Over its century and more, the yard founded by Norman Wright has turned its hand to almost anything, Nigel Sharp tells us.
It was in 1909 that Norman Wright founded his boatbuilding business near Breakfast Creek on the banks of the Brisbane River. It was a well-chosen site as it was close to a tram route between the wealthy suburb of Ascot and the city of Brisbane, allowing businessmen to call in on their way home from work and talk to Norman about their boating requirements. The first boat that Norman built there was a small gaff cutter called The Superb, a centreboarder to allow for the shallow waters of nearby Moreton Bay.
The business grew with the building of large private vessels and passenger ferries, as well as a variety of other craft such as surf boats, racing skiffs and hydroplanes. In 1936, when the city council decided to requisition the site to build new wharves, the yard moved across the river to Bulimba where the discovery of 40 tonnes of valuable tin slag when constructing new slipways went some way to counteract the risible compensation received from the council.
During the Second World War the workforce rose to an all-time high of about 160 to cope with the large numbers of military vessels that were built and refitted; and then with the return of peace there was a great demand for work boats such as trawlers, luggers and vessels for nearby tourist resorts. Norman's sons Norman Junior and Ron joined the company in the 1950s. Both brothers were highly successful skiff sailors, respectively winning the national 18ft title five times and the 16ft title twice. Norman Junior soon moved on to start his own boatbuilding company but Ron - who was the first person in Australia to qualify as a naval architect - gradually assumed control of the company. Ron's sons Bill and Ian began working at the company in the early 1980s and took charge when Ron retired in 1990. "Mum would ring us up and say 'he's really annoying me at home, can't you give him something to do at the yard'," Ian told me.
Around the same time, the company moved again, to a site just down the river at Byron Street, and in 2017 there was another move, further still down river, to a vacant plot of land at Rivergate Place where a new 40m x 20m shed was built on a site shared by various other marine businesses, and where there is now a 300-tonne travel lift. The biggest boats the company has built were four 112ft (34.1m) Fairmile coastal patrol boats during the war; and another of equal length was the Captain Heath, a cargo boat for the Australian Navy which was launched soon afterwards. The biggest boat in more recent times was the 108ft (32.9m) charter motor yacht Elizabeth E which Ian remembers lofting and which was completed in 1980.
In the mid-1960s, the favoured construction method changed from traditional plank-on-frame to cold moulding. "But when dad had a really bad car accident and didn't work for some years, we went back to planked boats," said Ian. "We then resumed cold-moulding in the early '80s before going over to composite in the mid '90s."
In 1995, the company began a major refit on the Fife yacht Cambria. She was in a poor state at the time "and the brief was to make her fit for day sailing on Sydney Harbour in a maximum of 20 knots of wind," said Ian. This involved new decks; removing, refurbishing and refitting the interior (after cleaning up the inside of the hull but "not really addressing the rusty frames"); removing and checking the keel bolts; and adding a carbon section to the mast to restore it to its original height. "We would have loved to have done it all properly," said Ian.
Norman Wright's Yard Today
The company now employs about 35 staff. A lot of the work these days is commercial: at the time of my visit, two 50ft (15m) pilot boats and a 40ft (12m) patrol boat for the Queensland Department of Environment were under construction. Three similar boats have previously been built for the Sydney and Queensland water police. But of more interest was the 75ft (22.9m) motor yacht South Pacific II which was part way through a major two-year refit. Built at the yard to an Eldridge McGinness design as Beryl May in 1962, she spent nearly half a century working as a charter boat - mainly for game fishing - in the ownership of the Jenyns family. Ronald Jenyns was an Australian multiple Finn champion who came fourth in both the 1960 and 1968 Olympic Games. "He then gave up sailing and set loads of game fishing world records," said Ian. "He was a very talented guy and a really nice fellow."
South Pacific is now having reconditioned Garnder 6LX engines to replace her original Detroits; new steel fuel tanks to replace the original steel ones; and new Sea Wasp generators, stabilisers, electronics, wiring and "pretty much everything." In the 1970s her superstructure was modified with extended wings and awnings in aluminium. Ian was not particularly complimentary about the way in which it was done and so it is all being replaced with an epoxy composite structure. To compensate for the hot Queensland climate which can be particularly hostile for a timber boat ashore - especially, perhaps counter intuitively, in the winter when it is very dry - the hull is currently covered in hessian which is soaked with water a couple of times a week.
Yachting World Diamond
Bill and Ian are now both retired and the company is run by managing director Tony Riek and operations manager and director David Fussell (who has worked at Wrights since 1988 when he began his apprenticeship there). But the brothers are still involved in the background, and are still actively sailing, not least in the extraordinary Saltash, a 1966 Yachting World Diamond. Originally a 30ft (9.1m) open keelboat, Bill and Ian bought her in 1981 and converted her for ocean racing by giving her stronger frames in the bow sections, a cabin, a self-draining cockpit, an inboard engine and various safety features to comply with the appropriate regulations. Since then they have raced her no fewer than 20 times in the 300-mile Brisbane-to-Gladstone race - probably Australia's second most prestigious offshore race - and have won it on handicap eight times. Ian described the first race in 1985, as "agonisingly slow" but it was a different story eight years later when Saltash finished the race in slightly more than 30 hours just behind a 60-footer (18m).
"It was a pretty hairy trip at times," he said. With the 1960s plywood starting to delaminate, the Wrights recently carried out a major restoration by replacing all the hull skins with new plywood, and incorporating epoxy coatings and a lightweight carbon weave.
Visit the Norman R Wright and Sons website for more information.