The oldest videos from the London Boat Show - 1955 to 1979
by Magnus Smith 12 Jan 2025 12:00 UTC
London Boat Show in the 70s © British Pathé
Do you remember the early days of the London Boat Show, when it was at Olympia or Earl's Court each January? As that time of year rolls around again, we can take a look into our video archive and round-up the earliest newsreels that covered the event. There were 36 in total but we will embed just the best ones here for your amusement.
Sadly, our enjoyment of the now-classic craft (and never-seen-again inventions) may be occasionally marred by sexism as sometimes the narrator makes bad puns about the bikini-clad girls. They must have had a miserably cold time in that huge unheated space in the depths of a British winter.
We start with the shows at Olympia, and the earliest one we can find is from the mid-Fifties...
1955 shows a great mix of royal barge, film star, boat building, and the first twin-hulled speedboat.
1956 shows us a folding Pixie canoe, coracle building, Donald Campbell and notes that 39ft is the largest yacht present.
1957 shows Uffa Fox, 'Bluebird', barnacles from an Atlantic crossing, and the caravan-boat hybrid.
1959 has a hydrofoil runabout, Mike Hawthorne, a boat with a fridge, plus craft as large as 56ft are now on display.
Now we reach the point where the venue changes to Earl's Court, as the Sixties begin...
1962 mentions 350 exhibitors, a revolutionary hull built of concrete, and we see Bell Woodworking and Stuart engines on display.
1964 features John Pertwee, a cruising trimaran, and Russel Brock fresh from a Wayfarer cruise from Scotland to Iceland.
1965 displays a medal-winning Flying Dutchman, and a dinghy simulator.
1967 stars the P class, Moth, and a scaled-up Mirror.
1968 has 'Gypsy Moth' plus a National 12 with exciting new transom flaps.
We move to the Seventies, and colour film, though we're still at the same venue...
1970 - the brightly-coloured Skipper dinghy, the cheaply-priced Tomboy, and celebrities of the day.
1974 featuring the Gull, Wayfarer, Fireball, and Solo dinghies.
1978 has the Topper, Bumblebee and Scorpion.
Finally we end with 1979 where technology has advanced to give us a windsurfing simulator, plus we see the Optimist and Hobie cats.