LETTERS Send your letters (and any replies, please) to: Classic Boat, Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place, London SW3 3TQ email: cb@classicboat.co.uk
The original Lively Lady A few weeks ago we were rowing up Portsmouth harbour on our weekly outing in a 1930s four-oared clinker Solent Galley, when we saw Lively Lady being towed across the harbour. It got me thinking of my Aunt Mona Cambridge, née Bishop (above), who was the original Lively Lady, after whom the boat was named. Why ‘lively’? She was nicknamed ‘Beans’ because she was always so full of beans! She married Jack Cambridge, an Army engineer, who ended-up as Chief Inspector of Railways in British Raj India. This involved visiting various Indian princes in the
Dunkirk – which version is best?
company of the Mountbattens. Mona and Lady
Having seen both the 2017 and the 1958 film versions of the Dunkirk story, I
Mountbatten wanted to meet the Indian princesses who
am in no doubt as to which is the better. The 1958 film stars Richard
were in purdah and they formed what they called Lady
Attenborough and John Mills and gives a much better historical account of
Mountbatten’s Purdah Club to facilitate this. Mona led a
the events leading up to the evacuation, as well as the evacuation itself.
very colourful and energetic life blessed with a huge
There is much more coverage of the process of requisitioning a whole
outgoing personality and a razor-sharp mind – she was
range of craft at their Thames berths. Many were owner-skippered and the
still paying for her gin out of her bridge winnings well
film covers their route to Dunkirk via Sheerness and Ramsgate – and of
into her nineties.
course the ferrying of soldiers from shallow water to ships waiting
Uncle Jack was planning to sail Lively Lady back to the UK with a colleague, after having her built in India,
further offshore. So for those of your readers actually interested in the Little Ships, the
where she was initially to be called Blue Wave. However,
1958 film is the one to watch. This summer’s massively hyped blockbuster
he and the colleague fell out and so he brought her
no doubt appeals to a modern day audience impressed by noise, gratuitous
home on the deck of a liner and named her after his wife
human suffering and dramatic scenes lacking feasibility.
instead. For a number of years he sailed her out of
Peter Broadbent, via email
Yarmouth IOW, from where as a boy I sailed on her. Eventually Uncle Jack decided to sell her and tried to get my father to buy her. Father’s retort was: “I don’t want that slow old thing.” He ordered a McGruer cruiser-racer to be built by Feltham’s in Bath Square, Old Portsmouth, instead. After Uncle Jack had sold her to Sir Alec Rose, he bought a smaller glassfibre cruiser, which he named Little Lady, and would get someone to crew him over to the River Seine each summer. He would then disappear into the French canals for a month or two, tying up to commercial barges and inviting the bargees on board for STUART COOK
a whisky or two. On one occasion, the story goes, a barge skipper kindly filled his water tank with red wine – for a while he had red wine coming out of his taps! Both wonderfully strong British Raj characters. I can as she raises her glass of gin with a loud “Cheerio”. Truly
Do you know this boat?
a very Lively Lady.
Do any of your readers recognise the design of this 20ft dayboat and know
Bill Bishop, Havant, Hants
what the original rig was? The boat has a carvel planked pine hull and an
Editor replies: Lively Lady is being restored by the Hayling
iron keel. It is pre-World War II but the year of construction is unknown. The
Yacht Company on Hayling Island in time for the 50th
bowsprit is thought to be original and there are running backstays. Any
anniversary in 2018 of Sir Alec arriving back in Portsmouth.
assistance would be much appreciated.
still visualise Aunt Mona always dressed up to the nines
Stuart Cook, Abbots Leigh, West Sussex CLASSIC BOAT NOVEMBER 2017
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