Early History, the changeover, and a few ponderings.
Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 11:12 am
Well, is it a Marston, or is it a British Seagull?
This is a current debate elsewhere, and one would think it an easy matter to discover. After all, we have serial codes that’ll tell you, don’t we?
The short answer is – no it’s not easy, and no we don’t have definitive codes. Even if we did there would still be room for debate.
The transition from Marston to British Seagull was a gradual matter. There was, it’s true, a finite date upon which British Seagull was formed formally as a company under law, yes there was a finite date when the deed of sale of all the stocks and spares and suchlike were purchased, and yes there was a date – unknown with any precision– when the first outboard bore the word ‘British’ in place of the word ‘Marston’. Nobody has any idea how many completed motors were covered by that deed of sale, nor how many completed gearboxes or cylinder blocks etc.
These dates don’t coincide –it didn’t all happen one afternoon. This was no ‘hostile takeover’ – far from it.
Bill Pinniger had been one of the original ‘concessionaires’ of Marston Seagull outboards right from the start, from his Merlyn Motors premises in Bristol. There was another ‘concessionaire’ in Ireland.
After the first couple of years, selling the ‘tear-drop’ outboards that we all covet, (and which are indubitably ‘Marstons’), Pinniger and his partner John Way Hope reckoned they could improve the design, and there is evidence to suggest the it was mainly their joint input – from about 1933-34 onwards – that resulted in the 102cc range such as the OJ, OP, ON etc.
Marston’s decided to pack up the outboard business, and effectively there was only one possible bidder – The partnership of Pinniger and Way-Hope.
The actual takeover was a benign affair, no hurry, no hassle. And, of course, no factory. Pinniger & Way Hope had no premises save their rather small sales office in Bristol. I am still researching dates, and it is – as some of you know – the devil of a job to be certain, so I’m not going to guess on a public forum! But I am pretty certain that the premises in Hamworthy in 1938 (about 500 yards from where I’m sitting) were no more than an ordinary residential house with an office in it.
In other words they were not manufacturing anything. Sure, they assembled a few, but it was by no means a factory. They assembled them in a small shed just down the road. But they didn’t do any machining.
Early on in the war they were virtually dormant. By then they actually had better premises, on the Quay in Poole itself, but whilst a prestigious address for a marine company, it still wasn’t a factory. Both Pinniger and Way hope went off to do other things, and the outfit was effectively put on a ‘mothballed’ basis.
So at this stage they still didn’t have any way of manufacturing anything.
All this time they were selling the same 102 motors that they had helped to design, unaltered save at one point (I don’t know when) when the ‘Marston’ on the tank decal turned into ‘British’. They were still using the same Amal carburettors, the same petrol cocks, the same gearboxes. And the same Villiers magnetos, complete with the stamped ‘JM’ numbers. JM, of course, stands for John Marston. As far as the other Charles, myself, and a couple of others can tell this JM number is a straight run of serials, only used on the outboards we’re talking about, never on anything else.
Whilst mentioning ‘JM’ numbers it’s important to point out that the total number of outboards produced can be plotted with these numbers, taking into account the numbers produced for the war effort. Key items like the SNP in my workshop are telling – when an item was only made in one single year and you are confident it has its original magneto you can peg that magneto to that year. Attempting to extrapolate forwards and backwards has its difficulties – for example we have no real clue as to how many were produced (if any) while the factory was dormant. On the low mean annual production figures that we have calculated that can throw dates out to a dramatic extent.
So we have, in 1939, a range of motors – OP and ON – which bear a JM serial on the magneto, Marston’s serial letter codes, cast and machined by the original manufacturer or his agents, but bearing a British Seagull decal on the tank.
The real break with Marston’s occurred in 1942, when the SN and SNP were manufactured. They were overall very similar to the ON and OP – the letters are a clue. But by now Marston’s were turning out all manner of war related items, so the castings and machining were brought ‘in-house’. The manufacturing came to Dorset, and was spread about anywhere they could find spare capacity. You can tell that standards are different, and we know that the re-opening of the premises on the Quay was the turning point in the British Seagull story. But it’s interesting that the letter coding changed at this point.
It wasn’t until they occupied the factory on Holes Bay more than a decade later that they were set up as a proper manufacturing concern, and even then they didn’t make everything themselves
It’s fair to say that the ‘S’ may well indicate a spring drive, I simply don’t know. I believe that it signifies the first outboard manufactured by British Seagull.
Now I’m not making a claim that anything manufactured before 1942 qualifies as a Marston. Nor that anything after 1936 is a British Seagull. But everything before 1942 bears a Marston serial starting with ‘O’ Everything before the HSD of 1946 bears a ‘JM’ number. And the 102 Marstons were designed by the men who became British Seagull.
