News on Screen

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 7th Year

Issue

Issue No.

3

Date Released

Nov 1953

Stories in this Issue:

• 1. Nystagmus: 1. The Conquest of a disease
• 2. BOWHILL UNDERGROUND
• 3. OFF SHORE

Story

Story No. within this Issue

3 / 3

Summary

BFI synopsis: a Scottish miner boat builder. Tom Carrington, and his boats Firefly and Llanelly. b
Builds yawls and sails them in the Firth of Forth.
NCB Commentary - Frances Colliery is right bedside the sea. Most of these miners spend their working hours under the seabed, and Tom Carrington here is one of them. But Tom likes to spend his leisure on top of the waves. Here are his headquarters, the lovely old harbour of Dysart where two of the Carrington boats lie at anchor.
Tom Carrington is a boatbuilder too, as well as a sailor. Firefly here, finished this Joly, was built up from a model, and look at the workmanship that’s gone into her. Llanelly’s a similar boat - they’re both yawls - made of larchwood, and sailed now by Tom’s son Charles.
Mrs. Carrington, with husband and son out at sea in all their spare moments, knows what she’s talking about when she says that they’re both boat daft. On a day like this, with a promise of fair winds, Charles will be waiting for his father in Llanelly at the quay. Then it’s step the masts, out of harbour and away into the Firth of Forth.
The sails on both the craft are lug sails. They look like the old Scottish herring boats people used to call the Zulus along the north-east coast. Tom takes a pride in keeping this old-style rig alive. The sea, as well as the pit, is bred into him. His father was a Trinity House pilot once.
With the swift tides and changeable winds in the Firth, the boats aren’t easy to handle, and the built-on keel makes them tricky on the turns. But put the wind behind them and watch how they go.
The lug sail has no boom, so on a turn down it comes while the crew -- they’re all miners, by the way -- whip it round to the other side of the mast and up again.
This is how the Carringtons and their friends pass every free minute of fine weather until the winter makes them beach the boats. And they have lots to show for it: cups and prizes, yes, but over and above all that the satisfcation and pride of being master on the high seas of something that you’ve dreamed up and built for yourself.

Researcher Comments

According to bfi records, this story was filmed on the 10th September 1953. Commentary recorded 5 October 1953.

Keywords

Ships and boats; Entertainment and leisure; Domestic life; Mining; Sailing

Locations

Scotland

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for Synopsis
Film User   Vol.8 No.89 March 1954, p138.
The National Archives COAL 32   /3 Scripts for Mining Review, 1949-1956

Credits:

Production Co.

Documentary Technicians Alliance

Camera

Kenneth Reeves

Sponsor

National Coal Board

Director

Stanley Goulder

Camera

W. Donat