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Apr

2020

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Rare Edwardian boat-building photos from Salter Bros Ltd (part 2)

Below are the second of a collection of rare photos of boats built by Salter Bros Ltd around the beginning of the twentieth century (c. 1900-1910). Some of them were slides used for promotional purposes. They include some of the earliest motorboats and steel-hulled craft built by the firm, as well as some craft built in the inter-war period, i.e. after the Edwardian period.

[The images are copyright of Salter’s Steamers Ltd and cannot be reproduced without permission]

Above: Unidentified motorboat

Collapsible lifeboat (that could accommodate 64 people!)

Pansy

Unnamed rowing craft

Endeavour (1905), a paddle steamer for the Baptist Missionary Society (for use in the Congo)

Endeavour doing trails in Oxford

Endeavour moored up at Folly Bridge

Thomas Arnold Baker’s steel boatbuilding crew on Endeavour (from my personal collection)

A two-person collapsible craft lifeboat

Beetle

Sailing boat with the old University Boathouse in the back (and college barges)

Unidentified motorboat

A (fishing?) punt with college barges and someone punting in the background

A steam launch

Canadian canoe with college barges in the background

A rowing machine made for South Africa (November 1924)

Dinghy with three children watching from the window. The graffiti on the door says ‘J Parsons is a fool’. Employment records from World War One show that J. A. Parsons was a former grocer’s assistant living on Henley Street who worked at Salters as a coal porter in the summer of 1916 (aged 29), having been rejected for military service. It is not clear if he continued to work for Salters beyond that. Three other Parsons were employed by the firm during the conflict, including an I. R. Parsons, who may have been J. Parsons’ brother. The former, who was an ex-soldier and a year younger (living on Clark’s Row), left his role as a coal porter when J. Parsons arrived (suggesting that one had replaced the other).

Motorised punt with old university boathouse and college barges in the background

A folding boat

Elsie

Unidentified rowing craft

18ft single sculling gig built for London County Council in 1921

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