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Martin Black wins the John Leather Award for Special Achievement at the 2014...
Martin Black, author of G.L. Watson – The Art and Science of Yacht Design, was tonight presented with the John Leather Award for Special Achievement at the 2014 Classic Boat Magazine Awards event in...
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Lá Fhéile Pádraig
We don’t know how to turn our blog’s template green for the day, but we do know a beautiful recently restored G.L. Watson & Co. designed yacht named after Ireland’s patron saint. Take it away St...
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Order of the Thistle
It continues to be the America’s Cup silly season: the void between the last, enthralling episode, and the next; wherever it may be; in whatever boats… And crew nationality has raised its head. Last...
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Dublin Bay – 2nd Edition
Read more and buy online here. The revised second edition of Hal Sisk’s popular book, DUBLIN BAY – THE CRADLE OF YACHT RACING has arrived. Irish yachting historian and Peggy Bawn Press founder, Hal...
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The Club Steamer – PS Duchess of Hamilton
PS Duchess of Hamilton chock-a-block full at a Royal Northern YC Regatta, Rothesay, July 1898.(Maclure, Macdonald & Co., Yacht Racing on the Clyde 1898) During the 1890s and early 1900s heyday of...
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Was but a muddle at the best
Wendur, 1883(N.L. Stebbins/ Wiki commons) Apologies to subscribers to this blog who received a sneak email preview of a future post by mistake today. Sometimes the technology can get the better of one…...
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The yachting firsts of Dublin Bay
No matter the era, the weather remains nature’s way of reminding us who is Boss.(Hal Sisk) In a response to W.M. Nixon’s Sailing on Saturday blog post for Afloat Magazine last week, Peggy Bawn Press...
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Scotia’s “Thistle”
Kaiserliche Marine’s training yacht Comet (ex Meteor, ex Thistle) thundering down Kiel Fjord c1910. (© Jorma Rautapää) Inevitably, a 127 year-old challenge from Glasgow, Scotland to New York, USA for...
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Speed, grace and beauty – The Clyde Fortnight 1923
For 13 tantalising seconds in the newly released Pathe archive newsreel above, we are treated to the full broadsides beauty of King George V’s G.L. Watson-designed cutter, Britannia: the special one;...
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Britannia behind the scenes
We’ve been spoiled rotten of late by wonderful footage of G.L. Watson’s masterpiece, Britannia, from the recently fully released Pathe archive. This, from 1931, is particularly fine – and rare because...
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The first match racers?
Women’s Match Racing World Championship, Royal Cork Yacht Club, June 2014(Iain McAllister) As Women’s Match Racing World Championship competitors prepare for a second lovely Cork Harbour sailing day at...
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All mod cons: the steam yacht Hermione, 1891
SY Hermione in New York waters, 27 July 1895, 24 days after a passage stopover at St. John’s, Newfoundland. The Red Ensign, New York YC burgee at the foremast and swan houseflag at the mainmast confirm...
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Wind of fortune
“Classic Schooner project” undergoing wind tunnel tests at North Sails New Zealand.(North Sails New Zealand) Snippets of news slipping out online more than strongly suggest that one of the most...
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A special arrival in Cowes
Copies of the Nappa leather bound limited edition of G.L. Watson – The Art and Science of Yacht Design by Martin Black have arrived in Cowes: now in stock at K1Britannia, 16a High Street. As Irish and...
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… Watson, I presume
Rainbow II sail plan.(SuperYacht Times) The pot of gold is secured: the Rainbow II replica project is official, and spectacular. Naval architecture is by Dykstra Naval Achitects, with launching and...
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Gordon Bennett!
The striking Lysistrata’s styling was unconventional.(Hal Sisk) The G.L. Watson designed and tank-tested twin-screw turbine steam yacht Lysistrata was launched by William Denny & Brothers,...
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Float your boat
Martin Black’s biography of Scottish yacht designer G.L. Watson pays homage to the side of his work that, reading between the lines, he found most worthwhile: improving the design of rescue...
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“The Macintosh of yacht design”
The October 2014 issue of Scottish Field magazine (out now) features Scottish sports journalist Roddy Forsyth’s entertaining take on the G.L. Watson story and Martin Black’s biography G.L. WATSON –...
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Return to the Hebrides
Hard to believe it’s over a year since we last met the long lived G.L. Watson-designed west highlands and islands of Scotland cargo vessel S.S. Hebrides (1898). And incomprehensible that we’ve been...
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The launch of the ‘Queen Mary': ship 534
Peggy Bawn Press:Nothing to do with G.L. Watson. Everything to do with the River Clyde, which made him. A worthy first ever “re-blog”, and reminder of the fabulous collections and work of University of...
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