What I am saying is that for me there is no clear date on which ‘Marston’ becomes ‘British’.
This is a current debate elsewhere, and one would think it an easy matter to discover. After all, we have serial codes that’ll tell you, don’t we?
The short answer is – no it’s not easy, and no we don’t have definitive codes. Even if we did there would still be room for debate.
The transition from Marston to British Seagull was a gradual matter. There was, it’s true, a finite date upon which British Seagull was formed formally as a company under law, yes there was a finite date when the deed of sale of all the stocks and spares and suchlike were purchased, and yes there was a date – unknown with any precision– when the first outboard bore the word ‘British’ in place of the word ‘Marston’. Nobody has any idea how many completed motors were covered by that deed of sale, nor how many completed gearboxes or cylinder blocks etc.
These dates don’t coincide –it didn’t all happen one afternoon. This was no ‘hostile takeover’ – far from it.
Bill Pinniger had been one of the original ‘concessionaires’ of Marston Seagull outboards right from the start, from his Merlyn Motors premises in Bristol. There was another ‘concessionaire’ in Ireland.
After the first couple of years, selling the ‘tear-drop’ outboards that we all covet, (and which are indubitably ‘Marstons’), Pinniger and his partner John Way Hope reckoned they could improve the design, and there is evidence to suggest the it was mainly their joint input – from about 1933-34 onwards – that resulted in the 102cc range such as the OJ, OP, ON etc.
Marston’s decided to pack up the outboard business, and effectively there was only one possible bidder – The partnership of Pinniger and Way-Hope.
The actual takeover was a benign affair, no hurry, no hassle. And, of course, no factory. Pinniger & Way Hope had no premises save their rather small sales office in Bristol. I am still researching dates, and it is – as some of you know – the devil of a job to be certain, so I’m not going to guess on a public forum! But I am pretty certain that the premises in Hamworthy in 1938 (about 500 yards from where I’m sitting) were no more than an ordinary residential house with an office in it.
In other words they were not manufacturing anything. Sure, they assembled a few, but it was by no means a factory. They assembled them in a small shed just down the road. But they didn’t do any machining.
Early on in the war they were virtually dormant. By then they actually had better premises, on the Quay in Poole itself, but whilst a prestigious address for a marine company, it still wasn’t a factory. Both Pinniger and Way hope went off to do other things, and the outfit was effectively put on a ‘mothballed’ basis.
So at this stage they still didn’t have any way of manufacturing anything.
All this time they were selling the same 102 motors that they had helped to design, unaltered save at one point (I don’t know when) when the ‘Marston’ on the tank decal turned into ‘British’. They were still using the same Amal carburettors, the same petrol cocks, the same gearboxes. And the same Villiers magnetos, complete with the stamped ‘JM’ numbers. JM, of course, stands for John Marston. As far as the other Charles, myself, and a couple of others can tell this JM number is a straight run of serials, only used on the outboards we’re talking about, never on anything else.
Whilst mentioning ‘JM’ numbers it’s important to point out that the total number of outboards produced can be plotted with these numbers, taking into account the numbers produced for the war effort. Key items like the SNP in my workshop are telling – when an item was only made in one single year and you are confident it has its original magneto you can peg that magneto to that year. Attempting to extrapolate forwards and backwards has its difficulties – for example we have no real clue as to how many were produced (if any) while the factory was dormant. On the low mean annual production figures that we have calculated that can throw dates out to a dramatic extent.
So we have, in 1939, a range of motors – OP and ON – which bear a JM serial on the magneto, Marston’s serial letter codes, cast and machined by the original manufacturer or his agents, but bearing a British Seagull decal on the tank.
The real break with Marston’s occurred in 1942, when the SN and SNP were manufactured. They were overall very similar to the ON and OP – the letters are a clue. But by now Marston’s were turning out all manner of war related items, so the castings and machining were brought ‘in-house’. The manufacturing came to Dorset, and was spread about anywhere they could find spare capacity. You can tell that standards are different, and we know that the re-opening of the premises on the Quay was the turning point in the British Seagull story. But it’s interesting that the letter coding changed at this point.
It wasn’t until they occupied the factory on Holes Bay more than a decade later that they were set up as a proper manufacturing concern, and even then they didn’t make everything themselves
It’s fair to say that the ‘S’ may well indicate a spring drive, I simply don’t know. I believe that it signifies the first outboard manufactured by British Seagull.
Now I’m not making a claim that anything manufactured before 1942 qualifies as a Marston. Nor that anything after 1936 is a British Seagull. But everything before 1942 bears a Marston serial starting with ‘O’ Everything before the HSD of 1946 bears a ‘JM’ number. And the 102 Marstons were designed by the men who became British Seagull.
What I am saying is that for me there is no clear date on which ‘Marston’ becomes ‘British’.