There were seven boats called Speedwell over the years, this particular boat was built at Arnside in 1919 for, and registered with Morecambe Fisherman's Mutual Assurance from 1919 until 1932 by Percy Baxter of 2 Morecambe Street.
She was in the Morecambe Regatta 23/09/1921, the next we know of her was July 1938 when she was owned by John Martin Junior of Fleetwood, she was sold on 20 October 1943 to William Stevenson of 231 Clifton Drive South, St Anne's, then bought on 25 July 1944 by Odafoam Limited of 46 Greenland Street, Liverpool when she was skippered by Alfred Pilkington.
She was purchased on 23 March 1946 by Robert Moss Woodhouse of 26 Sun Street, Morecambe. Sold on 29th December 1965 to Charles George Overett of 20 Burlington Avenue.
On the 3rd May 1973 she was purchased by Mr D Towne of Fleetwood. We have copies of receipts from her sale twice in 1988, one, dated 23/6/88 is signed by a JB Nolan and records "received from KG Wilson" £800.00 cash, the other, 4 months later on 22/10/88 records the sale to Chris Tulloch by what looks like G Wilson. Chris owned her from then until 1st of May 2006 when she was bought by myself, Derek Bayley with the intention of restoring her and using her as a cruising boat.
She carried several numbers over the years:
LR31 13.08.1920 until 22.11.1933
WO74 06.12.1933 until 25.03.1938
FD97 09.05.1938 until 23.03.1946
LR29 18.04.1946 until 03.05.1973
WA42 papers not yet found.
With grateful thanks to Nick and Martin from the Old Gaffers Association who between them supplied most of this history.
If you can help with filling in any of the blanks in her history please drop us a line using the contact page.
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| Saturday 14th October Posted at 11:49 pm on Saturday, November 14th 2009 |
| Apologies to those wanting to see the furnace finished, I'm afraid work pressures have kept me away from boat work for a while, I hope to be back next week. |
| Friday 16th October Posted at 11:15 pm on Friday, October 16th 2009 |
  I've welded a liner into the air pipe hole, if you've noticed the shape is different to the earlier pics thats a mod from Colin Pecks book, sorry but you'll have to buy the book to find out what that is, the pedal you can see in the background is an MGB clutch pedal adapted to a lid lifting bar!!The last pic is the top and bottom flanges from another drum which together should make the new lid, tomorrows job! |
| Friday 16th October Posted at 11:08 pm on Friday, October 16th 2009 |
   I've cut out the air inlet pipe hole leaving an allowance for the refractory around it,I used a piece of plastic drain pipe for the former, it's too big so I cut a slot in it then taped it together so it was almost the same size as the inlet pipe, It needs to be slightly bigger so the pipe will still move (I hope) when the furnace is working and it expands, |
| Friday 16th October Posted at 11:03 pm on Friday, October 16th 2009 |
   Back on with the furnace, both liners with spacers put in then held in place with 6mm bolts, then the tap hole cut out and a liner and support tray for the melt, |
| Friday 8th Oct Posted at 11:07 pm on Monday, October 12th 2009 |
  The insert stood in place, at this point I realised it was too high and that I would have to cut off the rest of the flange at the top of the drum |
| Friday 8th Oct Posted at 11:05 pm on Monday, October 12th 2009 |
  For the inside I needed to make a former, to make the discs a simple circle jig, a piece of 3 x 3 scrap timber screwed on, Voila! |
| Friday 8th Oct Posted at 11:00 pm on Monday, October 12th 2009 |
  Bit more recycling, these are the old engine bearers from Speedwell doing duty as a base support. |
| Friday 8th Oct Posted at 10:55 pm on Monday, October 12th 2009 |
     After some research on the net I'd found Colin Pecks (The Artful Bodger) book about building an oil fired furnace, having read it from cover to cover and e mailed him with some queries (really nice guy, so helpful), today I set to building the Quantum Furnace,  (nothing to do with Quantum physics more to do with Quantum oil)the pics say most of it but if you want to build this yourself then you need Colin’s book ‘The Artful Bodger’s Iron Casting Waste Oil Furnace. I must be a real squirrel, that bit of checker plate was left over from our security door in 1992, 17 years stood in the back of the workshop!! |
| Friday October 2nd Posted at 11:36 pm on Saturday, October 3rd 2009 |
 One of the projects that I've been looking at is casting my own fittings in bronze, I've been waiting for a book on building a waste oil fired furnace and I spent today making a pattern for casting a new porthole, totally unneeded yet but just to see if I could do it, here's the result. |
| Sept 25th Posted at 9:57 pm on Friday, September 25th 2009 |
   Starting to see a shape now!!!! |
| 16th Sept Posted at 10:22 pm on Wednesday, September 16th 2009 |
| I've been thinking over the past couple of days about some of the metalwork including Bulwark brackets, (I know she didnt have them originally but I want some security in a blow)I'd been thinking of making them from Steel strip then having them galvanised, but what would be fantastic would be cast bronze, with that in mind, and having done some alloy casting in the past I wondered about doing them myself, we have a CNC machine to make patterns from, an internet search found forums that were very helpful in explaining the how to, lots of videos on You Tube about people doing this in their own back yard, the end result was me ending up at Wolsingham in Durham being shown around by the foreman of a casting shop and buying a crucible as the first step on the way to doing this myself. |
| Friday Sept 12th Posted at 6:11 am on Monday, September 14th 2009 |
