Thetis - Great Uncle Walter's duplex boat is revealed at alst
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| It took at least two generations of family members several years to find this article so you can imagine how pleased we were to see this - the top half of the title page. |
Great Uncle Walter's duplex boat- a kind of early catamaran - has been revealed at last and in a most unexpected way. World famous among out family members, this odd vessel is mentioned in an unpublished biography of my great great grandmother, Susanna, written by her grand daughter, Winifred Scott. It's been a cause celebre across more than three generations because it's remained out of reach for so long.
Regular readers may remember Great Uncle Walter. He was uncle to my grandfather and to my mother's Auntie Winnie. He was a war artist, entrepreneur, photographer, writer and inventor and very much a man of his times. Impossibly glamorous to his little nephews and nieces, he died in Venice in 1890 having neglected to be inoculated for smallpox and the Walter cycle of legends has endured to the present day.
He more than qualifies as a steam punk. His design for a duplex huller-paddle steamer for exploring the Nile hangs on my wall, properly framed and respected instead of lining the bottom of a wardrobe.
I suppose the Thetis is more sail punk.
Occasional snippets about Thetis, his working duplex boat and house boat cum studio have only fuelled our interest. As well as a reference to an article in Art Magazine entitled "A Painter's House Boat" given by Winnie in Susanna's biography, I have a sketch by Great Uncle Walter of a steam powered duplex boat for exploring the Nile and in the notes accompanying this drawing he mentions a prototype built in Falmouth, named Thetis.
I did the obvious thing and visited the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth but could not find any references to the Thetis although we knew it had been built there.
Cousin Gordon has a series of letters from Great Uncle Walter to his brother-in-law, my great grandfather Jack Turner, that literally chart the journey this vessel made from Cornwall to London. Walter puts into coastal towns along the way and often "touches" Jack for some more money. It seems great grandpa was a financial backer of some sort - or maybe a very generous and indulgent buddy to the irrepressible Walter.
We have the remains of several scrapbooks belonging to Great Uncle Walter and although we have the design drawing for the Nile boat and numerous photographs of steam and sail ships - many of which are clearly used as a reference for some of Great Uncle Walter's magazine illustrations - we had no image of Thetis.
And yet if this vessel was such a significant part of Walter's life, he must have taken many photographs of it. Sadly, none of them are known to survive. Less relevant images of vessels have come down to us but the most important ones, of his own vessel, presumably were used and abused and dispersed and fell to pieces.
Winifred Scott gave a reference to Art Magazine, July 1888, and many of us have been looking for this for years. My Uncle David had sadly come to the conclusion that it no longer existed in any surviving record and when I visited him recently, I was willing to agree with him.
Fortunately, Winnie mentioned the author of the article, W H Boot. I had wondered if this was a made up name but, no, William Henry James Boot really did exist. He's listed on Wikipedia as a member of the Royal Society of British Artists so he was an artist as well as an author.
We did a further internet search on him and found examples of his landscape and architectural engravings of Theydon Bois and Saffron Walden.
I've also seen references to William Henry eating pandas and - understandably - attracting some controversy over this.
I like to think that he might have eaten one by mistake and didn't enjoy it. Anyway, these references no longer appear on the net and I'm going down that rabbit hole (or up a bamboo shoot).
The breakthrough for us came when Uncle David and I tried a search including "A Painter's House Boat" with the name of William Henry Boot.
We discovered an archived newspaper article in Australian for the North Australian Saturday, 23rd March 1889. Initially we thought we'd found what we were looking for but this was just a couple of paragraphs. Winnie specified an extensive article in Art Magazine. However, on reading the North Australian contribution we realised that this referred to an earlier article in Magazine of Art - not Art Magazine.
A further search on those terms and we found "A Painter's House Boat" at last. You might sat that a switched on art librarian would've helped us but librarians of any sort seem an endangered species these days.
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| From a distance the Thetis looked almost normal |
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| Out of water, it's clear that Great Uncle Walter really did saw a boat in half to make his sea going house boat |
Thetis was a cutter, literally sawn down the middle by Great Uncle Walter and then joined back together again to make an early form of catamaran. W H Boot's article mentions a smaller version of Thetis but calls that a catamaran and in her grandmother's biography Winnie says this was the first of Walter's strange craft. All other references to Thetis describe it as a duplex boat, however, which I rather like.
What is particularly interesting for me is the verification of various bits of family lore. The solitary Cornish crew member who accompanied Great Uncle Walter was none other than the redoubtable Pikesley who would frightened any youthful person who would listen with tales of derring-do on the high seas with their favourite uncle. It seems that he never made the journey back to Falmouth. Surely his passage out didn't put him off travel? He found gainful employment in charge of the ponds in Hampstead and, as Winnie puts it in her biography of Walter's mother, "Pikesley might have told us many stories, if he had not awed us by his rough voice, when he found us trying to rescue a hoop from deep water in the Hampstead pond."
Of greatest interest to me in this article is the interior illustration of the Thetis. Its windows closely match those shown in a sketch that has come down to me of Walter at work in his studio.
It seems we had an image of Thetis after all - albeit only a partial interior one - but didn't know it.
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| Is this a view of Thetis that we unknowingly had for years? Compare the window panes with W H Boot's illustrations and decide for yourself. If in doubt, also consider the rigging visible outside and storm lantern on the ceiling |
Although it's clear that Walter built Thetis himself, he is not mentioned by name anywhere in the article. This strikes me as very odd. Magazine of Art was a prestigious periodical and this would surely be great publicity for a professional artist. Either, he was too modest or, perhaps more likely, everyone knew who this "man of enterprise" and "intrepid skipper" really was.
"Speculation on the score of his safety was deemed superfluous" describes the attitude Boot and his colleagues had towards Great Uncle Walter. "Old Cornish salts shook their heads ominously" when Walter announced his intention of sailing the Thetis up the Channel to London. "The fisherman who was shipped a first mate was declared to be holding his life ridiculously cheap."
"The skipper, of course, it was useless to argue with, as he was always considered to be more or less of a dare-devil and it was generally understood that whatever fate befell the crew and the boat, he would be sure to come up smiling."
This article is really a bunch of chums poking gentle fun at each other, full of in-jokes that we may never understand now.
Great Uncle Walter, it seems, was a fellow who laughed danger in the face and went out of his way to provoke the caprices of fate who, as we all know, is a woman but she ain't no lady..
I still don't understand why they didn't name names, though. It would have made it so much easier for us to find!
One thing I did notice, though, was a reference to the great Turner himself - possibly the famous J M W Turner but just as easily Jack Turner, my great grandfather and Walter's best friend, a parliamentary reporter who sailed with and discussed art with him.
And why was Great Uncle Walter's vessel called Thetis?
Thetis was a shape-shifting water nymph in Greek mythology who was known for giving succour to heroes.
What else could Great Uncle Walter call his invention?
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