Tuesday 2 June 2009

Aquabelle and Ramsgate harbour in about 1970

Aquabelle was one of the Dunkirk Little ships moored in Ramsgate harbour around 1969 to 1972, there were far fewer pontoons at that time and by the brick arches the were quite a few boats moored in trots (side beside each other).

A lot of these boats had their owners living on them and many of them were undergoing repairs of one sort or another, collectively we referred to them as the inner harbour cruising club.

Life in those days was still a bit cocktails and tea on the foredeck (cucumber sandwiches without crusts).

I did quite a few electrical jobs on these boats and went on some minor voyages on some of them.

I have been looking for information about Aquabelle for some time, as I was away from Ramsgate when she left and I knew the owners who I lost touch with.

She has just appeared on the Little Ships website click here to go there.

I was surprised that she saw military service as she has welled side decks that are prone to fill with water in much of a sea, I always considered her a bit of a fair weather boat.

When I knew her, her owner was a member of the royal engineer yacht club so he was entitled to fly the white ensign quartered with the club’s coat of arms, what with that and flying Dunkirk honours she occasionally got saluted because she was mistaken for an admiral’s yacht.

Click here for some pictures of this part of the harbour at about that time. I always find it surprising how few people seem to remember much about the boats or the harbour such a short time ago and would certainly appreciate it if anyone has any more pictures.

3 comments:

  1. L'Aquabelle est toujours à aigues mortes , je l'ai encore admirée dimanche dernier.
    je m'interesse beaucoup à ce bateau et serais heureux d'avoir des renseignements sur son histoire
    remerciements
    jp lauzin

    ReplyDelete
  2. L'Aquabelle est toujours à aigues mortes , je l'ai encore admirée dimanche dernier.
    je m'interesse beaucoup à ce bateau et serais heureux d'avoir des renseignements sur son histoire
    remerciements
    jp lauzin

    ReplyDelete
  3. L'Aquabelle est toujours à aigues mortes , je l'ai encore admirée dimanche dernier.
    je m'interesse beaucoup à ce bateau et serais heureux d'avoir des renseignements sur son histoire
    remerciements
    jp lauzin

    ReplyDelete

Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.