CLASSIC BOAT NOVEMBER 2017 95LETTERS
Send your letters (and any replies, please) to:
Classic Boat, Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place,
London SW3 3TQ
email: [email protected]The original Lively Lady
A few weeks ago we were rowing up Portsmouth
harbour on our weekly outing in a 1930s four-oared
clinker Solent Galley, when we saw Lively Lady being
towed across the harbour. It got me thinking of my Aunt
Mona Cambridge, née Bishop (above), who was the
original Lively Lady, after whom the boat was named.
Why ‘lively’? She was nicknamed ‘Beans’ because she
was always so full of beans!
She married Jack Cambridge, an Army engineer, who
ended-up as Chief Inspector of Railways in British Raj
India. This involved visiting various Indian princes in the
company of the Mountbattens. Mona and Lady
Mountbatten wanted to meet the Indian princesses who
were in purdah and they formed what they called Lady
Mountbatten’s Purdah Club to facilitate this. Mona led a
very colourful and energetic life blessed with a huge
outgoing personality and a razor-sharp mind – she was
still paying for her gin out of her bridge winnings well
into her nineties.
Uncle Jack was planning to sail Lively Lady back to
the UK with a colleague, after having her built in India,
where she was initially to be called Blue Wave. However,
he and the colleague fell out and so he brought her
home on the deck of a liner and named her after his wife
instead. For a number of years he sailed her out of
Yarmouth IOW, from where as a boy I sailed on her.
Eventually Uncle Jack decided to sell her and tried to get
my father to buy her. Father’s retort was: “I don’t want
that slow old thing.”
He ordered a McGruer cruiser-racer to be built by
Feltham’s in Bath Square, Old Portsmouth, instead.
After Uncle Jack had sold her to Sir Alec Rose, he
bought a smaller glassfibre cruiser, which he named Little
Lady, and would get someone to crew him over to the
River Seine each summer. He would then disappear into
the French canals for a month or two, tying up to
commercial barges and inviting the bargees on board for
a whisky or two. On one occasion, the story goes, a
barge skipper kindly filled his water tank with red wine –
for a while he had red wine coming out of his taps!
Both wonderfully strong British Raj characters. I can
still visualise Aunt Mona always dressed up to the nines
as she raises her glass of gin with a loud “Cheerio”. Truly
a very Lively Lady.
Bill Bishop, Havant, Hants
Editor replies: Lively Lady is being restored by the Hayling
Yacht Company on Hayling Island in time for the 50th
anniversary in 2018 of Sir Alec arriving back in Portsmouth.Do you know this boat?
Dunkirk – which version is best?
Do any of your readers recognise the design of this 20ft dayboat and know
what the original rig was? The boat has a carvel planked pine hull and an
iron keel. It is pre-World War II but the year of construction is unknown. The
bowsprit is thought to be original and there are running backstays. Any
assistance would be much appreciated.
Stuart Cook, Abbots Leigh, West SussexHaving seen both the 2017 and the 1958 film versions of the Dunkirk story, I
am in no doubt as to which is the better. The 1958 film stars Richard
Attenborough and John Mills and gives a much better historical account of
the events leading up to the evacuation, as well as the evacuation itself.
There is much more coverage of the process of requisitioning a whole
range of craft at their Thames berths. Many were owner-skippered and the
film covers their route to Dunkirk via Sheerness and Ramsgate – and of
course the ferrying of soldiers from shallow water to ships waiting
further o§shore.
So for those of your readers actually interested in the Little Ships, the
1958 film is the one to watch. This summer’s massively hyped blockbuster
no doubt appeals to a modern day audience impressed by noise, gratuitous
human su§ering and dramatic scenes lacking feasibility.
Peter Broadbent, via emailSTUART COOKCB353 Letters.indd 95 26/09/2017 12:30