Disappearing heritage!

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DAVID J. WIGGINS with thanks to JOHN and PAUL DELL pays a last visit to the Motor Boat Museum

Dave visited the Motor Boat Museum in Pitsea, Essex in November 2009. Sadly, subsequent to that and at short notice on 4th December 2009, the local council who own the site decided to close it for major building refurbishment and return the boats and artefacts to their donors or owners. This has also had an effect on the viability of Wat Tyler MBC who use the adjacent model boat pond. Hopefully in the case of this, matters will become clearer in due course to the benefit of model boaters. This article is published, because it will hopefully remind readers of out national heritage and how what was a unique collection has now been dispersed to the disadvantage of all of us – Editor.

Dave’s visit

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In November 2009, I visited the Motor Boat Museum at Pitsea in Essex specifically to take some pictures for a Canadian friend interested in their large collection of outboard motors. Fortunately, I took some pictures of the other museum contents as at that time no one mentioned that it was likely to close so soon afterwards. This therefore is pictorial record of what was a unique collection and the pictures are hopefully of interest to model boat builders.

On the day, I went with an ex-MOD engineering colleague, John Dell. His son Paul is interested in, and is modelling, the offshore racer Surfury (designer Renato Levi, 1965 and 60 knots on about 1000 bhp!) for a vintage 15cc GANnet OHV so I took some shots of that too. So, presented here are pictures of the real Surfury and of Paul Dell’s model, not yet finished but a true high quality double diagonally planked model.

The museum

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Almost every boat in the museum was my cup of tea. This will not, I’m sure, surprise regular CCM readers as hard chine powerboats are what I like and there were a lot of full size hydro’s and very fast boats there including examples of Chris Craft, Riva and many others. On the debit side the model engine display that used to be there and some of the models had already been taken away, although I did see two that I liked, these being a Chris Craft displayed in a glass case in the lobby and an oldie from Blackheath member Tony Falconer that has (or had) a 10cc Channel Islands Special for motive power according to the label.

It was not just boats. There were significant collections of silverware including those of Marian Carstairs. Carstairs, known as ‘Joe’, had quite a history in fast boat racing during the 1920s including a period out in Eastern Canada driving fast boats built by Ditchburns of Gravenhurst on the Muskoka Lakes of Ontario. He is a boat builder of great interest to me as last year, I scratch built a semi-scale model of their 1928 Viking hydroplane which is set to be serialised in my column during 2012 (yes 2012!). While there I also saw a pretty steam launch and a really lovely Thames slipper launch that very much took my eye as a future scratch modelling project plus many other small wooden boats, but the overall emphasis was on performance craft with several outright racing hydroplanes.

Next to the museum is a small model boating lake used by Wat Tyler MBC and if you live in the area, I’m sure they’d welcome enquiries for membership. Hopefully, these pictures will be of use to readers should they have it in mind to build any of the craft that were on display and this unfortunate tale might spur us on to ensuring that other speciality museums across the UK don’t suddenly disappear for economic reasons, or perhaps because they don’t ‘fit’ into an area development plan.

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