Introduction to the site....
The site has come about from my desire to collate in one place as many pictures as possible of the boats that served the branch so well, from the humble beginings in 1918 to the untimely closure in 1986.
A big thank you goes to Donald Smith (Marine Craft Historian) and Terry Holtham (Military Small Craft Historian) for providing me with so much background material and photographs. Also, a big thank you to Budge Bergin (Wireless Operator on the boats for 8½ years at various Marine Craft Units's, including Mount Batten, Alness, Portrush, Holyhead Seletar and Penang) who has, and continues to clean up a lot of photographs on the site.
I would of course like to pass on my thanks to all those who have contributed to the site by providing pictures for inclusion or by permitting their photographs previousy published in books, magazines, and the internet to be displayed.
With the release of V1.03, there are approximately 500 pictures on the site, and growing practically day on day. Inevitably there are still gaps to be filled, I would ideally like to have at least one picture of each boat on the site.
There are numerous pictures without a location and date taken associated with them, if you can provide these details it would be really helpful.
So, if anyone has any pictures they would like to see displayed on the site, especially those that fill in the gaps, then please contact me and make a contribution towards creating a pictorial history of the boats we all loved so dearly. I hope everyone gets as much enjoyment from browsing the site as I do developing it.
>>>> Version 1.05 has now been released, and adds to the site the 60ft PINNACE, although sadly I have no pictures of the MK.IIA, MK.IIB, MK.IIC, MK.III, ASR MK.IA and SPECIAL DUTIES (SD) MK.IA. So come on everybody, get searching and see if you can't fll some of those gaps for me. Since the last update in December, a number of new pictures have been added to existing galleries and more pleasing for me new galleries have been created to fill gaps. I would like to say a big "Thank You" to all those who have contributed to make that happen <<<<
Joe Thomas - ex Webfoot (MBC)
Dated: 24/01/2010