created by Anthony Cox
by Knut Sackvoll
This homemade inflatable boat, called Doll, was discovered lying limp and derelict and surrounded by clumps of maidenhair fern (adiantum aethiopicum) beneath The White Cliffs of Dover. She had been knocked up, rather crudely, from bits picked up at the seaside or online.
Dating her maiden voyage was difficult; there were signs that she appeared late in the 1990s. Her distinguishing feature was the shape of her keel, which followed the well-rounded lines that American shipbuilders referred to as “bubblebutt”. This was a popular design found in the props on TV game shows such as “It’s a Cock-up!” because it made the boat unstable and prone to capsizing – much to the delight of spectators.
Vigorous pumping got the D.I.Y. Doll to come back into shape but when the pump was withdrawn a faint flatulent sound revealed that the rubber that had unfortunately perished.
The craft’s small size and shape suggested that she had always been a two-person (three at a squeeze) pleasure boat in which no one would wish to go too far for any longer than required. She was the floating (or otherwise) equivalent of a seafront “Kiss Me Quick!” hat.
‘Seamen Down the Ages’
Surprisingly, her rusty vintage outboard motor had not seized up and could be teased back into a shuddering semblance of life in order to allow the “helmsman” to give his screw propeller a run. The propeller itself was encrusted and warped and sat on a shaft that was far from horizontal. This put a damper on the craft’s prospects of going all the way suggested by the size of its fuel tank. Nevertheless, despite little promise of a future foray lasting longer than a minute, the Doll deserved a better fate than a Kentish beach cleaner’s bin.
She found her final resting place at the end of Margate Pier as an exhibit in the “Jack Tar’s Jollies” museum of maritime fun. After extensive specialist puncture repairs at Halfords, and re-inflation by hand to 2.5 PSI, she became the focal point of the museum’s permanent interactive display of “Seamen Down the Ages” (which competes with London’s Science Museum for knobs to turn and buttons to press).
Visitors are drawn into this exhibition by the plaintive sound of a shipwrecked sailor alone with his hornpipe begging for someone to give him one last rendering of “Blow the Man Down” before he dies. This is interspersed with a melodious voice, attributed to the anthropomorphised Doll, repeating the traditional shanty’s best-known line: “Come quickly, lay aft to the break of the poop”. It is a moving experience.