Commercial - unidentified 


Here are some photos of a pond yacht that I recently purchased in the hope that someone in your group may be able to identify it. Unfortunately I think the images I attached were not the low resolution versions and this may have caused some difficulties at your end so I'm re-sending in a smaller format. I've also taken a few more measurements that may help to identify it.
The yacht is;
1070mm O/A ,
860mm at boot top (LWL)
217mm maximum beam
90mm width of transom
250mm sheerline to bottom of keel
1495mm top of mast to bottom of keel
520mm mainsail boom


It appears to have the original paint job which is in fairly good condition except for tiny droplets of hard wood sap that are pushing through the paint in places and over the lead where the paint is slightly crazed. It has quadrant steering with simple eyelets as guides. It appears to have a hole for a flag pole set into the deck on an angle just forward of the transom. The guy I got it from suggested that it may be a commercial model produced by Bowman.
I hope this is of some use and look forward to your comments.


Tony Kearney
Port Adelaide
Australia


 

vmyg comment.

Thanks for the sight of this. I'm sure you are right that it is a commercial model from the 1950s. It might just possibly date from before 1939. Design wise there isn't much difference between the commercial products of the pre and post war years. I don't know what it is, but I do know that it's not a Bowman. It's too big and too sophisticated in design terms to be one of theirs, which were pretty crude items. This bears a close resemblance to a serious racing model of the period and has a decent piece of lead on the keel. It's the sort of thing that good toyshops and model engineers like Bassett-Lowke would sell. Bassett's catalogues show that they bought in a number of ranges of superior toy boats,(for instance from Alexanders of Preston) but this one doesn't figure in any of the copies that I have, so we can't be sure it came through Bassetts.

I recall one of my schoolfriends had something smaller but very similar in style, even down to the paint scheme in the late 1940s, but I don't know what it was, and I'm not sure that he did either. These things came to us from devious sources through several hands in the immediate post war world.

I'm sorry not to be able to help more. RP