For those of you wondering what’s happened to ‘Deva’ recently, Tom Curtis brings us an update from the boatshed. ‘Deva’ is a Royal Mersey Rivers Class, built by Crossfields of Arnside in 1912. The Rivers Class were Crossfields’ smallest prawners fitted out as open racing boats for the ‘Liverpool gentlemen’. The Class was active up to about 1935, when it was disbanded. Several of the Class went to join their working sisters in the pursuit of shrimps and prawns in Liverpool Bay and off North Wales.
‘Deva’ was owned for many years by stalwart of the East Coast OGA, Jon Wainwright. Re-decked with raised topsides by one plank, she was sold in 2008 from his estate. In 2019 ‘Deva’ was purchased by East Coast boatbuilder, Tom Curtis.
She is currently having a full rebuild in our shed. After a long time of procrastinating whether anything of the original could be saved and if so how . . . we decided the hull was too far gone to save anything. So the decision was made to just keep the ballast keel. We’ve built her a brand new centreline out of oak, sawn on our mill in the shed next door. We patterned the hull and made up OSB moulds which were installed on the new centreline and now the hull is starting to get battened ready for new floors and frames.
Tom Curtis
We last heard from Tom a year ago . . . find out more about his projects here.
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