Museum Of The Broads New Boat And Replace Falcon's Steam Engine

[Timbo]

http://www.edp24.co.uk/business/museum-of-the-broads-stalham-grant-for-new-trip-boat-1-5606860

Now according to the EDP, they are going to take the steam engine out of the steam launch and replace it with an electric motor? I hope it's an EDP error as that would have broken Uncle Albert's heart!

[Guest]

I have it on VERY good authority that the new engine for Falcon is a steam engine. The old one being the original one from 1895 when she was built. The confusion may arise from the fact that a new launch is in build as we speak by the Lowestoft training college. This launch will be electric.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, springsong said:

I have it on VERY good authority that the new engine for Falcon is a steam engine. The old one being the original one from 1895 when she was built. The confusion may arise from the fact that a new launch is in build as we speak by the Lowestoft training college. This launch will be electric.

The new electric launch will apparently have a transparent roof, so you can view the birds as they fly above you. But, birds being birds, I was wondering... Will it have a windscreen washer on the transparent roof?... 

[grendel]

having seen Janet Annes car at the weekend, I think a pressure hose at the very least.

[MBA Marine]

The new hull was put on transport for Lowestoft college today, and yes it will have electric drive propulsion.

[Poggymale]

Good morning all. 

The Museum is indeed getting a new electric trip boat with a transparent roof. Bearing in mind how good most boat windscreen wipers are they haven’t gone for one on the roof - a bit of elbow grease will resolve that one?. They are also getting a new steam engine for Falcon and the current engine will go on display. The wheelchair will be used with the accessible electric trip boat. 

Thanks for flagging this Springsong, and Timbo I am sure Uncle Albert would have approved. 

Its all good news for the Broads and for a fabulous indepenent museum.

Have a lovely sunny day all. 

[Ray]

Visited the museum for the first time this year during an emergency services open day. Fantastic place, looking forward to another visit 

Was a lovely surprise to also find the old Maltsers bar there, good memories (some slightly foggy though )

[Poggymale]

Ray that’s great. What’s more their annual ticket means you can go back again for free. Seen another example of the old Malsters type bar in the Royal Norfolk and Suffolk and also in a bar in Harwich. It’s a great concept ?

[Ray]

Very good value for money! I was surprised to find the bar gone from the Maltsers, it was a long time ago I last visited but it was such a great thing I don't think I would have removed it!

Mind you it was very generous of them to donate it. A living memory item in a museum... I must be getting old! 

[Guest]

I was once talking to Percy aka H.T.Percival of the boat building company in Horning who bult the bar. He could tell a good story, they brought it up by boat unloaded and carried it to the pub. They could not get it through the door so had to remove the window on the left of the door. I cannot remember when it arrived at the MOB but I do know Griff was 

involved so maybe he will pop up to tell us, at a guess 2008/9

[Vaughan]

I have been looking in the loft for this, for a couple of days!

The bar is a proper clinker build, with copper roves and the spokes of the wheel behind, are also beer pumps.

The man with the pipe is my father and seated in front is Geoff Pleasants, landlord of the Maltsters. I can't quite remember but I think the man to the left is Don Hagenbach, of Windboats, who was vice chairman of Blakes, so this may have been shortly after the bar was installed.

The printing date on the transparency is Jan 1961.

I remember my father telling me that Blakes sponsored the building of the bar, which is quite likely as Blakes held the lease of Malthouse Broad and the Maltsters quay in those days.

(Susie asked who the dog was, and that is my father's gundog, "Flight").

[Ray]

Great photo and history Vaughan 

[Guest]

I remember the 'boat shaped bar' at the Maltsters, from our first visit in 1972. Those were the days of 'Norwich Bitter' and scampi & chips in a basket... I've seen the bar many times since, both at the Maltsters and at it's new home in the Museum of the Broads.

Besides the 'boat bar' at the museum, I always say hello to this 'moth eaten' old specimen, because he's also a part of Broads history too. I remember the first time I came 'face to face' with one of these little chaps. I was riding my motor bike along Market Road in Burgh Castle, when the headlight caught it, sitting beside the road on the edge of the marshes. The thing that struck me, about what looked like an oversized rat, was it's bright orange incisor teeth, which seemed almost fluorescent in the light beam. I saw quite a few more Coypu, mostly on the marshes around St. Olaves, Belton and Burgh Castle in the late seventies. It's a pity they had to be killed, but the damage they did to the drainage dykes, flood banks and sugar beet crops, meant they had to go. I believe the last Coypu's were finally eradicated, from the broads area, in the late eighties...

 

[BroadAmbition]

We removed the bow bar during one of our Lads weeks into a removal van. I will have photos / date on the home p/c

Griff

[Vaughan]

On 18/07/2018 at 12:55, kingfisher666 said:

 

Now who does that remind us of? Perhaps I had better not ask, or our chairman might suggest it is one of his ancestors. Sweyne Forktooth.

 

I wonder if this is the same one that used to be in the Stracey Arms? If you can bear with me, I have a little story.

One evening, in the mid 50s, my parents and I were coming back from a day out in Yarmouth, in my father's Standard Vanguard Estate car. Wherever father went in Norfolk, he could never drive past a pub when it was open, so we called in at the Stracey Arms for a "quick one". In those days it was a typical small riverside Norfolk pub, probably built as a marsh man's house and similar in many ways to Geldeston Locks, the Waveney at Burgh St Peter, or the New Inn at Rockland. The original building can still just be seen, in the middle of all the later extensions. Inside there was just one bar, with an open fireplace at one end, the bar at the other end and some old church pews around the walls, for the locals to sit on.

