THUNDERSTREAK’S HISTORY

Tommy Sopwith’s Thunderstreak was originally meant to be a new Bertram 38 from the eponymous Florida yard. However, this new 38 was written off when it was dropped on the dockside while being loaded for shipping to the UK. Dick Bertram agreed to replace it with one of his new Bertram ‘Competition’ 31s, a limited run of seven or eight specially built race hulls beefed up for offshore racing. Her sister ships included Surfrider (Charles & Jimmy Gardner), Rum Runner (Harold Abbott/usa), Blue Moppie (Keith Schellenberg) and Lucky Moppie (Dick Bertram/usa) but as far as we know, Thunderstreak is now the only one still in use today. Thunderstreak raced in the famous Cowes-torquay-cowes event on four occasions under Sopwith’s race number 400. In the 1963 race she was leading the 49 other entrants across Lyme Bay when one of her Ford Holman V8s failed. In 1965, Sopwith entered her again with detuned Fords for greater reliability but this time a shaft failed. Keith Schellenberg, who had previously been racing another Bertram Competition 31, Blue Moppie, bought Thunderstreak in time for the 1966 race. Under his race number 995, the Holman-moody Fords were uprated to 700hp. Again she retired with engine problems. After a year’s absence from the race circuit, Thunderstreak 995 was acquired by Robert Doxford for the 1969 BP Round Britain marathon and the Cowes-torquay-cowes. She was refitted at Whitehalls Shipyard with an ugly cabin and a revised high driving position and re-engined with two 175hp Perkins diesels, but retired from both races. Fable has it that, instead of arriving in Falmouth as planned, Doxford ended up in the Scillies – perhaps due to the number of empty beer cans found beside the compass! She then faded into obscurity for three decades until discovered, badly deteriorated, in an East London marina as a houseboat. Acquired by Robin Ward in October 2014 after a tip-off by Classic Offshore Powerboat Club’s Mike James, the ‘sheds’ rapidly disappeared under his chainsaw. Re-powered with period 7-litre Fords from a US powerboat, Thunderstreak returned to her racing state with a replica aerodynamic cabin drawn by publisher and artist Charles Lawrence, competing in the 2015 C-T-C. In the following year’s infamously stormy 2016 race, she was one of only five boats to make it back to the Solent, where she struck an underwater object in sight of the finishing line and was beached on Yarmouth harbour slipway to prevent her from sinking.