the hand of the person who took out Chloe Janes original air cooled lister and put a BMC in its place. I could also strangle the idiot who cut vents into the bulkheads to address a condensation issue he caused by keeping the windows sealed shut!!

At the end of the day 'refitting' is just part of the life of a boat and its surely better to have a more modern updated version of  an old broads cruiser than no old broads cruiser at all, just like the new kitchen you fitted in your house because the old one was worn out.

There is also a certain pleasure in finding original fittings to help restore things back to a previous era.

[Vaughan]

56 minutes ago, JanetAnne said:

Lots of original mahogany and varnish surrounding a modern fridge, shore power, epoxy'd decks, battery banks and clever charging systems.

Actually, the King of Hearts was hardly traditional when she was built, in 1952.  She was quite a ground breaker, with a lot of new ideas and materials.

I will explain tomorrow, with some more photos .

 

[unclemike]

[Timbo]

13 hours ago, Vaughan said:

I will explain tomorrow, with some more photos

Come on Vaughan...it's tomorrow already! 

 

 

[Vaughan]

Before I explain some of the new features in the King of Hearts, we might compare what most hire boats used to look like in those days.

This is the saloon of the Six of Hearts, which was completely re-furbished in 1946 after she had spent 5 years of the War on a mud weight on Rockland Broad in order to stop German seaplanes from landing.  Quite what the Germans might have done to threaten us, after landing in the middle of all that reed marsh, was never fully explained!

Among things to notice are the heavy oak roof beams, supporting a deal planked cabin top, usually tongue and grooved and covered in painted canvas.  More of that later.  Right aft is a small galley compartment with a hand pump for cold water and a cooker.  The gas bottle was kept in the cupboard under the sink.  The BSS, was several decades into the future at this time.  

The saloon layout is still more like a yacht, with a central folding table and seating which converts into berths at night.  Seat covering would be leather and berths were covered in an upholstery fabric, which gave one the feeling of being in a compartment of a second class railway carriage.  Some boats even had droplight windows, held up by wide leather straps, just like the Great Eastern Railway!  On this boat the windows were opened with handles, just like in a car. Furniture still relied on whole boards of solid mahogany.

And here looking forward, into the small, stand - up wheelhouse, with the engine under the floor.

Compare this with the saloon of the King of Hearts :

Having the main saloon and dining area as part of the wheelhouse, was made possible by the fully opening sliding canopy.  This also freed up the aft end of the boat for a big athwartships galley and an aft cabin with its own toilet compartment off to one side.  So straight away, you had a boat with two toilets, which was also quite rare.

Extensive use is now made of plywood bulkheads and furniture, rather than the traditional mahogany panelling.  The seat covers are made from a brand new plastic material, called "Vydura".  This was waterproof if you left the canopy open in the rain;  you could walk all over it to get out onto the deck;  you could spill your food on it;  you could even puke all over it, and it all wiped off with no trouble at all.  In other words it was virtually HIRER PROOF!  With my father, everything had to be hirer proof.  And how right he was!

Father knew quite a lot about plywood as he had been in Coastal Forces MTBs ever since 1935 in the RNVR and most of their superstructures were built of it.  He said it was a very strong, light and hard wearing material, but it would not stop incoming cannon shells.

So he made that long, wide foredeck on the King with quite thin deck beams and two layers of marine ply, glued and screwed together to make a very strong, light structure.  The aft cabin and canopy top were made in the same way.  So this was one of the early examples of cold moulding.

The big innovation was the sliding canopy and one or two yards tried to copy it but they found there was a problem.  The "trick" to it was that the cabin sides had to be parallel and exactly vertical, or it jumped off the rails.  Most boats then, were not shaped like that.  The runners were made of thick brass tube with the front face sliced off, to form a track, which was fixed to the sides on wooden formers.  At each corner of the canopy was a steel ball which ran inside the track on roller bearings and was bolted on with adjustable lock nuts.  So the canopy could not fall off, or blow off in the wind and you could even take her to sea, if you had a mind to.  The front rail dropped down sharply at right-angles at the front, for about an inch and a half, so when you closed the canopy, it dropped into place and locked itself.  At the same time a front lip dropped over the front of the windscreen to hold it in place and make a rain proof seal.  So to open the canopy, you just had to stand at the front inside facing aft, lift it up about an inch, and it glided back down the rails on its own.  One man could close it by pushing from the inside but one on each side out on the deck, was recommended.  So the performance of lowering and stowing a wheelhouse canopy and its sides, could now be done by one man in a matter of seconds, without even having to stop the boat.

