Tag Archives: Les Turner

Les Turner: Harbour, 1970s

I shall never forget the day we had to deal with a fifty foot sort of Edwardian steam yacht.  Apparently they’d gone out the harbour and something had fallen off – I think it was a clock or the barometer. The husband and wife were having a bloody good old argument about it and they hit the Admiralty buoy out there, and so they comes in screaming and shouting.
We managed to get a line. They got the bow to about here, and of course the tide was  going out and I managed to put a line on there on to the quay.  People with pumps came from everywhere. They even got the Fire Brigade down here.   Poor old Bob Woodford went and got this pump off Vic. He went running down this little slip. Course he forgot the bloody thing ended, and the people on the boat just managed to grab hold the pump before Bob disappeared off the end.

Yarmouth Harbour 1960s

Yarmouth Harbour 1960s

That’s where Cecil Doe, George Weston and Jack Harwood used to keep their sailing dinghies, their Enterprises, GP14s and stuff. We used to go down there lots of times, find a dinghy with an oar, scull up to the top of the quay or up the top of the harbour if there was westerly wind blowing, and either Al or myself would stand up with our jackets wide open, and one of us would steer with the oar while the other one stood with their jacket and sail down the harbour.  Les Turner  b 1944

 

Les Turner: Harbour, antifouling, 1950s, 1960s

Harbour at low tide

Harbour at low tide

Wally Feaver had this,-  about, what?-  fifty foot type motor cruiser and he’d say to us lads,  “Can you come and give us a hand, nipper?  We want to do the underside of the boat  – anti fouling.’  We laid on the mud, absolutely covered in stuff.  Cor, what a job!  Because there were these huge great bilge keels on it, and you had to slide up in between them.  Les Turner b1944

Les Turner, Alec Cokes: Free Time with Go Karts 1950s

Alec and I would go out after school with one of our karts across to Sandhard or down to Fort Vic. to collect the wood off the beach.   At weekends we sawed it up for firewood.
I remember we used to take turns to ride the Kart down over Fort Vic hill.  The Fort was still manned by the Army then.
It was my turn this particular time.  I went hurtling down over the hill.  All of a sudden this dispatch rider appeared coming  the other way up the hill.  He went in one hedge and I went in the other. Les Turner b 1944

I can remember going over to Fort Vic; it particularly sticks in my mind as I think we brought back a carton of those 7 pound tins of cocoa.  We had about four of them in a box, and we had chocolate cakes for a long time after that, and chocolate puds.  Yeah I can remember doing that one.  Alec Cokes  b1945