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The Royal William Yard, Plymouth

RWY_George_IMG_1204_d.JPGMeeting with the redoubtable George Skinner this morning at the cafe on the 16 acre site of the Royal William Yard, Plymouth. RWY_IMG_1207_d.JPG

I first meet George when he managed Scott Bader at Plymouth.

Actually the day started with a return to CarCare who serviced and over saw the annual test for my car last Friday.

I’d left my only waterproof jacket there, tallas and yamulka on Friday at closing time when I’d collected the car ~ twit…

Turning failure into success I had them replace  2 almost worn out tyres this saving time on a day in the not to distant future, the diversion was not wasted.

George and I struck up an instant rapoure when we  first met, interests in common including encouraging maritime Plymouth to get up to date, fossilised regatta committees to evolve, encouraging a very reticent council to notice it has a massive port.

Because of the city council’s persistent attitude to things nautical Plymouth has been described as a city with its back firmly to the sea.

This is some what ironic for a city with such an incredible maritime history and future.

It seems to me some thing went very wrong after World War 2.

Maybe the heart of Plymouth was bombed out in more senses than literally?

We share other interests including promoting maritime business in Plymouth, boat building and sailing.

The topic today was marketing and exhibitions…

By great good luck we also met with the renowned Mike Leece, one of Plymouth’s more interesting and dynamic people, more I hope of Mike Leece later.

Mike is an ideas and concept person, something together with vision and hard work he shares with George.

Much of the remainder of the day was centered around Adaptgraphics and finalising the booklet “Life on the Ocean Wave“.

Following a few minor changes we will soon be printing the final version a copy of which because it has an ISBN has by law to go to the British Library in London.

The Royal William Yard designed by Sir John Rennie (1794-1874) for use by the Admiralty as a victualling depot for the Royal Navy replaced the ancient  previous naval victualling premisis at Plymouth, work started in 1826.

The older site became the emigration depot.

You can see the Emigration depot in the painting on page

http://www.frickers.co.uk/marine-art/plimsoll.html,

This stunning moonlight scene will be available as a collectors heritage quality edition later this week.

To make sure you have a copy before it sells out you can order from page

http://www.frickers.co.uk/prints.html

You can read the Royal William yard’s history on page http://www.plymouthdata.info/RoyalWilliamYard.htm