ARE YOU ALL SITTING COMFORTABLY? THEN I WILL BEGIN.
Some 58 years ago I moved into the country to live on a farm. I have allways had a passion for the sea ( my father was an officer in the merchant navy, his four brothers all went to sea and his only sister married a ships engineer- hows that for credentials) and even though I lived some distance from the sea I fed that passion on reading and magazine cuttings. The old farmer had enormous piles of old Victorian magazines which he let me read and take cuttings from. In an 1890s London Illustrated News there was an article on Bible Bashers and how they were spreading the word? in India., but that is only incidental. There was a superb etching (far better than photographs) of a launch used by the local state governor on which they used to hitch a ride. The Governor had a vast territory to cover and he wasnt keen on horses so he passed a copy of a London launch builders catalogue to the local sappers and engineers regiment with the request could they build a launch like one in the illustrations for his use to go upstate. The engineers and sepoys duly built the launch using local timber which they powered by a small 2 cylinder pumping steam engine driving the fixed paddles by chain. The article went on to say that the launch navigated over 500 miles of Hooghli tributaries during the wet seasons and carried dignitaries to many state functions. What happened to it I dont know!
This story stuck in my mind for many years and I did numerous sketches from memory until I built Melissa when My first granddaughter was born 9 years ago.
So, you have a model built from the memories of an etching of a full-size launch which was built from an etching in a catalogue by a bunch of soldiers! They dont make heros like our Victorian forbeers- could you see any of our present day luvvies and footballers having the balls to tackle something like that? Regards, Walter.
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