![]() ![]() Those available were in poor condition, and it soon became apparent it would be cheaper to build new hulls. The supply of retired Admiralty boats began to dry up, Stapleton recalls. It wasn't too long before the businessmen, Jack Fielding and Alfred Tyaransen, bought the yard. Sometime in the 1960s, two retired British businessmen who needed something to do began buying surplus Admiralty boats and converting them to recreational use. One was Southern Marine, which operated a general boatyard in Malahide, doing mostly repair. ![]() One of Ireland's oldest communities, Malahide always had boat builders at work on its shore. "But what a difference-it's like the difference between cheese and chalk."įor Southern Marine, it was almost like Camelot-one brief, shining moment of challenge, excitement, accomplishment and pride. The Alaskans were light and had a hard chine and that's okay, because that is what was wanted. "The Grand Banks Alaskans (wood boats, ironically) sold for less delivered in the U.K. We stopped building yachts and went exclusively to commercial work," he recalled in a telephone interview. "The yacht business was gone because of competition from the Far East, and we were priced out of the market. ![]() Ask Myles Stapleton, the naval architect who designed all the Malahides and who today builds homes in the Dublin area. At least one has been given a costly refurbishing.ĭespite the promise indicated by marketing at boat shows in the United States and Europe, the end came quickly. Some are battered and worn, while others are in good original condition. Approximately 30 were built and, so far as anyone knows, all are still afloat in the world's prime boating waters. The first Malahide was launched in 1972, the last about 1978. They were inexpensive to operate, and buyers succumbed to the sales pitch that glass was easier to care for than wood. Unfortunately for the world's ocean cruisers and the growing community of powerboat passagemakers, economic conditions that would doom Southern Marine and the Malahide line were gaining momentum even as the yard began work on the first of its trawlers.įuel prices were multiplying throughout the world, the result of politically contrived shortages in petroleum products inflation was galloping through the United States and Europe and fiberglass trawler-type yachts were becoming increasingly popular because they were cheap (and sometimes cheaply built). The boats simply were called Malahides and identified by their names, Ursa Major, Jimmy, New Love, Glimmer, Cobra II, among them. Southern Marine did not screw builders' plates into pilothouse bulkheads and did not number hulls before they splashed into the sea for delivery on their own bottoms to buyers in the United States and Europe. ![]()
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