DOROTHY
photo & details ex Barry Davis

How today’s photo ended up on ww is a little amusing, but first some details that were printed on the back of the photo. Dorothy was built by Collings & Bell 1911 for W.J.Quelch Newton. She was 35′ x 8’6″ & powered by a 12hp Doman Block 5 1/4.
Obviously the photo has been retouched e.g. the helmsman is hand drawn & out of proportion to the size of the launch but the retouching was done a very long time ago & at the Collings & Bell yard. How do we know this ? Well Collings & Bell closed down with the reclaiming of the area for the Auckland Harbour Bridge. As an adventurous school boy Barry ‘found’ this photo on the floor in the now very derelict older of the two Collings & Bell boat sheds just shortly before it was finally pulled in 1961, a good two years after the business had closed. Barry has had the photo & one other (a later ww post) filed away for decades & how thanks to ww they can be viewed.

So the question is what became of Dorothy & where is she today?

Harold Kidd Update

I wrote an article about W.J. Quelch and his many yachts and launches in Boating NZ a few months ago. He owned some great boats; launches WAIHIRI (C&B 1910), MARORO (1920) and yachts ETHEL (1913), ALEXA (1915), GRYPHON (1917), VIDA (Colin Wild 1931).
DOROTHY was indeed built for him by Collings & Bell and launched in November 1911. He sold her to R E Fry by 1916. She went through the hands of Len Cunningham (1917) went to Takatu Point and (I think) was sold to Tauranga in 1920 owned by M Sinclair of Matakana Is. Unfortunately there were several DOROTHYS, on the Waikato, the Manukau and at Whangarei, as well as on the Waitemata, so they are easy to mix up.
I suspect a name change in Tauranga.
Quelch had Collings & Bell build him DOROTHY Q in 1923, a Van Blerck-powered flush-decked 38 footer, later 100hp Stearns. She became DORIS (one of many of that name!) when Quelch exchanged her for JEAN with Sam Leyland in 1930. Quelch then exchanged JEAN for WANDEROO with L Schischka.