Vintageview
Tim Windsor PTII
Two issues ago I brought Tim Windsor together with Shipbuilders Ltd when the company built Enterprise, the racing 18-footer Tim designed for D’arcy Whiting. Tim’s design qualifications and drafting skills came at a crucial time following the outbreak of war in September 1939.
With a capacity of 230 tons of cargo, 15 of the 22 lighters ordered were completed by VE Day
Shipbuilders Ltd had started in business in 1922 in Poore Street, now Westhaven Drive, when it was run by T.L. Sharp. The company’s major work was in shipwrighting – heavy repair work on steamers, scows, barges and commercial craft of all types. Norman Matheson, who had built the Rudder Cup-winning launch Maroro, worked there for many years. The company dabbled in commercial vessel ownership, for example running the scow Excelsior with J.J. Craig Ltd., bringing rusty scrap from the ship graveyard on Browns Island to town for export to Japan.
By 1939, when Tim became involved with the company during the building of Enterprise, the manager was S.B. (Hoki) Williams, formerly of Chas. Bailey & Son Ltd, in nearby Beaumont Street. The company had four ‘electric slipways’ and went into the war with an excellent reputation for shipwrighting and good heavy gear.
In July 1939 Shipbuilders got Tim to alter the lines of a keel yacht they were building for Blomfield, and when the company received an order for a 26ft patrol cutter from Capt. Jock Eastmure of the Coastguard in August 1939, it commissioned the design from Tim. Coastguard No.1, as she was called, was launched in December 1939 and kept at Tamaki Yacht Club.
But no in-house position with Shipbuilders followed, so Tim reverted to his old job at Farmers Trading Company but became a fireman with the Emergency Fire Service in early 1940. With the war raging in Europe he could see no way of furthering his burning ambition to be a yacht designer.
Still, he did a few free-lance yacht designs including a 28ft fast cruising keel yacht for S. Irvine, the T Class racing 14-footer Corinne for P Wadham, a S Class 16-footer for Berry, another T Class for Flaxman and a couple of runabouts.
Then, in June 1941 Tim received a call from Hoki Williams offering him a draftsman’s job. He gave notice at the Farmers and started work at Shipbuilders the very next day. He was now involved in an ‘essential industry’ as the company had 120 tradesmen engaged in building composite Castle Class trawler/ minesweepers for the Navy. Seagar Bros fabricated all the steelwork while Shipbuilders did the woodwork and launched the vessels.
Tim’s first drafting job was a wheelhouse shelter for the scow Jane Gifford, then owned by the Kasper brothers, the first of many wheelhouses put on scows. His next task was calculating the depth of water needed at the end of the launching slipway to avoid the first of the minesweepers being built, HMNZS. Hinau, from striking the seabed on launch.
She was already planked up and well advanced. This entailed clambering through the hull and estimating the weight of all components and the centre of gravity. Tim was greatly satisfied when the launch went perfectly on 28th August 1941. Hinau was followed by Rimu and then Tawhai in 1943.
As well his drafting work, Tim joined the rest of the workforce in various essential jobs like fitting shrapnel and bullet-proof cladding round the wheelhouses and gun platforms on passenger and cargo ships, sometimes working over 30 hours at a stretch.
After Pearl Harbour, and as the Japanese rapidly advanced down the Pacific, the pace on the Auckland waterfront became frenetic. By then Shipbuilders Ltd, P. Vos Ltd, Associated Boatbuilders (Lidgards, Collings & Bell and Colin Wild) and Chas. Bailey & Sons had been contracted to build 12 Fairmile B launches.
These were 112ft timber patrol vessels, designed in England and largely standardised and prefabricated except for hull and deck timbers. The frames were built in India. The twin engines were petrol-fired 630hp V12 Hall-scott Defenders. The plans were highly secret.
Tim was assigned to tabulate and control the issue of individual plans to the foremen and also did the lofting in a building in Hobson St. owned by Smith & Smith Ltd. The first of the three Shipbuilders’ Fairmiles, Q407, was commissioned in December 1942.
At first Tim shared a tiny office with Hoki Williams, but in 1942 a new building was constructed in which he had his own drafting office. Here he finished off the plans, started by Bill Lowe, for composite 114ft powered lighters to the order of the US Navy and he calculated that they were too big for Shipbuilders’ current slip, which had to be rebuilt.
The first vessel, YF-1038, with twin 272hp Hercules diesels, was handed over, with ceremony, on 21st December 1944. The US Navy liaison officer, Commander A.C. Bushey, praised the New Zealanders’ workmanship but spoke against the constant pressure from the NZ Army to take away the Category A men in the boatbuilding industry, maintaining that their work was vital to the war in the Pacific.
With a capacity of 230 tons of cargo, 15 of the 22 lighters ordered were completed by VE Day and these useful vessels served in the invasions of Iwo Jima and Leyte and throughout the Pacific Theatre.
In March 1943 Shipbuilders Ltd had joined with Chas. Bailey & Son Ltd, W.G. Lowe & Son Ltd, Associated Boatbuilders
Ltd., P. Vos Ltd and Roy Lidgard in forming United Ship and Boatbuilders Ltd to carry out the wide-ranging repairs needed to US cargo vessels, which had priority, and new vessels to be constructed for the US Army and Navy.
These included orders for 15 welded 75ft tugs from Steel Ships Ltd at Mechanics Bay and 50 wooden 45ft tow boats. The pace of work for Shipbuilders and Seagar Bros on the composite vessels was immense. Tim was deeply involved in all this US work and also did all the design work in the complete reconstruction of the wooden steam coaster Tiroa into a diesel vessel of modern layout.
After the capitulation of Germany in May 1945 and Japan three months later, the remaining British and American Government orders, worth £360,000, were cancelled and 150 men were laid off in September 1945. Several unfinished craft were completed but the war-time boom was over.
It was not all hard graft though. Firstly, as light relief, Shipbuilders carried out a commission in October 1944 to build five M Class 18-footers, and some rowing boats and canvas canoes for the use of American airmen at recreational bases in the Pacific. Tim did the M Class design work which echoed the early Arch Logan ‘wholesome’ style, very full forward and not at all like the radical post-war Ms to come.
On 12th November, 1944, a shakedown sail of all five and a race took place. The crews were a Who’s Who of Auckland centreboard yachtsmen including Roy Steadman, Tim Windsor, Roy Parris and Vince Hogan. The boats were then crated up and sent to the Pacific, their subsequent fate unknown.
Secondly, in 1944 the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron established a design competition for a keel yacht for weekend or vacation cruising and class racing in the Hauraki Gulf. Shipbuilders put in a design done by Tim, the exact task for which his study with the Westlawn School had fitted him well.
It was August 1945 before the results were published; Arthur Robb had won, Bob Stewart came second and Tim Windsor third, out of 21 entries. Here was the genesis of the K Class. Robb’s design was built in England as Mokoia, Stewart’s in Auckland as Helen, but Tim’s was never built, a pity because it was equally meritorious.
BNZ