The 1st Boat Show - pre Earls Court

The first boat show was at Olympia in 1955. Later shows were sponsored by the Daily Express which lead on to a wonderful series of cartoons by Giles. The boat is an American Chris Craft. I should recognise the emblem on the car but don't. I remember going to the show at Olympia. It was in just a part of the hall curtained off from Bertram Mills Circus - the smell and other outpourings of the elephants and other animals could be quite strong. I had my first science lesson there when my father bought be a little campher powered toy boat.

Mind you, in the early days the Earls Court Boat Show followed a lifestock show into the hall - the YM stand, according to Des SLeightholme, was on the site of a cattle pen and he found the evidence to prove it! Des and animal waste product could have been made into a book on its own. He famously stood in for an absent tour guide on a world trip offered as a prize in YM. There was one lady who was the bane of his life but who got her come-uppance when he lured her into treading in an emu dropping.
 
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If the first show was 1955, I was probably there with my father. We had a Firefly at the time and I remember looking at exciting boats like 505s. In those days, the show went on in the evening and we had dinner there on the first day of our honeymoon in 1965.
 
If you go to the Chris Craft website here http://www.chriscraft.com/index.php...er&ref=History&category=History&filmstrip=631 and scroll the filmstrip along to the right half a dozen times, the picture is there with this caption:

"In June of 1935 the Hudson Motor Car Company demonstrated the strength of its steel roof by loading a Chris-Craft and two passengers on their stock Terraplane. The weight of the new 16-foot level riding runabout and passengers was 2,665 pounds."
 
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