LIBERTY – 446
Earlier this month I featured the launch Liberty on WW, the story generated some good chat around her provenance and some b/w photos from her past (link to that story below).
In the WW comments section Tom Morris mentioned that he had a photo of Liberty still with her wartime number on bow. Today that photo arrived in my in-box, and its just too good to ‘bury’ in the existing WW story.
Tom commented that the launch was built by Lou Burns and Stu McCallum at Te Papapa Onehunga. In the photo above we see Lou at the helm, and Tom’s late mother standing, Tom’s grandad is sitting in cockpit.Tom believes that Lou and Stu also built the launch Pirate and Stu McCallum built Avanti.
Liberty is for sale – someone needs to buy her & using the above photos reference, bring her back to ‘as launched’ condition. She is a looker and with the right engine appears to be a zoom zoomer 🙂
BBQ RSVP: waitematawoodys@gmail.com
Happy Birthday Harold 🙂
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No need to apologise to me! It’s hard to keep track of the multitude of fine launches built in this country at the best of times and APACHE was certainly very distinctive and piratical as Alan remembers.
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Harold, my apologies, it was Apache and not Pirate that Lou Burns and Stu McCallum built, and from all accounts was built in Captain Springs Rd, Te Papapa Onehunga.
Cheers.
Tom.
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The moulded cabintop launch McCallum built in the 1930s was APACHE. I don’t think he built any of the PIRATEs which were H.N. Burgess (1910), Chas Bailey Jr (1917), Warne Bros (1938).
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I built a Vindex 32 for Joyce McCallum who would be Stu’s daughter in law it was also called Avanti.
Joyce ‘s husband was also called Stuart.
At the time he showed me a model of a bridge decker that his father had built in the 1930s it had very distinctive moulded cabin tops unfortunately l can’t remember the name of the vessel.
Stuart senior started a marine hardware business supplying John Burns
Those of you who can remember the old NZR toilets 🚽 he supplied them.
He also built and retired to the house which sits in the saddle on the left hand side of Awaroaroa Bay on Waiheke.
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Really nice boat. Interesting that as an Onehunga boat, she bears a striking resemblance in styling cues to the Coulthards Echo and Matariki
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