Black Prince Brochure 1983

[DanH]

Hi Everyone

 

I have been enjoying the old brochures shared here, and have been looking through a few myself during this lockdown spell and so I thought I would share a few key pages from the Black Prince brochure from 1983

 

Dan

[Athy]

What an absolutely fabulous time capsule. They had quite a fleet, did,t they? There must be 20 boats in the Whixall picture. I wonder if they have as many now.

I also note the large number of sensible sized craft, so that a novice couple could hire a 35 or 40 footer instead of having to struggle with something 55 feet long as is so often the case nowadays.  

Edited May 6, 2020 by Athy

[DanH]

53 minutes ago, Athy said:

What an absolutely fabulous time capsule. They had quite a fleet, did,t they? There must be 20 boats in the Whixall picture. I wonder if they have as many now.

I also note the large number of sensible sized craft, so that a novice couple could hire a 35 or 40 footer instead of having to struggle with something 55 feet long as is so often the case nowadays.  

Yes, Whixall which was their head office at the time had a lot of boats certainly, and the fleet grew pretty big before it came crashing down in 1987 and the original owners - Ed & Gill Rimmer (later of Challenger fame) departed.

 

The boats they inherited as they took over places added for quite a varied fleet and were often run a few years before being dropped

 

Dan

[MartinC]

That was the year that we and our friends hired William Gladstone, from Acton Bridge. We had intended to do the Cheshire Ring in October half term, but a couple of weeks before the start we had a call from Black Prince. The boat needed a refit at Stoke Priors and winter stoppages meant that if we completed our hire they would not be able to get the boat down to Stoke Priors. So with some additional free hire days we agreed to deliver the boat to Stoke Priors and it had to be via the Severn in view of a stoppage.

An adventurous trip including discovering at Stourport that we had no anchor. Not counting the fact that we had been given all the end of season partially full gas bottles and after three days BP had to meet us with a further supply.

[Chris Lowe]

Weren't some of their early boats built by Anglo Welsh some in that brochure have the bridge deflectors. 

[John Brightley]

Thanks Dan for posting these. I'll post some more of mine when I get the time.

You mention about BP buying other companies. For some years in the '70's and '80's, BW for some reason wouldn't issue any new hire licences, so for companies like Black Prince who wanted to expand the only way was to buy other existing companies. Some (such as Planetfleet in Birmingham) they bought just for the licences -they didn't want the boats or the base.

1 hour ago, buccaneer66 said:

Weren't some of their early boats built by Anglo Welsh some in that brochure have the bridge deflectors. 

Yes, a few of the early ones were, but I think they soon went on to buy shells from other builders in the same style. If a boat has bridge deflectors, it wasn't neccessarily built by Anglo-Welsh/Harborough Marine. Fernie Steel Fabrications, also of Market Harborough, built a lot of them.

[DanH]

2 hours ago, buccaneer66 said:

Weren't some of their early boats built by Anglo Welsh some in that brochure have the bridge deflectors. 

As John says some were bought 2nd hand from them or they often inherited ex Anglo Welsh with other purchased fleets/bases, along with ex Fernie built ones that were similar and then Black Prince built their own as well in a style copied from the Anglo Welsh/Harbrough design, but in all steel.

 

Classes such as the Frigate, Corvette, Carrier and Clipper were all built only by Black Prince at various sites along with additional boats for classes that had a mix of AW/Fernie boats within it - such as Missile, Fighter, Tank and Bomber classes

 

Dan

[Paddle]

I reckon the couple who got the 'double bed' in the boatman's cabin of BRISTOL might have been less than 100% happy...