mtb boats

[jimmy harleston eng]

i sometimes work in a building situated in lowestoft on nelsons wharf,victoria road. one of their older employees tells me that during the war mtb boats were made in the building.he started working there in 1968 and said that he could remember for a long time lots and lots of jigs and templates being leftover in older buildings. unfortunately i guess that no one had the foresight to save them or probably really cared. you would think that they would have been pretty interesting to some.

does anyone have any info on this at all or pics ?

i dont think it was brooke marine.

jimmy

[Johnny]

I'm pretty sure it would have been Brooke Marine. There might have been other small shipyards or the larger ones may have taken over other smaller buildings.

Brooke went bust in 1992 having been sold on in 1987 and renamed as Brooke Yachts.

The company was relaunched again in 2006 as Brooke Marine Yachts Ltd but had gone bust again by 2009.

 

There is lots of info on the internet about them.

One site lists their wartime production as " Launches for the Royal Navy; Fuel and Servicing Launches for Costal Command. Type ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘D’ MGB’s/MTB’s and Landing Craft under contract to the Fairmile Marine Co. and Airborne Lifeboats."

One of the last craft built by the original company was Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic Challenger 2.

 

http://www.oceanpirate.co.uk/pgs/brooke.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooke_Marine

http://www.lowestoftmaritimemuseum.org.uk/brookemarine.htm

Edited March 17, 2011 by Johnny

[jimmy harleston eng]

thanks for the reply johnny.

i spoke with a friend who knows some local history and he was surprised to hear that the site which was the silk works was being used to build the mtb's. he did wonder if they could have been using the building to repair them,would this have neccesitated the use of the templates that were left?. he did inform me that the adjacent buildings on the pye/sanyo site were used by the army training on lvt landing craft.

brooke marine is a possibility although its not on there premises. however im sure that they would have occupied other buildings during the war if needed.the guy who works there has a feeling it could have had something to do with richards. he remembers some rough slips a wooden hoist at the water and two underground bomb shelters which are still there somewhere today.