| Boat day, feeling a bit frustrated, I feel as though I’ve been flying along then somehow stalled, I know that the work area is getting cluttered with offcuts, maybe that's it, I moved the 6 x 4’s that have been leaning against the lift since they were delivered, to the shop and almost gave myself a hernia! One thing I hadn’t considered was the weight of these things on the bow, I decided to trim them down to a more manageable size, or rather Smithfield Timber did on their bandsaw, cost me a tenner in the charity box but they planed it as well, produced some useful offcuts which will make nice trim pieces when we get to that stage. I cut a new mortice in the top of the keel and set the Samson post in place, had a bit of a job finding 16 mm bolts of the right length (9”) and settled for studding cut to length, it took most of the day to sort that, I cut 2 spacers from the pieces cut off the length and trimmed the 2nd post before leaving for the day. |
| September 5th Posted at 10:21 pm on Sunday, September 6th 2009 |
  Ive been able to get some longer planks on so that I can see the shape developing, with the new frames going in she's really starting to look like a boat again.since this pic was taken the port side of frame 7 is in and I'm about to start on frame 12 which is directly behind the mast step,(out of the picture) the plan then is to move further back, maybe to 17 so that the longer planks can go on, maintaining the line of the hull, then infill the gaps with new frames, re planking as we go, I've done more work in the past 6 to 8 weeks than I've ever managed before, I hope I can keep this inertia going. |
| 28th August Posted at 10:17 pm on Sunday, September 6th 2009 |
   The larch finally arrived today, turned out to be 7 trees in all, By the time it was all unloaded it was 4 30, my lads normally finish at 5 but every one of them stayed back til 10 past 6 and worked like Trojans to move the wood into the storage and stack it! |
| 29th July Posted at 10:05 pm on Sunday, September 6th 2009 |
| John and Keiran are on holiday so it looks like the larch will have to wait, We'll be off to Holland for 2 weeks now, back on the 17th of August. |
| 20th July Posted at 11:00 pm on Monday, July 20th 2009 |
| The pitch pine I'd thought I ws getting hasn't materialised so it looks like we're back to plan A, re planking in Larch, a forester I was told about, Paul Craven, rang me back to say he'd found 4 good trees which he could fell this week, they could be at the sawmill by Sunday and, if John and Kieran can manage it they could be stacked and drying before I go on holiday at month end, fingers crossed!! |
| 17th July Posted at 10:53 pm on Monday, July 20th 2009 |
| Isn't it funny how easily guys can be distracted by toys? About a month ago Mark from the Kitchen manufacturer next door suggested a line of units to replace the mess at the back of the shop, they arrived today and they're a bit posh for a workshop! I'd been knocking offcuts into trim pieces for a while now so it looks like the doors and drawers are getting the treatment now, oh well... |
| 11th & 12th July 2009 Posted at 10:44 pm on Monday, July 20th 2009 |
  spent the entire weekend working on the frames, re working a couple that I'd done in early days as I could now see they weren't right, I started planking a couple of weeks ago and now have 12 planks in place, 6 a side to keep the stresses even, last week I made up the Port side of frame 9, this week the Starboard side and floor, the Oak is now dry and useable so I need to find a 3" section good enough to cut deck beams from, this will give me a full rigid frame to work to, with a register plank in the centre I'll then be able to infill the other frames between this and the stem meaning that about a 1/4 of the frames will be done by then. When I removed a frame today I pulled out a fixing which, in my ignorance, had looked ok when I originally looked at Speedwell, this is the same fixing removed from the frame, its supposed to be a 5/8"-16mm diameter bolt! its scary to think what would have happened if this had been left in.... |
| 5th July 2009 Posted at 10:34 pm on Monday, July 6th 2009 |
   its been ages since I was able to get back in the workshop, theres been so much to do, with family, work and all that, the workshop itself is pretty much sorted now, hard to believe its been so long, but its really easy to manage now. |
| 6th November 08 Posted at 10:35 pm on Thursday, November 6th 2008 |
| The reorganisation is moving on, in the last 3 weeks I,ve moved the compressor and bought an ex demo table saw and a dust extractor, the new saw is a treat to use, I've set up the dust extraction system, incorporating a chip separation box idea I found in a book I bought recently, I finished building a mobile work bench today which should make handling the Oak sections much easier, The wood shop is a tip at the moment but order is starting to emerge, should be able to get on with some proper work soon. |
| 16th October Posted at 10:05 pm on Thursday, October 16th 2008 |
| Not a lot been done on the boat herself lately, I've been trying to sort out the wood handling, I've wasted a lot of time up to now making patterns, cutting out with a reciprocating saw then the band saw, Too much handling, with chunks of Oak weighing in at about a hundredweight each my poor old back is protesting, while the new wood is drying a bit I thought this might be a good time to re organise. it seems obvious now but its just occurred to me that if all the machines were at one level and in moveable cabinets life would be so much easier...Doh!!! And if I move the compressor out of the Wood shop then I can get the saw in that I want... |
| 13th September Posted at 9:58 pm on Thursday, October 16th 2008 |
 A fair bit of weight |
| 13th September Posted at 9:57 pm on Thursday, October 16th 2008 |
   John and Flynn, his new dog, Oliver died recently. |
| 13th September Posted at 9:55 pm on Thursday, October 16th 2008 |
   John setting up |
| 10th September Posted at 9:46 pm on Thursday, October 16th 2008 |
  Its been a while but there's something to show at last. Colin has got the last of the concrete out now and I've fitted some more frames and one of the deck beams.I went to see John at the Sawmill on Saturday to sort out some more Oak. |
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