Four little ships ready to go

n a recent visit to Dennetts, we saw so many boats in varying stages of reincarnation that we lost count. Of the, a 52ft (15.8m) motor yacht rescued from the brink and given a stunning new art deco interior; the 42ft (12.8m) cruiser-sterned motor yacht , designed by John Baine and built at the Silver yard in 1928; the 45ft (13.7m) , built in 1938 to be a floating home for her racing driver owner Douglas Briault; and last but not least, (above). We saw her at Dennets, mid-transformation at the end of 2019 and wrote “a lean, slender, flat-sheered monster, reminiscent of the fast Second World War wooden motor torpedo boats (MTBs) and high-speed launches (HSLs)”. This one was built by the British Powerboat Company in 1938 as a private yacht and was recently relaunched after a serious rebuild. Her light build and slender beam – just 6ft (1.8m) at the stern – over 47ft 6in (14.5m) length, to ply rough seas at 30+ knots, meant creative thinking in terms of longitudinal stiff ness, just to stop her snapping in half. Soon we’ll see just how fast she goes!