Tag Archives: boatyard

Colin Smith: Harbour, Theo Osborne Smith’s boatyard 1930s

Father had the boatyard that, at that time, came straight on to the water when the tide was up.  There was a lot of sedge and so on, but there was a channel along the

Smith's Boatshed 1970s

Smith’s Boatshed 1970s

first of all, and up to the back of the Institute, the Liberal Club I believe they called it in those days.  Just beyond, the stream ran along to what was the Dump, the beginning of where they used to bring the lorries in and dump off rubbish. Now they’ve covered the whole lot of course.

My grandfather started the yard there as I understand it.   Grandfather’s name was Theo Osborne Smith.  He used to have the name on the sign. His first shed was an old ex army canteen. He bought it and had it re-erected there, and there was another little arched type of building behind as well.  He originally started up at Oxford on the Upper Thames and then moved down, first to Fawley, over at Ashlett Creek. He had a little business there, and then for some reason, I haven’t got a clue why, moved over to Yarmouth.  He specialised in mostly little centre-board type of sailing boats, twenty foot or twenty two thereabouts and so on.  He built one of them, the ‘Menomopote’ it was called, Child of the Ocean. I don’t know where they got that name from.  A very unusual boat, very easy underwater shape and the top sides were paired off and came round into a kind of chine and at midship it came right up to the gunwale (or gunnel) . He was a very advanced designer.  I don’t think my father took it to the same extent.  Colin Smith b 1921

Joan Cokes: Harbour, rowing 1920s, 1930s

Yacht  and dinghies alongside Quay 1920s. Postcard from Mike Holden

Yacht and dinghies alongside Quay 1920s. Postcard from Mike Holden

My father was employed as a gardener in the Pier Hotel (now the George Hotel).  He bought a boat in Lymington and rowed it back to Yarmouth on a slack tide.
I can remember rowing my father’s boat for him.  He would ask me to take it alongside the harbour at high tide, from the hard by the boatyard – otherwise it would have been high and dry at low tide.  I also used to row my father and a customer to go fishing off Black Rock – but he wouldn’t tell me or show me the fishing ‘marks’. Joan Cokes nee Cooper b 1918