Pilot Cutter lines "Mischief"

johnrb

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Pilot Cutter lines \"Mischief\"

I am searching for the lines or plans of the pilot cutter "Mischief". owned and sunk by the mountaineer explorer "Bill Tilman" from 1954.
She was built in Cardiff in 1906 and was converted to a yacht in 1927, she had 9 owners since then. she is loa 45ft beam 13ft draught 7.5ft. has any one got an idea where to look??
So far I have been in touch with the Bristol Pilot Cutter society, and the National Maritime museum .

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Ohdrat

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Re: Pilot Cutter lines \"Mischief\"

Have you tried the science museum.. not joking.. I have a book on Sailing Trawlers with plans/lines which gives an acknowledgement to the Science Museum.. I think the plans are held there as these were once commercial vessels and some authority held the plans / lines to commercial vessels .. possibly Lloyds?

Tilman is a very bad example.. he seems to have sunk most of the Pilot Cutters.. which is inexcusable.. I gave up reading his books in disgust!

One day I shall rebuild the Brixham Ketch Ibex.. dream on!

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Mirelle

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Re: Pilot Cutter lines "Mischief"

I respectfully disagree; HW Tilman was a very fine seaman indeed. I am in quite a good position to be a judge of that.

You might take a look at this website, put together by one of his crew members

http://www.comlay.net/tilman/

which has some nice pictures.

As to Mischief's lines, I fear that they do not exist; only one pilot cutter was ever built to plans; all the others were built from half models. A few pilot cutters had their lines taken off by enthusiastic yachtsmen in the 20's and 30's and these are the lines plans that you see published today. Mischief was not amongst them.

A competent naval architect with knowledge of, and an interest in, the type (Ed Burgess comes immediately to mind!) could make a pretty fair stab at re-creating them if armed with photos of her (of which there are plenty) and access to, or the lines of, a boat or two built by the same builder.

The drawings of sailing working craft in the Science Museum are mostly the William Maxwell Blake collection - Blake spent his retirement designing yachts (I'm very happy to say that Mirelle is one of his) and taking off the lines and making exact construction and rigging plans of sailing working craft because he feared they would not survive. These were presented to the Science Museum. Blake wrote a long series of articles for the Yachting Monthly in the 1930's with the results of his research - very well worth reading if you are ever anywhere (eg the CA Library) with a full run of YM.

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Ohdrat

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Re: Tongue in cheek

Will people please cease taking everything I say seriously!

As per another possible source re Pilots Cutters you could contact Tom Cunliffe - he had one, can't remember which so might well have some info regarding lines/plans etc

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johnrb

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Re: Tongue in cheek

Thank you both for your info,
So far I have been in touch with the Bristol Pilot Cutter society, and the National Maritime museum, Yachting monthly (who were very helpfull, and gave me two articles from the thirties on pilot cutters, but not about mischief), various forums etc.
The only pilot cutter of similar length existing (including archived lines) that I have been able to find is “Peggy” formally “the wave”, built by Rowles in Pill (Bristol). She is also 45ft though has a straight stem, but looks pretty similar in volume (quite full bodied).
I could of course build Peggy from the waterline down, with Mischief above, but I'm sure you would agree that this would not really be acceptable.

I think we all agree with "Ohdrat" that Tilman was pretty hard on his cutters, but that after all is what they were built for, not for posterity anyway..

please keep the ideas comming, ..I haven't given up yet!!



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tmeslin

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Hi everyone,

I'd like to reactivate this thread because I'm looking for Mischief's plans as well.
To put it in a nutshell : my dad is an 83 year old fisherman retiree who spends his old days building wooden boat models. He's recently finished a french Bisquine (see attached) and has allowed me to choose what his next project would be. I've read (too many) and loved Bill Tilman's books and immediatedly thought that his next boat should be Mischief, Baroque or Sea Breeze.
However, I'm having a hard time finding any plans for those sea jewels.
I've contacted the BCPCOA and RB boatbuilding to no avail.
I'm about to order Cariad's plans on the Royal Museums' website, but thought I could give a try on this forum before doing so.

Thanks for your help.IMG_6233.JPG
 

Kukri

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Gosh what an old thread! Since it started Ed Burnett recreated Mischief’s lines and alas died. I had the pleasure of corresponding with him over the time when he was recreating Mischief. I would think Ed’s drawings will be very close indeed.

For what it’s worth, I do know that Mischief was the Skipper’s favourite boat, from talking to him, so that is the one that might make the most interesting model.

Be careful with Cariad as there were two!

One was built by Rowles of Pill and was owned for many years by Frank Carr, who was the Director of the National Maritime Museum. She is still around. She was known as ‘the white Cariad’

The other one was built by Hambly of Porthleven who also built ‘Baroque’; she was a little larger and was known as ‘the black Cariad’. She no longer exists, but her lines do, and they look like ‘Baroque’.
 
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