NEWS
SPECIAL REPORT
Historic boats get new Welsh home
A major new attraction featuring live boat restoration and displays of historic craft is due to open at Cardiff’s Discovery Quay this summer, reports Peter Willis. Boat Lab will be run by World of Boats, the public brandname of the Eyemouth International Sailing Craft Association (EISCA) – the charity set up by maritime philanthropist Andrew Thornhill QC. The display will be the third, and largest, site opened by the charity, since it rescued the contents of Exeter Maritime Museum after closure in 1997. The collection has now grown to about 400 craft and is in storage at various locations around the UK. The main warehouse is in Eyemouth in Scotland, where there has been a small, themed exhibition on the waterfront for some years.
BARN AT BEALE PARK The other display centre is the Tithe Barn at Beale Park, on the Thames near Pangbourne. Near the site of the annual boat show, it was opened briefly last year, then closed again for further development. Its full opening, with around 40 river craft and sailing dinghies, is scheduled to coincide with this year’s Beale Park Boat Show (8-10 June, see p43). Plans for an
all-weather, purpose-built centre at Beale are at the design stage, and could open within the next five years.
CARDIFF EXPERIENCE In Cardiff, work is forging ahead to meet a mid-July deadline. “We want to be open ahead of the new Dr Who Experience, which will be next- door,” explains Stephen Walters, spokesman for World of Boats. “It will be the first major visitor attraction in Cardiff in 21 years.” Boat Lab will be based around a fully-equipped boat restoration workshop, where visitors can see work being carried out and watch progress on four or five boats at a time. Around this area, additional displays will show up to 50 historic boats from the collection, with touch screens explaining how they were created and what they were used for. The first large ‘feature’ boat in the workshop will be the Elena Maria Barbara, a Russian-built replica of an 18th-century Baltic packet schooner that measures 62ft (18.9m) on deck. She is a sister ship to the one used for the replica HMS Pickle in 2005, briefly called Cymru, ‘a Tall Ship for Wales’, before entering into an extensive programme of restoration under various owners. She will be
“It will be the first major visitor
attraction in Cardiff for twenty-one years”
Above and below: Beale Park’s Tithe Barn houses part of the collection
followed in about 18 months’ time by Silvery Light, a herring drifter built in St Ives, Cornwall, in 1884 for use on the East Coast. EISCA- owned, she is on the National Register of Historic Vessels. Eventually, the plan is to move the bulk of the collection down from Eyemouth and display it properly at the Cardiff site. “Eyemouth has been an excellent, and economical, storage facility, and it will be keeping its exhibition and boat restoration workshop,” says Stephen Walters. “But sadly, it just doesn’t get the visitor footfall that we need. Cardiff will give the collection the visibility it deserves.”
www.worldofboats.org
CLASSIC BOAT JUNE 2012
27
C/O EISCA
C/O EISCA
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100