Posted by John Wilson on March 30, 2011 at 02:46:58 user hugo.
The ‘Coarse’ author Michael Green wrote about summer holidays on the Broads since 1954 with ‘a group from Questors (Theatre):
... in a fleet of three or four hired boats. They were the days when the Norfolk waterways were still full of lovely wooden yachts, totally engineless and moved by huge wooden poles when the wind dropped. I soon discovered the Broads can provide every known marine disaster without leaving sight of land, which is not surprising when one considers how crowded they are and how helpless are sailing boats among hordes of powerful cruisers, most of them driven at high speed by power-crazy soccer holigans.
Among our experiences were Insanity of Ship’s Master (followed by Mutiny); Explosion of Vessel; Dismasting; Death by Drowning (or nearly); and Collision on the High Seas (the River Thurne, to be exact).
It was drink which caused the ship’s master to go insane, trying to tack out of Potter Heigham in a gale under many bottles of Worthington … Next day Green blew up a boat with a Calor gas leak when he struck a match.
From page 237-8 of “''Nobody Hurt in Small Earthquake'' 1990).
Green was commissioned to write “The Art of Coarse Rugby” by Hutchinson to go with a republication of “The Art of Coarse Cricket” by Spike Hughes, who had intended the title as a play on “Coarse Fishing”. Coarse Rugby became a best-seller in 1960. Green later wrote among others “The Art of Coarse Sailing” and “The Art of Coarse Cruising”.