Classic_Boat_2016-06

TELL TALES

BEN WOOD

© THE GOVERNOR AND COMPANY OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND 2016

HAUGESUND, NORWAY

New Viking ship to test ‘first transat’ theory

YARMOUTH, IOW

X, Y and Z Solent bash

BANK OF ENGLAND

Fighting

Temeraire

for new

£20 note

Three historic one design fleets will race together for the

first time at a new annual Solent regatta to mark the

Queen’s birthday. The XODs, Yarmouth ODs and the

Victory ODs will be part of a huge fleet racing from

Yarmouth on Sunday 5 June. The regatta will see sail

insignias X, Y and Z sharing the start line.

Racing will be preceded the evening before by a dinner

at The Towers, Yarmouth, the home of John Caulcutt

(pictured at the helm), one of the syndicate that owns

Mariquita. The bash will feature performances by Gary

Brooker from rock band Procol Harum and Leanne Jarvis

from BBC’s The Voice. Proceeds from the evening,

including a charity auction by Nick Bonham, will go to local

charities. Jubileegala.co.uk

One of Britain’s favourite paintings will feature on the new

£20 bank note to be released by 2020. JMW Turner

(1775-1851) drew The Fighting Temeraire after seeing the

98-gun ship, a veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar, being

towed from Sheerness to Rotherhithe on the Thames to be

broken up in 1838. As previously discussed in CB, the

painting is at odds with how a sailor might perceive it:

firstly, the sun is supposed to be setting, even though in

reality it could only be rising because Rotherhithe is west

of Sheerness. Secondly the painting is not, most Turner

scholars think, a eulogy to the age of sail as it cedes to the

age of steam, but a more general comment about the

decline of Britain’s naval power. The unidentified floating

object sticking out of the water in the bottom right is

possibly a note of whimsy. The image of Turner on the note

is his 1799 self portrait. The quote “light is therefore colour”

is from a talk Turner gave. The new £5 note will feature

Winston Churchill and the new £10 depicts Jane Austen. All

three new banknotes will be plastic rather than paper.

DORSET

Winner

of boat

building

course

“Delighted” CB

reader Darren

Hazel was

picked

randomly as the

winner of our

recent

boatbuilding

competition. His

prize is a short

boatbuilding

course at the

Boat Building

Academy in

Lyme Regis,

Dorset.

The Viking ‘supership’ Harald Hårfagre, built in 2012, was waiting for

a weather window to set off across the Atlantic in the greatest Viking

ship voyage of modern times, as we went to press. She’s the

biggest Viking Ship in the world at 114ft (34.7m) long by 27ft

(8.2m) beam, 80 tons and with a 3,200sqft (300m^2 ) mainsail. The

voyage is in support of the claim that Leif Eriksson crossed the

Atlantic to discover the new world more than half a millennium

before Christopher Columbus’s voyage. We covered the build of

the Harald Hårfagre and her North Sea voyage to Liverpool and

back in 2014. This voyage, despite an escort vessel for safety

reasons, bears all the hallmarks of the almost unbearably

uncomfortable, yet nearly 4,000 applied for the 32 volunteer

positions. They will sleep in a tent on the open boat and be devoid

of any other shelter for the duration of the north Atlantic route

which stops in Reykjavik (Iceland) and Qaqortoq (Greenland) before

making landfall in the new world at St Anthony, Newfoundland. The

boat will spend the late summer touring Canadian and American

ports including Quebec, Toronto, Chicago and New York.