For love of a boat – in Northumberland, England

/ Bill

Seahouses, Northumberland, UK 2004

AA commented to my last post:

“I have often heard it be mentioned for aircraft “If it looks good it will fly good”.
I guess it applies to all things, boats included 🙂
Beauty, efficiency, utility, it all lies with the right proportions, maybe just the right mix of good and bad design (as nothing is perfect).”

I definitely agree with this. There is also the thought that “form follows function”.

When they reached the final design for the coble, they must have explored a whole seried of boat forms before they decided that this was the one that ideally suited the coast on which it was to be launched.

In the image above, there is the opportunity to compare the coble with the more recently designed Drascombe lugger – conceived and built in the south west of England.

This should also please Mr Boating who commented: “Looks good but I think you can add more photos from other sides, can you?”

Sometimes you take several images, sometimes you don’t.

2 thoughts on “For love of a boat – in Northumberland, England”

  1. Hello

    I am also glad to see a different view of this boat, i assumed a different shape for its hull from the one in the previous post but it turns out it was not as i imagined.

    “Form Follows Function”, kind of like the KISS principle, this should be the 3F rule of thumb 🙂

    My personal “sample” of wooden fishing boats covers except my place (Chalkida-GR) and Plymouth-UK, Malta, Ireland, Portugal and Italy. Every time i come close to the shoreline, i get the same question in my mind….Why are the boats in this port different? Is it because the people are different – Like differences in jewelry designs? Or is it because the sea conditions are different? I tend to believe it is actually both BUT as function comes first, it should primarily be the sea that enforces the principal hull form.

    This is within walking distance from where i live back in Greece http://www.flickr.com/photos/anna_greece/469809055/
    I once asked the the owner of this small boat yard (they do repairs and construction as you can see). “How did you work out the hull? How do you know that this shape is sea worthy?”. He looked at me smiling and he simply said pointing to the sea…”The not seaworthy ones are at the bottom”……..His name is not Darwin 😀 but that’s natural selection for you anyway.

Comments are closed.