Saving Old Seagulls

I am interested to see the letterhead. I used an ad as part of what to do but there is no boat in that. Also the photo you posted is different to the one I found on the Internet and used as the base. It showed some colour in the Britannia figure. Thanks for your post as I didn't know what the small letters were in the side decal. Still trying.
Also I am using Inkscape and Gimp which are both free programs but I don't have a drawing tablet unfortunately so it's a bit laborious. But Inkscape is mostly what I use as it produces vector files which are totally scalable for printing.

I don't think there is a boat on the decal. The last page of the 1932 Britannia operator's manual shows the exact same image as the letter head Russ posted above. When you compare this image to the faded decals on the tank I think you will see the parting waves match. Its so hard to make decals when good original examples do not exist. You guys have done a stellar job thus far.

Until we see a better decal, we will not know whether there is a boat there or not, or what the correct colors are.

i had not seen the image posted by Russ before, but clearly it is not the same as the decal. Aside from the waves and background, even the size and position of Britannia is not the same.

I am redoing the artwork for the Australian clipper outboard at the moment and have found the decal artwork 'clipper name' to be different to that which appears on their letterheads and advertisements. I also trace/draw letters instead of using readily available fonts, so the reproduction is as close as possible to the original.

It is interesting to note that early decals are not too dissimilar to early porcelain signs, where for example the same letter will be different. This is because they were hand drawn, and often without templates. Very different to the computer generated stuff, and reproduction signs we see today.

With reproductions like this, it comes down to how fussy you are. so much out there that looks good until you see it side by side with the original and can see how wrong they actually are.

You couldn’t be more right about that. Literature and decals are often different, especially in this era. Unfortunately, I have only seen two examples of the decal and both lack detail. It does stand to reason that since the image above was used as the logo on the original sales brochure/operators manual that the decal would be based on the same artwork. Maybe someday a perfect example will surface and we will know for sure. Sadly, that isn’t likely to happen where I live.

Certainly a rare engine, of the earlier one with the non villiers ignition I only know of four, three in the UK and one in Australia.

wbeaton do you have one? Any pics?

Oyster 49 wrote: wbeaton do you have one? Any pics?

Mine can be seen in the thread below.

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=6508

Ah yes, I remember. I’ve still not got around to looking at my spare engine. So this makes 5. Perhaps we should start a register

I have a Triton and a Britannia and both coils are non sparkers. I have managed to find single spark coils and will test them when I complete the
rest of the restoration. Ed

Hello Russ,

Better late than never ......
Sorry for not having done that earlier. It simply slipped my mind.

Regards,
Spiro