Tag Archives: Stan Smith

Colin Smith: Nova Espero, Siani class yacht 1940s

Colin and Stan Smith travelled to Canada in WWII to train as RAF pilots. After the war, they returned, and built the ‘Nova Espero’ ,the forerunner for Siani class, in which they crossed the Atlantic,

After WWII
After the war  I think I got demobbed first actually, or just a little before my brother.
I went back to Saunders Roe for a while and went up in the mould loft in the drawing office for a little bit, and did things of that sort.

Stan, my brother, and I went out to Canada.  We’d done our flying training out there and we didn’t go right inland where we’d done the training, we went over to Nova Scotia where we built the little boat, Nova Espero – Esperanto from New Hope,  and sailed it across.
It was intended to be a two way trip.  Nobody knew us when we went there so we thought we’d make ourselves known a little bit by doing a double crossing, that was the intention.

She was a half decked boat, twenty foot long.  We designed it on the way across on the Aquitania.  We’d get down in our cabin and get the lines out and work on it, the lines were all ready by the time we got to the side.

We took only about three months I think altogether, something like that to build the boat in Nova Scotia.  We went over in March and left in the beginning of July 1949.  I’d been doing design work and all that, drawing work down at Saunders Roe.  Stan had as well.  We both chipped in on this one.  She was quite a tough little boat, clinker built and a hundred weight of cast iron ballast on the keel underneath.

We didn’t know if anyone had done any trips, prepared for it before hand or anything like that, so we adjusted ourselves with what we thought we needed and that was it.  Sponsorship, we’d never heard of that.    We worked it out and had lockers along the side of the boat under the side decks and tried to figure out what we’d need and got loads and loads of ships biscuits, far more than we needed, I suppose, and lots and lots of tinned stuff and that kind of stuff, powdered milk and lots of sugar.  Couldn’t do without that.  For water we had  twenty eight gallons I think. We had one made up, a galvanised tank with a tap in one corner.  We had that stowed up, just after the mast, up forward under the cabin.  We had no bunks.  We just about had sleeping bags, laid those out on the cabin floor, you see.  I’d say we were probably wet most of the time.

It was July through August.  We had some pretty nasty weather at times too of course. We had a little portable radio we hoped to get the time checks or weather checks or something like that.  Didn’t get a peep out of it from the time we left so we dropped it over the side and that was that.  We had a sextant, not an aircraft sextant, a proper little sextant, yacht sextant, and an aircraft compass which wasn’t actually mounted in the boat at all.  We used to carry it around with us you know and that was what we used.  We were concerned when the weather got really nasty and it did at times too.  We had a little primus stove, a little loose primus stove we used to hold between our knees, and a little pressure cooker.  We used that a lot.  We didn’t do too bad you know.

Smith brothers arrive in Yarmouth, 1949,

Smith brothers arrive in Yarmouth, 1949,after crossing the atlantic in 43 days in their 20ft boat.

Afterwards, mostly it was going up to this do up in London, and this do and all that sort of thing, which we just hadn’t expected of course, and all that sort of nonsense.  But there was one firm that wanted to turn the boat into production or something, but we didn’t go along with it, we were too busy.

We were going back to Canada and set up in business over there but it didn’t come off.  I came back to this country, met my wife and got married and that was that.

Siani class yacht

Siani class yacht: photo Colin Smith

Nick Chandler: Harbour, River Yar boatyard, 1950s, 1960s

View from above Harold Hayles' Boatyard of gasometer, old bridge, and Sandhouse

View from above Harold Hayles’ Boatyard of gasometer, old bridge, and Sandhouse

One day I saw the Thames Barge moored up to the bank over Gas Works. I thought, I must have a look at that, so I went over there, stood on the quay looking at it. The old Admiral popped up, ‘Hello.  Can I help you?’
‘Just interested. Having a look,’
‘Come aboard!’  so on I went. We were talking and I told him I was a boatbuilder.
He said, ‘Just the chap I’m looking for!  There’s lot of work needs to be done on this barge.’
I thought, I’m not a barge builder. This is different; great spikes and dumps. He said would I go and work for him, so I was shared between him and Stan Smith for a bit.

I never did go to sea with Admiral Larkin on the barge. He was asking me but we never got round to it. When the barge was under way it seemed to me it was,‘ Full ahead and trust in the Lord,’ sort of thing.  In the winter of ‘63 she was froze in solid up there for weeks. The ice was thick enough to walk down the creek to the river.

Some friends of the Admiral’s came down from London with their Atlanta which they wanted painting up, so I said,
‘I can build a little dock over there,’ which I did, and that was the first job in what became River Yar Boatyard. Yes, it all went well, until the old Admiral shot himself.
The new management and me did not get on, until one day I demanded my cards and walked off, went back next day and collected my toolbox.

I saw Barry McDonald that day and he told me they wanted someone down here (the Harbour).
‘Go and see Major Sheppard,’  which I did, got the job in 1966 and was there for 30 odd years. Nick Chandler

Harbour staff photographed by Malcolm Mallett c1990

Harbour staff photographed by Malcolm Mallett c1990

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: School days

I was never any good at anything at school except drawing.

Colin Smith b 1921, who in 1949, with his brother Stanley, sailed the Nova Espero, a 20 foot boat they had designed and built, across the Atlantic from Nova Scotia, in 43 days. They did this without chronometer, bunks, lifejackets….in what remains one of the smallest boats to cross the Atlantic.

The arrival of the Smith brothers in Yarmouth harbour in 1949

Boats greeting the Smith brothers in Yarmouth Harbour after their 43 day Atlantic crossing in 1949 ; photo Sue Russell