The landlord came from the north of Canada and had come over to serve with the forces in the War. He fell in love with England, stayed, and bought the pub. On the wall behind the bar was a large stuffed coypu, on a shelf, which the landlord described as a "marsh mouse". It seems they were a lot bigger, in Canada!

He was an opinionated sort of person who loved to tell his customers all about the Broads and what he reckoned was wrong with them. Father quite soon, said "That is interesting, as I happen to be involved in the Broads. I have a boatyard in Thorpe". In other words, he gave the chap due warning of who he might be talking to. But this did not deter him and he went on for a while about Blakes hire boats, the tourists, Blakes, the wash, what Blakes should be doing, what he would do if he were Blakes, etc., etc. Father made neutral comments from time to time, my mother just smiled and I turned round to study a stuffed pike on the other wall in order not to ruin it by bursting out laughing.

Eventually, he said "Say, you seem to know a bit about these Broads. I don't suppose you are anything to do with this here Blakes?" Father, quite quietly, said "Yes, I am the chairman." So the next round of drinks was on the house!

As a footnote, a few weeks later, the board of Blakes approved a contribution towards repairs to the quay heading at the Stracey Arms.

 

 

[stumpy]

I recall when there was a bounty on coypu - 7/6 rings a bell. Sea Scout weekends on Valoma sometimes resembled a scene from the Dirty Dozen, catties,crossbows, one guy even turned up with his dads folding .410 and a pocket of cartridges! Never managed to bag one though - shame as a five gallon jerrycan of red was 7/6 in those days.

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, stumpy said:

I recall when there was a bounty on coypu - 7/6 rings a bell. Sea Scout weekends on Valoma sometimes resembled a scene from the Dirty Dozen, catties,crossbows, one guy even turned up with his dads folding .410 and a pocket of cartridges! Never managed to bag one though - shame as a five gallon jerrycan of red was 7/6 in those days.

I knew an old chap, when I lived at Burgh Castle, he told me, he got "five bob for 'em". He worked the marshes on 'the island' and never went short of 'beer money' thanks to the coypus and the geese or ducks, that "flew into the pylons" near Haddiscoe bridge...  

[Bound2Please]

9 minutes ago, kingfisher666 said:

I knew an old chap, when I lived at Burgh Castle, he told me, he got "five bob for 'em". He worked the marshes on 'the island' and never went short of 'beer money' thanks to the coypus and the geese or ducks, that "flew into the pylons" near Haddiscoe bridge...  

As a kid we used to get 2/6 for every grey squirrel tail we took in to the council offices. That stopped one they realised the greys had won and killed off our reds

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Bound2Please said:

As a kid we used to get 2/6 for every grey squirrel tail we took in to the council offices. That stopped one they realised the greys had won and killed off our reds

Sorry, for continuing this little 'thread' detour.

But, I remember the woods, where I grew up (I literally did spend most of my childhood roaming the woods, no telly you see) all the squirrels (in our part of Essex) were Red Squirrels, with the occasional Grey Squirrel. Despite the local farmers lads, attempting to eradicate the Greys (with 410's). Within ten years, by the time I'd reached my mid teens (in the late sixties) the Red's were all but gone... Yet another sad tale, about introduced non-native species, it rarely ends well unfortunately...

[stumpy]

On 21/07/2018 at 14:47, kingfisher666 said:

I knew an old chap, when I lived at Burgh Castle, he told me, he got "five bob for 'em". He worked the marshes on 'the island' and never went short of 'beer money' thanks to the coypus and the geese or ducks, that "flew into the pylons" near Haddiscoe bridge...  

It could well have been five bob,after all it was a long time ago (when Wagon Wheels were huuuge!)

[marshman]

We used to run a "business" in the pelts by skinning the ones we got and custom lining the old green parkas!! Garage used to stink a bit!!!

[BroadAmbition]

19th October 2009, annual Lads week.   We moved the bar outside and into a van for transport to the Museum of the Broads

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

I wasn't there the day you delivered it but for the next few weeks I cleaned and scraped many years of beer and nicotine stains and then re varnished it. It has survived pretty well, once I persuaded  the engineers not to put engine parts and tools on my new varnish  

 

[LisaRose]

On 18/07/2018 at 10:47, Vaughan said:

I have been looking in the loft for this, for a couple of days!

The bar is a proper clinker build, with copper roves and the spokes of the wheel behind, are also beer pumps.

The man with the pipe is my father and seated in front is Geoff Pleasants, landlord of the Maltsters. I can't quite remember but I think the man to the left is Don Hagenbach, of Windboats, who was vice chairman of Blakes, so this may have been shortly after the bar was installed.

The printing date on the transparency is Jan 1961.

I remember my father telling me that Blakes sponsored the building of the bar, which is quite likely as Blakes held the lease of Malthouse Broad and the Maltsters quay in those days.

(Susie asked who the dog was, and that is my father's gundog, "Flight").

Hello, this is my Grandpa, I was just looking to see if the boat bar was still there and I found your post. You wouldn't have any more photos of Geoff at all or of my Grandmother (Rose) or my Dad (Douglas) at all would you? Sadly they have all passed away now x

[Vaughan]

8 hours ago, LisaRose said:

You wouldn't have any more photos of Geoff at all or of my Grandmother (Rose) or my Dad (Douglas) at all would you?

I will see what I can find! I know I have some somewhere.