Jack Maltby's 37ft motor cruiser JUMBO II punches out of the Colne on a fine breezy morning with a typically jolly party on board. For 40 years the JUMBO II was a feature of the coast from the Orwell to the Crouch and sometimes beyond. Her owner was a popular member of the Colne Yacht Club at Brightlingsea and was usually at the centre of merrymaking at the many events and social gatherings then arranged by the club. A Kelvin petrol-paraffin engine powered this smart motor cruiser along at eight knots and her raised sides and flush foredeck made a seaworthy craft, equipped with a trysail and staysail for steadying canvas and carrying a dinghy in davits to starboard. Even this modest sized cruiser had one hand to maintain paintwork and varnish, tend the engine, cook and steward and relieve the wheel when necessary.
JUMBO II typified the single-screw, simple, practical motor cruiser of the 1930s. She ws built at Southend by William Hayward in 1923, in his yard which turned out many passenger launches and cockle boats for Southend and Leigh owners. The firm later became Hayward and Croxton, with premises at the Vulcan Works, near the Kursaal, away from the water, craft being launched on skids, towed along by a steam traction and in some instances by an ex 1914-18 war army tank.
She is now owned on the River Deben, in Suffolk. [JL]
Plate.101 in SWW
Used in The Sailor's Coast, page 97.