While seabeds are the final resting places of ships lost “at sea” such as the Titanic and the Bismarck, so too are the village ponds for the toy boats that were so popular since the middle of the 19th Century. When the round pond in Kensington was dredged in 1923, some 150-toy boats were found enshrined in the mud at the bottom. To learn why, we need to know more about these popular toys, and an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum can help us.
The aim of the exhibition is to show the development, variety and range of toy boats between 1850 and 1950. In it, we are privy to a range that spans from 'one offs', small vessels expertly crafted out of wood complete with sails, to manufactured tin plated wonders that were made in Germany, France and also Britain. Losing any kind of boat at the bottom of the pond may seem like a tragic loss to a child, but to lose a handcrafted only-one-of-its-kind would have to be a catastrophe on more than just miniature proportions. The trick it would seem was to keep them moving
As technology changed in the maritime industry, so too, did the propelling mechanisms of the toys. Initially, most boats were propelled by the wind straddling the sails and gliding them along the surface. Yet a single strong gust of wind could topple it over, or no wind at all could leave it stuck there stranded "at pond". Rubber band mechanisms were a revelation as they could be simply wound up, locked and released when in the water. The child would then look in delight as it glided along the surface for a matter of seconds before needing rewinding. The introduction of clockwork mechanisms allowed the boats to go further and last longer, but the mechanisms would rust or jam. The steam-propelled boats with tiny boilers could keep a child happy for much longer but the battery-propelled ones would put the rest to shame and would run, expensively and wastefully for hours, without any apparent steering mechanism I might add.
But, before we are distracted by what seems like a quest to cross the pond in the quickest possible time, there is more to this delightful exhibition than speed. There is also the influence of maritime themes upon the children of the times. The launch of RMS Queen Mary is illustrated with a sectional toy that is ingeniously made up of several painted layers of thick card cut into a boat shape that can be taken apart deck by deck. In addition to the museum activities for the children, on display are educational toy boats, such as "Noah's Ark and Animals" (about 1880), which is a wooden ark complete with a variety of animals, in twos of course, for Sundays.
The only thing that seemed a little unfair was that we couldn't play with the boats. Collector Ron McCrindell puts it very succinctly when he says in a short film, "What's the point in having them if you can't get any fun from them?" Seeing them moving around a pond in the film made me want to take a trip to Hamleys, and any child with you might want to do the same, but why not try the village pond instead? For all the technology involved in making these small boats move, a simple long pole with a hook was apparently the way to retrieve the ones that got stranded. The ones that weren't rescued are probably still resting peacefully amongst the algae and the jellyfish just waiting to see the light of day once again.
-- Gary McLeod
All images courtesy the National Maritime Museum
Images: Clockwork battleship, Espana, by Paya, about 1930 © MnM; Clockwork royal yacht, Hohenzollern, by Gebruder Bing, 1889-1909 © MnM-Photo Arnaud Fux
print
