Tag Archives: houseboat

Pauline and Jack Harwood: Harbour, houseboat,1950s

Houseboats moored on the river side of the old bridge.

Houseboats moored on the river side of the old bridge

 

When we got married we couldn’t afford to buy a house. We were lucky because a sleeping sickness specialist chap in Kenya or somewhere – Robin Cox and his wife –  he went back, and he said we could have their houseboat.
It was nice, plenty of room. We had a nice little stove, and one night Jack built up the stove so it got so hot we thought it would catch fire.
We wondered why there were so many mugs around and pots. When it rained we realised; rain came in everywhere.
When the tide was wrong and the wind came from the south, she used to come up on her end but we never came adrift from the mooring/gangway.  We were on ‘Bluenose’, but it started off as ‘Spinwham’ – same boat.
Stan Smith lived on it for a bit and then Colonel Mitchell. And then Penny and her husband and it ended up at the top of the river. Pauline Harwood nee Hatch b 1935

Brian Pomroy: Harbour, Smith’s boatshed 1940s

Yarmouth harbour Panorama 1950s

Yarmouth harbour Panorama 1950s

The tide used to come up to where Stan Smith used to come out of his yard to launch his boats. Where the old coastguard houses are now, the water used to come up to their back walls.  Jack Harwood had an old RAF boat there that he used to live on. Brian Pomroy b1937

Colin Smith: Early Days

I started off in Quay Street in a house in one of those little passages that go across. Then we went to live in the harbour aboard a boat called ‘ The Tina’, a sixty footer, and whether that caused my mother to be poorly I don’t know.  She went into Havenstreet for a while with ‘consumption’ as it was known in those days, and then up to Scotland, and I, being the youngest of the brood, I went up there with her and attended school up there for a while.  That was a sad business, but there it was. Colin Smith b 1922