Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on February 15, 2004 at 15:41:08 from 195.93.32.7 user ACB.
In Reply to: Re: Sea Bear posted by Adam Quinan on February 15, 2004 at 14:22:38:
Just to state the obvious, "Teddy" was, of course, designed and built by Colin Archer. He built quite a number of pilot cutters; many survive as yachts. They are generally rather faster and a bit less beefy than his sailing lifeboats ("redningskoites").
The Colin Archer type enjoyed a huge suces d'estime amongst cruising yachtsmen in the inter-war period, largely thanks to a book called "The Cruise of the Dream Ship" by Ralph Stock and to Erling Tamb's book. However when Tambs managed to pitchpole the redningskoite "Sandefjord" in the South Atlantic (some years after the loss of the "Teddy") a more balanced view began to prevail. At the time when Ransome was writing, they were considered by many to be the ideal ocean cruiser.
A very well known descendant of the Archer type, scaled down to yacht dimensions, is Robin Knox-Johnson's "Suhaili" which is actually a William Atkin "Eric" design.