The galley was built with the new "magic" material called Formica and it was a revolution at the time, in easy to clean, hygienic surfaces.

 

This was the galley in the Princess of Hearts which went right across the boat, with an aft cabin having its own toilet (and shower) off to one side.  A layout that we are quite familiar with nowadays.

In the same galley, looking forward, all of the surfaces and bulkheads are now in Formica, as were the toilet compartments.  Apart from the cooker, it would be hard to tell this boat from a modern one.  But this was 1956, and it was the state of the art!

I am now going to take a tea break if I may, and later we can "lift the floorboards" and have a look at the engine. That was ahead of its time, as well!

[ChrisB]

I love raised flat foredecks like the ones on this thread. Apart from the classic good looks it makes the Forepeak a really usable space and adds bouyancy when punching into short square waves.

[WherryNice]

loving this Vaughan, thanks for sharing, can't wait for the engine room tour

[Aboattime]

Vaughan thanks so much for the pictures and information.My father in law was on MTBs during the war, out of Lowestoft.I always remember him telling me about the speed of our boats as against the slower German steel boats.We had to avoid a fire fight with them as they were easily holed and had to go below and place mattresses against the bullet holes to stop the water coming in.Despite being a non swimmer, he survived 3 sinking ,being hit by mines in the North Sea,saved by his life jacket.

 

         

[Vaughan]

It may take a moment to get accustomed to what we are looking at here.  This is only the third diesel engine to be installed in a Broads hire boat. The first two were in the Knave and the Ten of Hearts but they were not  a qualified success as they were a big V2, designed for tractors and the vibration was astounding!

This one is actually a prototype by Turner Diesels, fitted as an experiment before they went into production.  It was designed for small tractors, such as the Ferguson "Pony".  It was a two cylinder, two stroke engine with blown air scavenging, hence the big air filter on top, as clean air was essential.  If you stop to consider, this is a much miniaturised version of the engine which powers your ferry when you cross the channel from Dover to Calais.  The technology is the same.

This was in the days when Britain was still heavily rationed and petrol cost around 3 times more than diesel. And diesel consumption was about a third that of petrol.  Please don't quote me on these figures    but it meant that you could have a two week holiday on the King, without having to fill up anywhere while on holiday and also, you could afford it!  This, in itself, was a revelation.

Being a two stroke, the engine ran at high revs through a direct drive to a very small prop.  This meant there was no vibration and hardly any noise.  It was still running well until 1970 until it was replaced with a Perkins 4107.

At the top in the photo you can see a metal tank with a cap on top and some pipes coming out of it.  This is a very early, and homemade, version of heat exchange cooling.  This meant you could control the temperature with a thermostat and also use antifreeze.  The engine has a "dry" exhaust with asbestos lagging but this was soon converted to the "wet" exhaust that we are used to nowadays.  About 3 years later, this system was used to provide hot water from a calorifier tank, so that the boat could have hot running water, and a shower!  I have a feeling that Hearts may have been the first to do that, as well.  Please correct me, if you know better!

This is the view looking aft and I well remember the old NIFE cell batteries, which were what they used then.  They were 6 volts each but the boat was wired in 12 volts.  I always felt they were akin to the technology of a U-boat.  They were very strong and would accept a deep discharge with no problem.

The rest of Hearts fleet were later fitted with this, which is the Coventry Victor "Vixen".  Actually designed as fire main pumps on ships.

I won't go into detail, except that to start the engine you had to put your foot on that button in the middle of the crankcase, which is a de-compressor.  This was after you had primed the engine with a little oil pot on both cylinders and advanced the throttle rack to cold start.  You then reached up to the dashboard, pressed the starter, wound the engine up to speed, took your foot off and stepped back very smartly!  If you had forgotten to close the valve on one of the oil pots, the result could be quite impressive!

Giving  a "trial run" on these boats was always amusing!

[WherryNice]

Thanks Vaughan very interesting indeed and how boring must the 4107 have seemed in comparison(if a little easier to maintain perhaps?).

By 'Blown air scavenging' are we talking proper supercharging with positive boost pressure or something a little more gentle? Having looked at the pics I can't quite decide exactly what is what.

