MARTIN BARRON AND TOMMY RICHARDSONHITLER’S TENDER
from a double decker bus into a perfect fit. Make do and
mend had been the wartime mantra – spare parts were
not to be had – and Richardson was an experienced
mechanic and engineer. Within a month he had the
engine running and soon Grillet was buzzing up and
down the Hartlepool coastline, her 10mph top speed and
her elegance drawing the admiration of all. It was
obvious before long that she rolled hopelessly in rough
seas – after all she’d been designed as a harbour vessel –
but Richardson fitted stabilising chocks and adjusted the
internal iron ballast until she settled down.
Although he had worried what people might think,
there was no need. Hartlepool took the motorboat to its
heart. From the start she was the fastest thing in the port
(the harbour tug could manage only 7mph and the pilot
boat less than that) and of course she looked superb.
Soon she was in demand for all sorts of community
events, ferrying the Carnival King and Queen every year,
and taking visitors out to see the light battleship
HMS Diadem when it lay three miles offshore. On that
occasion Richardson had a licence for 12 passengers, but
in the end managed to take 30, reckoning correctly
Grillet could do two fast trips to everyone else’s one.
With Grillet’s speed, looks and her reputation,
Richardson charged good money for such trips. As well
as being a family boat, she could earn her keep.
Meanwhile Tot’s son, Tommy, was enjoying the
benefits of Grillet’s slippery hull as a keen waterskier.
He’d become fascinated by the idea after watching
Esther Williams in the Busby Berkeley blockbuster Easy
to Love in the early 1950s. Like father, like son, he made
his own skis, out of two glued sheets of ¼in ply bent
over a brick, guessing that “if they were wide enough
they would work”. So it proved. Tommy went on to be
national senior champion three times, thanks, at least in
part, to his early experiences with Grillet.
All the family joined in for her twice-yearly anti-
fouling scrape and she was a familiar sight being towed
back and forth to the workshops on an old gun trolley:
it was make do and mend, as ever. The boat was Tot’s
pride and joy from 1945 until 1966, when arthritis left
him unable climb down the boarding ladder. With a
heavy heart, he sold her on.
There followed several owners, Grillet enjoying life
as a family pleasure cruiser and canal boat in Yorkshire,
until she was bought and restored by the journalist
Revel Barker, who lives on the island of Gozo, off
Malta. After her sojourn in the Mediterranean, she wasTop: Tot
Richardson at
Grillet’s wheel in- Above:
alongside the
Aviso Grille.
Below: Revel
Barker (left) and
Tommy
Richardson with
Grillet, in Gozo
acquired by an airline pilot, Rod Cadman, who had
fallen for and spent years searching for her after seeing
a tiny picture in a travel article. She has now been
shipped back to his home in Kent and is about to have
a full refit to restore her to her former glory.
Cadman is very clear about what he wants: where
possible, this will be a conservation. He is seeking an
original engine, for many motor launches of that
period had similar versions, and hopes to rebuild her
original cockpit and mechanics, using the best expert
advice he can find. His father was fascinated by motor
yachts and Cadman lived for a year on a steel
100-footer when he was 16. He loves the 1930s
‘Shimara’ style and says: “Lürssen are one of the top
yacht designers – always have been – and a 1930s
pinnace from that yard is a lovely thing in her own
right and well worth preserving. She is fine now, but
once we are done, she will be magnificent.”
Symbolic grandiosity was the central tenet of the
Nazi propaganda machine, so when Hitler was voted
president as well as chancellor of Germany in 1934, it
served his purpose perfectly to own the largest state
yacht afloat. For her to be named after Grille, which
had been the Kaiser’s imperial yacht from the 19th
century, was even better. Everything about her – design,
fit-out, technology and yes also her tenders – was of the
highest quality and this is perhaps what has saved
Motorboot I, aka Grillet as re-named by Tot Richardson
in 1945. In the years since 1945, she has been purchased
and preserved largely because of her own period beauty
and motorboat enthusiasts have admired her for what
she is, not for who she has belonged to.