C & B JUNIOR
photo & details ex Barry Davis

The above stunning photo of C & B Junior was one of two photos that Barry Davis ‘found’ when poking around the Collings & Bell boat sheds after the yard closed down as a result of the reclaiming of the area for the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Barry ‘found’ this photo on the floor in the then very derelict older of the two C & B boat sheds just shortly before it was finally pulled down in 1961, a good two years after the business had closed. Barry has had the photo & one other (Dorothy – a previous ww post) filed away for decades & how thanks to  ww they can be viewed. Junior was built by C & B in 1913. And while a wee thing at 20′ x 5’6″ x 3′ she is in my eye perfectly proportioned, not an easy task in a boat this size.
Given the inscription on the photo, she may have been built for W.H.M. Davis, or perhaps that was the photographer?

So woodys what became of C & B Junior?

ps photo below (ex Harold Kidd) of the Collings & Bell yard, with the 36′ Carrie-Fin on the slip. Carrie-Fin was later shipped (on Makura) to Tahiti for a wealthy American sport fisherman, Eastham Guild.

Update from Harold Kidd

She was built by Collings & Bell for themselves as an advertisement for their skills, one of several such launches they built as demonstrators. Her actual name was C & B JUNIOR. Davis was the photographer. She was launched in April 1913, a few days before this image was taken. Her dimensions were as stated . She had a 10hp 2 stroke Eagle engine. Alf Bell had most of the running of her, entering quite a few launch races with her.
She was a trend-setter with her dodger, something quite new at the time, and obviously immensely practical.
Collings & Bell sold her to J Harris of Grey St., Onehunga in early 1914. He renamed her CYNTHIA. In late 1914 he fitted a 9-12hp 4 cylinder 4 stroke Aristocrat engine. In 1917 he sold her to D. Herd and she “disappears” shortly after, probably a name change.

Collings rarely published his lines because he thought of himself as an innovator, especially with his hard chine “concave-convex” planing hulls.
It seems that when the St. Mary’s Bay yard closed a lot of material was left lying around. Barry liberated the two lovely images of C & B JUNIOR and DOROTHY, but hundreds of Charles Collings’ own glass plate negatives were either shied into the bay by apprentices or left lying around, mostly cracked or broken. I have a number of these, all much the worse for wear but hugely interesting.
An earlier launch of the same dimensions was exhibited at the Auckland Winter Show in 1910 with a smaller dodger. That one was was really the trailblazer and was one of several of their launches called just C & B.

Terribly minor point; for whatever reason, when C & B JUNIOR was sold to Harris, Collings & Bell fitted a 6hp 2 stroke Perfection engine in place of the Eagle. They were agents for Perfections and I suspect that the Eagle may not have proved satisfactory. The Perfection was built in Detroit by Caille and one of the better American marine two-strokes (of which there were a great number).