DOUGAL’S DIARY

THE SOUND OF SAILING…

Although we take for granted the choices we have nowadays when it comes to outboards, this has not always been the case.

When we talk about the love of being afloat, what we are often describing is the wonderful assault on our senses as we enjoy all of the sensations that we are experiencing. Surprisingly, this does not just include the obvious ones, the wind on the face or the motion of the waves, but all of our senses, including sound.

After all, what can be more evocative than the sibilant hiss of water rushing past the hull, or that gentle slip-slop of night time waves against the hull that can ease even the most problematic of sleepers into a blissful land of nod.

There is, though, one other sound that today has all but disappeared, yet for many of that generation for whom nights away were spent at an anchorage, rather than a marina, this has to be the sound of getting from the boat to the pub and then back again at closing time. Those who were already asleep on board would be roused from their slumbers by a noisy, clattering rumble that would see them smile, turn over and then say “Seagull” before going back to sleep.

That smile would say it all, because back then the choices for an outboard for the tender were a 40 plus or a Century and both were made by the British Seagull company at a factory in Poole. That meant the problems with the outboards, which were thankfully few, were common to us all. After an evening run ashore, to start the engine you had to fiddle with the push-pull fuel tap below the tank, feel for the manual choke on the carburettor, then wind the starting cord around the flywheel and pull hard.

RELIABLE BUT NOT GREEN Few Seagulls started ‘first pull’; dropping the starting lanyard overboard you would have to row back, meanwhile others in the boat would have to beware of the flailing cord as the big pull needed to start the engine risked ‘crowning’ any unwary passengers.

Amazingly, Seagull outboards were in truth incredibly reliable as there were so few parts to go wrong, and the stories of how they got dropped overboard, dragged back up, rinsed off under a hose, refuelled and then started again were legend – and true! British Seagulls were in use right across the globe, from the frozen wastes of the ice caps to the heat and humidity of the tropics, where they would run and run, often with the most minimal of servicing and attention.

That said, they were noisy, smelly, not very fuel efficient and an environmentalist’s worst nightmare, as they ran on a hefty 25:1 mix of two-stroke oil, which meant that when running you left a faint but distinguishable oil slick in the wake behind you. However, despite these failings, Seagull outboards helped power the huge growth in coastal sailing in the 1960s and ‘70s. Because of this, it is easy to think of the Seagull as being right at the forefront of marine outboard motor development, but when taken in global terms, they were quite a late developer.

Image: Simon Higham

Another vintage American outboard, single cyclinder but with the exhaust allowed to come out into the air - this would have been noisy

Image: Evinrude USA

Image: David Henshall

The an behind the first really practical outboard otor, le vinrude seen here in with his bi sellin hp otor

ENTER EVINRUDE Instead, the first outboards hark right back to the very early days of popular leisure boating in the late 1870s, and these were electric. The batteries of the day were heavy and lacked capacity, so the next outboard developments focused on the petrol-powered units that came out of the USA. In the first years of the 20th century practical motors started to appear in growing numbers courtesy of the ‘Porto-Motor’, but these would soon be overtaken by one of the all-time great innovators from the world of boating.

Ole Aaslundeie was born in Norway, but when his parents emigrated to the USA the name was Americanised to Evinrude and it would be the company that Ole created, bearing his name, that would finally create a user friendly and reliable two-stroke outboard that would include nearly all of the features that we recognise today.

Given that the back of a small boat is hardly a kindly environment for a complex engine, simplicity would be paramount. It was this basic layout, a top mounted power unit, then a vertical shaft down to a 90° bevelled gearbox that fed the propellor, that would be followed by the makers of the first Seagull motors in the 1930s.

CHANGING NEEDS Outboards would be given a chance to show their true worth during WW2, when the changing nature of modern warfare saw the need to easily transport assault boats that could be handled by troops with only minimal training. Outboards might be the answer, but in order to become an effective power supply there would need to be something of a step function in performance from the current 5hp that was in use with pre-war yacht tenders to a far more powerful 50hp motor.

Once again it was Evinrude who would come up with a new engine, whilst one of their big competitors, Johnson, developed an equally important 22hp outboard that was used to help position the units that formed the basis of a floating bridge. These outboards played key roles in the abortive Market-Garden attacks into the Netherlands, then the successful crossing of wide rivers such as the Rhine.

In the years following the return to peace, import controls meant that the American outboards were hard to come by, so the market was open for UK built units to satisfy demand. Although the motor now known as the British Seagull was numerically dominant, frequently mounted on one of the ‘new’ Avon inflatables and happily traded with the tagline ‘The Best Outboard in the World’, they remained low powered, slow revving ‘chuggers’ that had no place in

Image: Saving Old Seagulls

You could hear them coming and then follow where they had been by the oil on the water, but the British Seagull was almost an institution in itself that helped drive the growth in leisure boating

the performance market. That role would be filled by the British Anzani engines; light, fast revving and powerful, ideal for the growing range of speedboats.

There were also other formats of early outboards in use abroad, with the Asian ‘long tails’, where a lengthy prop shaft was welded directly to the end of the crankshaft, then the whole lot balanced on the transom, but thankfully these did not have a place in our home waters as one can only imagine the carnage they would have caused in a busy anchorage at night.

NEW OUTBOARDS By the late 1970s and the 1980s the world of leisure boating was changing fast, with globalisation providing a stream of smart new outboards that were lighter, quieter and in so many ways more user-friendly, and the stalwart of the UK boating scene, the Seagull, would no longer provide the soundtrack to our sport.

Moreover, the way in which we spent time afloat was changing as trips became passages from marina to marina and, for many boats, the tender itself became almost superfluous.

Elsewhere, though, the outboard was not just coming of age, it was getting beefier and better, but the next stage in the outboard story will have to wait until Part 2 of this series!

Image: Simon Higham