When she was up for sale recently she sat for quite some time slowly deteriorating(not seriously but varnishwork starting to dull etc) and I found myself getting drawn in closer n closer as the asking price slowly crept down(it didn't help that I could see her from my mooring), finally reaching almost affordable levels but in the end whilst many aspects of the re-fit would have been within my capabilities doing proper justice to any woodwork required would not and I feared that I would've ended up ruining her, so it was quite a relief to see her sell and some work begin although I'm not sure where she is now.

Incidently when for sale she was listed with a new Nanni of some sort.

[Vaughan]

23 minutes ago, WherryNice said:

By 'Blown air scavenging' are we talking proper supercharging with positive boost pressure or something a little more gentle? Having looked at the pics I can't quite decide exactly what is what.

Thank you very much for your comments. I understand that the Nanni you talk of, may not have been fitted when she was put up for sale. I am very much looking forward to meeting her new owner when I am next in Norfolk and for some reason, they seem to want to meet me!

As I have been taught, scavenging is what is done on a two stroke engine (which has no valves) in order to blow out the exhaust gases on the downstroke and replace it with clean air ready for the induction stroke. Turbo charging is done on a conventional 4 stroke engine, when you want to force more air into the cylinders than atmospheric pressure will do on its own. Hence a non turbo engine is known as "naturally aspirated".

[JanetAnne]

Absolutely lovely. The lines, the design, the fit out, the engines.. the nostalgia. 

A real treat for us wooden boat anoraks. Thank you Vaughan.

[JanetAnne]

Can I fire a couple of questions?

In the pictures of the saloons you can clearly see the winder handles protruding from the boxes. There must have been some water ingress into those areas from the window channels. How was that stopped or dealt with?

The 'formica'd' galley shows what looks like fixings around the edges of the Formica panels. Was that additional fixings or were they not glued at that time? Formica of the sixties and seventies was much thicker and harder wearing than its current equivalent. I wonder whether the original version was even thicker than the sixties option and so the fixings were necessary to just hold it down!

 

 

[Vaughan]

6 minutes ago, JanetAnne said:

Can I fire a couple of questions?

Right on both counts!

Those windows were awful and frequently got broken by the hirers, who then couldn't close them. They were soon replaced with hopper windows.

Formica was more difficult to bend when it was a new product, so it had to be glued and screwed. Also, the use of it was a bit of a learning curve. So the galley of the Princess looks a lot more professional than the King, which was the first attempt in Formica.

[Turnoar]

On 02/04/2020 at 16:56, Vaughan said:

 

 

 

 

A bit like this, perhaps, at the Pleasure Boat at Hickling? 

Yes, they could get under Potter bridge in those days. The boat in front is the Queen of Hearts.

 Photo taken by her hirers, on 26th May, 1953.

In the early 80s I can recall a wooden motor cruiser being privately based at Hickling which someone later told me was originally Lionheart. Looking at Craigslist I see she was Wards then Hearts but seems to have more the look of a Hearts design albeit from the twighlight years of woodies and as modern as they got before grp became defacto.

Nice looking boat but would have trouble shooting Potter now, I wonder what became of her?

[Vaughan]

7 hours ago, Turnoar said:

I see she was Wards then Hearts but seems to have more the look of a Hearts design albeit from the twighlight years of woodies and as modern as they got before grp became defacto.

You may be talking about Sea Roamer, which was one of the last boats built by Wards. The two yards' boats did look quite similar as they all had that step down in the hull amidships, but Wards boats had a lot more flare to the shoulder of the bow.

My father and Alf Ward were also great friends. He lived in Thorpe Old Hall in those days.

[Gio63]

On 29/12/2017 at 14:04, webntweb said:

My first Broads holiday, late August 1958 on Vestella 4.

Left to right myself, my sister and older brother,

Roy

Fabulous picture & boat.

[webntweb]

26 minutes ago, Gio63 said:

Fabulous picture & boat.

I posted the pic above over two years ago. I forgot to ask if anybody knew where we were moored. Pretty easy for old timers I would think.

[gancanny]

ludham bridge maybe

[grendel]

I like the boarding plank, a shame more boats dont have those nowadays.

[webntweb]

Not there gancanny.

The lad on top of the cabin is my brother. Teenagers were bone idle even in those days.

[LizG]

I am trying to read the name on the stern of the work boat in the background.  Wondering if it is Salvor - Herbert Woods trusty workhorse!