National Maritime Museum Cornwall - Boats

Boats

The Museum manages the National Small Boat Collection, which came from the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, in addition to its own collection of Cornish and other boats. Famous boats on show in its collection include:

• Waterlily, a Thames steam boat built by Thornycrofts in 1866
• Fricka, a gentleman's day sailor built by William Fife
• Champions like the Ventnor planing hydrofoil; the Flying Dutchman Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (Superdocious for short) in which Rodney Pattisson won a gold medal at the Mexico Olympics; Rita, the Laser in which Ben Ainslie won an Olympic gold medal in Sydney; and "Defender II"
• Thunder and Lightning the International 14 which was the first boat to use a trapeze competitively
• Early examples of popular sailing dinghies like Mirror No.1, Firefly No.1 and Dart No. 1
• Curlew, the Falmouth Quay Punt in which Tim and Pauline Carr sailed to the Antarctic
• Wanderer-W48, a Wayfarer, in which Frank Dye sailed to Iceland and to Norway from Scotland (surviving four capsizes and a broken mast during a Force 9 storm) .

The museum is the country's premier museum for boats and maintains a national register of small boats (under 33 foot) and invites owners of historic craft to register them.