RANSOME’S
Arthur Ransome sailed the Kingsbuilt Selina King for just one season before he had to give her up. Now, after over 50 years away, she is restored and back at home
WORDS AND PHOTOS PETER WILLIS
KING
PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION WINNERS
The National Historic Ships UK photography competition, run annually in partnership with Classic Boat, attracted many strong images. Here are the winners
CLASSIC BOAT WINNER A Sinking Feeling, featuring Mayfly and Dorothy
By Chrissie Westgate from West Mersea
TRUE COLOURS OVERALL WININER
Painting Trafalgar
By Peter Collins from Portsmouth
NEWCOMER
By Amy Lawson from Perth, Western Australia
by Julie Fletcher from Llandeilo
CLASSIC BOAT
Pudge By Shaun Mills from West Mersea
THE LAKE SHOW
The Windermere 17 Class has been embellishing Lake Windermere for 120 years and continues to flourish. Sam Jefferson went for a celebration sail on its anniversary day
BACK TO
She was at Dunkirk in 1940 and she’ll be returning in 2025. Right now, the Camper & Nicholson TSDY is celebrating the refit of a lifetime
WORDS STEFFAN MEYRIC HUGHES
Some said it couldn’t be done. Rescuing 338,000 troops from Dunkirk and the clutches of the Nazis in 1940 using a motley flotilla of small pleasure vessels from English shores and rivers seemed too dinky and unconventional to some at the time. But the steel-hulled Llanthony played her part heroically alongside the 800 or more other ‘little ships’ at Operation Dynamo, today seen as an audacious, imaginative and (meteorologically) lucky answer to an impossible predicament. Eight decades later, when the small, upper Thames boatyard of Michael Dennett took on a complete restoration, some again said it
couldn’t be done. You can guess the outcome from the photos on these pages, but perhaps not the question: how would a yard like Dennetts take on a yacht… it’s tempting to call Llanthony a ship… of a size that just getting her this far up the Thames would be a challenge; a yacht too big to be slipped ashore; a vessel that was going to have a ‘superyacht’ standard interior and systems, and one that needed to be done in about 18 months, afloat, with a staff of around 10 more accustomed to wooden hulls?
It wasn’t due to my efforts. I’ve been volunteering at the yard occasionally over the last few months, but my work on
DUNKIRK
Llanthony was limited to peeling shrink-wrap plastic off fridges. I did witness much of the real work, which always seemed to hurtle on at breakneck pace in the absences between visits. The customary tea breaks carried on, always announced by young AJ’s fractured bellow of “tea’s up” at the appointed hour. Michael Dennett, 83, still turned up to work every day with his sandwiches and newspaper and sat on his usual chair. Conversation at lunch hour encompassed many things… flood ‘liaison’ officers (the Dennetts yard is prone to vulnerable to rain and river and flooded badly in January last year), 20mph zones, the difference between a cannon and a machinegun, the quality of microwave spag
bol, and… occasionally… an enquiry into how stressed Steve Dennett the boss was as the impossible deadline loomed. The answer? Not as much as you or I would be. Dennetts was going to have a go at Llanthony, but in their own way, the way of a small, trad yard that’s done countless restorations over 60 years.
THE DESIGN LEGACY
When Llanthony was built in 1934, the yard of Camper & Nicholsons (C&N) was riding a wave of popularity in the design and build of cruising motor yachts, sharing a global stage with GL Watson and Co in Scotland, then under the control of the designer James Rennie Barnett.
While Watson was building some of the greatest yachts of the inter-war age in grand, traditional style (a number of which have been rebuilt this century, including Nahlin, Blue Bird and Lady Hertha), C&N, then under the helm of Charles E Nicholson, had taken a different direction, with an emphasis on more comfortable, space-efficient interiors and modern external appearance.
According to William Collier, who undertook the design work for the recent restoration of the 165ft (50.3m) Camper & Nicholson motor yacht Malahne (1937), it was a trend that began with the firm’s introduction of diesel engines on large motor yachts, starting with the aptly-named 148ft (45m)
IN BALTIC WATERS
The Cunliffes continue with their grand Baltic adventure
WORDS TOM CUNLIFFE
This photo: Constance anchored in Harstena
Inset: Baltic ketch
Johanna in Brixham, about to sail for the Caribbean, Feb 1970