MISS VAUXHALL
photo ex Robin Elliott

Todays photo of the woody runabout, Miss Vauxhall, is from Robin’s collection of photos from the Whangarei Cruising Club Collection, as far as Robin knows, all are from the 1940’s early 1950’s & and were taken by Palmer Photography in Whangarei (1910-1999). Most by the late Graeme Palmer and possibly some older ones by his father.

While the boy at the helm is deep in concentration he no doubt is having the time of his life. Can any woodys ID the design of the boat & even better whose the skipper ?

16-01-2017 Harold Kidd Input

I’ve just come across an article in Sea Spray  (below) on Dick Hartley in which he discusses, most lucidly, the evolution of his designs. There is the same pic of MISS VAUXHALL as well as her sections, pointing out that he could just as well built her in ply in 1947.

16-08-2020 UPDATE ex Peter Morgan – HDK was correct the boat is a Hartley. Peter M has commented that his father – Jack Morgan, of Paine Bros (North Auckland) Ltd, General Motors dealers in Whangarei, in 1947 asked Richard Hartley, then a young (b. 1920) boat builder in the town, to design and build Miss Vauxhall. She was powered with New Zealand’s only Mercury 25-hp Thunderbolt in-line 4-cyl. 40 cu.in. outboard. Paine Bros stocked and sold Sea Craft clinker dinghies and Mercury outboards. In the above top photo the young skipper is Roger Morgan, aged 11. In the photo below (very low res), supplied by Peter M, taken in the early 1950’s at Russell in front of the Duke of Marlborough Hotel. Jack Morgan is standing in Miss Vauxhall, while son Roger is holding the transom. Miss Vauxhall had a top speed of 27 mph (23.4 knots), measured by timing between the ends of the Paihia and Russell wharves and measuring the distance off a hydrographic chart of the area. Miss Vauxhall could pull water skiers up from a deep-water start on a single ski.