Baden Powell LN138 is a 34ft Worfolk smack built in 1902.
The Baden Powell was built in 1900 in a boatyard on the River Nar by Walter Worfolk. He had arrived from Stainforth in Yorkshire with his young family the previous year, staying in Bridge Street with his wife’s uncle, William Lancaster. Walter already knew that Lynn did not have a boat building company to service the fishing fleet and he put the skills he learned in Stainforth to immediate use by building the 34ft Baden Powell for Harry and William Cook, for £50.
It is a double-ended cockling boat. The Cooks were so pleased with the workmanship that they gave Walter an extra fiver and presented his wife Lily with a cruet set for the table. Walter’s sons, Gerald (10) and William (8) at the time, were soon apprentices to their father and continued building wooden boats in Lynn until 1981, when Gerald died. William lived to just past his 100th birthday in 1994.
©The Baden-Powell Project
©David Ashfield
©The Baden-Powell Project
