Images(2)

DJV

Vessel numberHV000570

Builder Bayes Bros

Designer Alfred Blore

Date1917

DimensionsVessel Dimensions: 13.41 m x 3.66 m x 1.37 m (44 ft x 12 ft x 4.5 ft)

DescriptionDJV was built by Bayes Bros at Battery Point Hobart and launched in 1917. The designer Alfred Blore was well-known and respected as a skilled designer and draughtsman in Hobart until his death in the early 1930s. It is a carvel planked fishing boat almost 13.5 metres long, gaff rigged as a yawl and originally fitted with a wet well for keeping live catch.

The boat was built for a trading ketch skipper ‘Snakey’ Spaulding, and named after his three daughters Daphne, Jean and Violet. Author Gary Kerr interviewed Clyde Clayton in the 1970s who recalled that DJV “ was a beautiful thing. She was fitted out with sails like a yacht – jackyard topsails- she’d sail in the least air.” He describes DJV sailing to windward and tacking up the Dunnally Canal on the east coast, an impressive feat as this narrow and long short-cut was at times even a difficult passage to make under motor.

At an unknown date it was later sold to Don Wardlow and operated by Joe Payne. From 1949 to 1962 Arthur Pike and his brother owned DJV and fished out of St Helens, and then it was bought by Barry Felmingham.

The current owners bought DJV from Pam and Grant Wheelan in 1990. They have rebuilt the deck and superstructure, and rigged it as a gaff cutter, and it is now a recreational sailing boat complete with accommodation and a Ford engine. The elegant lines drawn by Blore remain untouched, and DJV has attended a number of the Australian Wooden Boat Festivals in Hobart.

SignificanceDJV is a wooden Tasmanian fishing boat built in Hobart in 1917. It was designed by Alf Blore, a key figure in Hobart vessel design in the early 1900s. DJV is one of a small number of vessels attributed to him as designer that remains extant, and a rare example of a fishing boat from his drawing board.