Local Life
ABOVE: The Baden Powell coming back to her Fisher Fleet mooring in King’s Lynn during the 1950s. Pictured on board (left to right) are George Solly, H Fisher and R Fisher
The Baden Powell will soon be back in town... A historic boat will finally return to King’s Lynn later this year, following a five-year restoration project to preserve an important part of the town’s maritime heritage, as Ken Hill explains.
E
very city or town on a waterway has a history of boat building. Or at least boat repairing. And many of them have a historic boat. London has the Cutty Sark, HMS Belfast and several more. Portsmouth has the HMS Victory. Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft share the Lydia Eva – even though she was built in King’s Lynn in 1930. For King’s Lynn, the town’s own historic boat is the Baden Powell. She’s the oldest local wooden fishing boat still afloat – or at least she will be next year. A 34ft double-ended cockling boat, the Baden Powell was built by
16
Walter Worfolk in 1899 on The Friars, by the River Nar, just over the fence from where Whitefriars School field is now. The Nar – a tidal river with access to the Great Ouse until recent times – was a busy waterway then, with another boatyard, a dry dock, a rope walk, two sawmills and a smithy close by to make and repair ironwork. Walter Worfolk’s boatyard was new in 1899. He was 42, and had learned his craft in Yorkshire as part of a proud boatbuilding family before coming to King’s Lynn, where he had family connections. The Baden Powell was his very first build here. She was bought by
Harry Cook of the extensive fishing family for £50. Cook was so pleased with the boat he gave Walter a £5 tip and a cruet set for his family – which comprised his wife Lily, sons Gerald (8) and William (6) and his daughters Beatrice (12) and Harriet (3). Walter’s sons started doing odd jobs in the boatyard even before they left school at 12, and were apprenticed for seven years from the age of 14. The business eventually became Worfolk Brothers, and by the time the business was sold in the 1980s on the death of Gerald, the father-and-sons team had
KLmagazine May 2016