The Newlyn Luggers

[John R Smith]

Well, I have been absent from LuLa for a while, and that is partly because I have been trying to catch up with my printing backlog. Like Ansel, I always seem to be months behind with my darkroom (Lightroom) work. At the moment, I am printing these pictures from an afternoon almost exactly a year ago.

This is Newlyn old harbour in West Cornwall, and on March 10th last year there was a special day when three surviving Mounts Bay luggers were moored up to do a bit of basic maintenance at low water, and the enthusiastic fans of old wooden boats could enjoy the spectacle. The boats are (l to r) "Happy Return", "Barnabas" and "Ripple". We all had a great afternoon.

I Used my Hasselblad SWC with the 38mm Biogon.

John

[Chairman Bill]

Nice, and I can imagine the print looks fantastic. If you'd like to send me a largish one, gratis of course, I'd be happy to confirm to everyone here just how good it is.

[Jaffy]

Nice slice of history.
I like how you've got the dark boats standing out from the paler background.
Never seen sails up on a grounded boat before.

[amolitor]

I totally missed the people in the first one. Those boats are much bigger than I thought!

The sails are likely up to dry.

I am curious about the SS19 notation. This appears too undistorted to be on the sail, is this something you've put on the print, or in the image file? The vessel name or registration does appear to be SS19, though, so I am puzzled.

Do I like it? I think I kinda like it. It's a nice slice of reality. A quite large print is indicated, though, the JPEG is just frustrating.

[Jim Pascoe]

I totally missed the people in the first one. Those boats are much bigger than I thought!

The sails are likely up to dry.

I am curious about the SS19 notation. This appears too undistorted to be on the sail, is this something you've put on the print, or in the image file? The vessel name or registration does appear to be SS19, though, so I am puzzled.

Do I like it? I think I kinda like it. It's a nice slice of reality. A quite large print is indicated, though, the JPEG is just frustrating.

I think you will find the SS designation refers to the port of registration - in this case St Ives, which is in Cornwall.  Each port has its own code.

Lovely picture though - reminds me of a Frank Meadow Sutcliffe!

Jim

[Baxter]

Very familiar and enjoyable scene John. I checked back in my library, I missed last year, but saw the same thing in Mar 11. They were doing an artists day with the luggers in the inner harbour as here and invite for people to come and paint. I'd done a dawn raid when everything was quiet with nice reflections. Shooting from road and from harbour shore too.

The luggers are a great source of detail shots too.

[John R Smith]

Thank you all for your interesting comments. As usual, I learn a great deal from how others react to a picture.

The SS19 is indeed on the sail and I certainly did not Photoshop it in! As Jim says, SS is St Ives - PZ is Penzance, FH is Falmouth, and so on. 19 is a very early number, and "Ripple" is still entitled to carry it. All of these boats have been worked on a lot to keep them afloat, but "Ripple" has really been completely rebuilt. I took a picture of her some years ago when she was ashore and almost ready to be relaunched (this time with the 500 and the 60mm Distagon).

John

[amolitor]

It just looks odd! I guess that area of the sail is simply pulled taut, so the letters appear weirdly square. As a sailor myself, I've read a lot of sail numbers in my day, and there's almost always a bit of curve to the sail, so the letters never appear squared up and even like that.

Thanks!