Saving Old Seagulls

charlesp wrote: ↑Fri May 14, 2021 7:28 pm A very modest cost, it might surprise you. The original agreement was signed in late December 1937 between the Bristol Motor Boat Company (now operated solely by Way-Hope and Pinniger) and Marstons. They were to take over the patents, drawings, stocks of motors and spares, goodwill etc, for the princely sum of £630. Tooling isn't mentioned

The pair had been working on improvements to the motors, and their first patent referred to the rubber bushing on an outboard propshaft.

The models being produced at this time were at first the OJ, quickly replaced by the ON and OP. Not many were being manufactured, it is estimated that a spacious factory wouldn't be needed, it being more a case of assembling the components. For a short while they rented premises in Wolverhampton.

By July 1938 they had become the British Seagull Company, and they were seeking premises, eventually moving to Poole, where Pinniger had family

Their fist short lived address was in Hamilton Road in Hamworthy - a few hundred yards from where I'm sitting right now. The exact number is unknown, there's no trace of the firm in that road now.

They were based in the town itself around 1939, near the old lifting bridge and in the early part of the war the company was pretty much in mothballs. It wasn't until 1942 that the powers that be wanted to know if they could put together a large order for the Army. Way-Hope was the one they contacted. He was working for Vosper's by them, and he simply said "Yes", and arranged for Pinniger to come back from the Bristol Aeroplane Company where he was a draughtsman. Around this time in the UK virtually every small fabrication or machine ship was working on Ministry contracts making bits for bombers or Sten Guns and I strongly suspect that the Seagulls were no exception, with work farmed out to wherever there was capacity. I do know that, for example, the Central Garage in Verwood was charged with drilling the holes in bracket castings and cutting brass exhausts from long tubes. I have met one very elderly gentleman who worked there at the time

It was the contract for what we know as the SD series that made the company, of course. The other Charles and myself calculated that total production from 1931 to 1939 was relatively small, but we know that around ten thousand SD's were supplied to the Ministry, ending in 1946. At pre-war prices that added up to approximately the cost of a Hunt Class destroyer without its armament.

As an aside, Way Hope used "B.E.M" after his name on their letterhead after the war. He was, I found, awarded the British Empire Medal for a rescue during the 1941 Blitz where he was on duty with Vospers' Air Raid Precautions. The position of the factory near the bridge is confirmed by the damage caused to his motor car when he carelessly left in near the bridge which opened with another car on the lifting bit, which ran down the slope into Pinniger's Rover.