Saving Old Seagulls

Yet again I have bought another engine off the Bay.



It is SD 28621

Looks all there from the photo, will post pictures when I get it.

Has anyone got a spare transom bracket for an SD?

What year does 28621 make it?

Hope I was not bidding againt anyone else.

H-A

Watch out! .....he will want the numbers

spare bracket ??? right one for the right year ???

of course ...like we're tripping over them

Numbers, please


Cant tell you exactly when it was made, but it's the highest number I have on the register, so I woulsd say towards the end of the run, maybe 45/46.

Timberman's right, the appropriate bracket (if we're even right about which none it was) is scarce. i work on the understanding that it's like the one here:

http://www.britishseagullparts.com/outb ... series.htm

The top two have the bracket we're on about.

I dissagree with Charles about this brackett.

In my eyes it just doesn't have the feel of, built for the ministry of supply.

These brackets have the post war austerity feel to them, the whole design is under engineered & fragile, hence the rareity, the motor retaining pin is real easy to loose & after that's gone, it wouldn't take much of a bump, to loose the whole outboard.

It just doesn't look, like something designed for a conscripted Tommy to use in a rush.
It feel's like something that was built to have an owner who paid for it & would take care of it as it cost a lot of money.

I think these brackets were built for the D's & C's in the post war period & would have been sold by Seagull to replace the heavy hull specific bracket's issued with the SD's that weren't very suitable for transom use.

What we need to settle this, is pics of Seagulls in use during the war.

I know you disagree with me Charles, and that's the beauty of this board. We can try to work it out between us.

The patent that applies to this bracket has an application date of February 1945. Given that quite a few of the patents are dated after the first appearance(and this effect is stronger in wartime) , then I strongly suspect that the bracket did in fact appear during the war. SD motors that were not 'Ministry' ones wouldn't have had the weird side mount stub, they would have been equipped for clamping onto a transom in the time honoured manner.

While we have numerous examples of SDs that have the universal stub, and we have the illustrations in the Arthur Bray adverts of the early sixties showing that stub when selling off war surplus SDs, we have quite a few SDs from civilian origins that have the bracket I am suggesting.

You're perfectly correct about your suggestion that this one is too fragile for Tommy to use - it's not the most robust, to be sure.

So far we have no illustrations that I know of depicting the Seagull at war. I guess they had better things to do. But what we do know is that there are a few that bear this bracket, the patent dates certainly would allow late war motors to have it, and there is no real evidence of any other 'normal transom' fitting other than the weird and wonderful items in the Military parts lists. But I can't see British Seagull selling those to the average fisherman.

My vote still goes for this bracket, but as Joan Armatrading put it 'Im open to persuasion'.

I know we will still be tossing this one about until someone comes up with a good wartime photo - best of all a mid war one - that clearly answers the question.

Over the past few years we have gradually filled in more and more of the Seagull picture, and every month we manage to throw light on another long forgotten corner of the history. It was only at the beginning of June that I managed to finally get a photo that includes the British Seagull building on the Quay in Poole. It's an aerial photo, showing virtually all of Poole, so the angle is wrong, the detail is poor, but it is progress.

The question of the wartime Seagull still fascinates me, and I still ferret about looking. My mate Andy still chuckles at my delight when I get a new document in my hands - he knows I value knowledge more than artifacts!

There will be many questions that must remain unanswered. Like (my favourite) with the 102 being so successful why on earth did they ever bother with the Century series?

As a matter of interest how many SD's do NOT have the dept of war stamp on the skeg. I'm presuming not all were made for the war effort.

I don't know what proportion have the stamp. When we started doing the register I didn't even know there was a stamp!

But the firm kept going from the outbreak of war until 1942 on civilian orders alone. Not private owners, but fishermen, people who use small boats professionally, and the like. The premises were looked after by one man, with Way-Hope and Pinniger off doing war work.

Even after 1942 there were a few sold to non military customers. Fishing was an absolutely vital source of protein - it's important to remember that Britain was, for a few months, only weeks away from collapse through starvation. This was the time of the U Boat campaign, and if you were producing food you were an important man.

They did, we know, produce over 10,000 motors 'for the war effort'.

If you have an SD let us know - has it got one of these brackets, and has it got a stamped skeg?

http://i169.photobucket.com/albums/u201 ... ICS019.jpg

Is that the one?

It is indeed - have I got its numbers? What sort of bracket has it got?

lolz ...yes you have the numbers and unfortunately it came with no bracket....what size socket do i need to take off the gearbox cap?

This is an SD with skeg stamp as I showed the Forum in 'No No Charles!' I believe the transom clamp to be original.

My D2016 came with a skeletal clamp, intact and I believe original.

Good to see you've restored it up to my standard! RBT

Pay no attention, RBT.

Sadly that transom bracket is late forties to early fifties.

The one that I think is the standard stern transom monted bracket - ie not for military use - is this one:



And this one - although the caption dates it as 1939 it is actually an advert from 1946.



The one we just don't know about - and which the other Charles is possibly thinking - is this one here:



But the one above is an OP, and we know that had a different shape bracket. The one in the picture is a chunky bronze affair rather better suited to the military knockabout use. But there are so few they could be post war add-ons.

(Actually I've just looked a bit closer and it's not an OP at all. It's got the wrong tank, magneto cover, tiller arm, cylinder block, carb, crankcase lower half, and so on....)

Wow rosbullterier bet thats loud when you fire it up!