Joint social meeting organised by PHYC

Joint social meeting organised by PHYC and held at the club on 26th January.

On Monday 26th January, eight Albany members attended PHYC’s inter-club social evening in the clubhouse at Penton Hook Marina, with a guest speaker, John Tough. John is the grandson of Douglas Tough who, with his brother Gordon, founded the former Tough’s Boatyard at Teddington in the early 1900s.  In May 1940 Douglas Tough famously mobilised around 100 little ships for Operation Dynamo, which helped rescue over 385,000 soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk. Teams of Tough’s workers travelled along the south coast to repair damaged boats, and the boatyard built vessels for the fire service that were using during the Blitz on London’s docks. During the second world war, Tough’s built motor gun boats and motor torpedo boats and afterwards many types of small boats, cruisers and motor yachts. Following Douglas’ death in the 1950s the business passed to his son Robert, John Tough’s father. In 1954 Bob Tough worked on the design of the Havengore, for the Port of London Authority, the vessel used to transport Winston Churchill’s coffin along the Thames and watched by 350 million people across the world. In the 1980s one of Tough’s last boats to be built was a 150-foot yacht called Brave Goose for Sir Donald Gosling, launched in April 1986. By the 1990s the boatyard was in decline, with Bob Tough eventually retiring in 2006, and the yard was redeveloped into offices and apartments. John is now Honorary Archivist of the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships and the owner of the Little Ship Thamesa.
John’s talk was most interesting and was very well received. Mark, as always, provided an excellent menu.
The meeting was very well attended and proved a good opportunity for inter-club networking. (Tony & John made a point of re-connecting with Andy Wilson, present Commodore of Upper Thames MYC, and asked whether Albany boats could moor at their clubhouse in Sonning in July. Andy agreed in principle, but we will have to alter the date of our cruise to Sonning Theatre as UTMYC are hosting PHYC on the weekend of 24th-25th July.)