History timeline

The Honourable Peter Hives

From 1943 until 1945, the Honourable Peter Hives, who was the third son of Rolls-Royce Chairman Lord Hives and a qualified engineer in his own right, was on the books of HMS Saker, a chain of Fleet Air Arms training stations in North America.

Honourable Peter Hives

Archie Peace

In June 1944, Archie Peace who was formerly an aircraft engineer with the Bristol Aeroplane company with a BSc in stress engineering, was an Acting Temporary Lieutenant and arrived at the same station. Although Peace was there for only four months, it was long enough for him and Peter Hives to strike up a friendship. They were later to form a boatbuilding partnership comparable in organisation with that of Messrs Rolls and Royce, with Hives looking after the production side of things, while Peace exercised his design skills.

Archie Peace

The beginnings

Following demobilisation at the end of World War Two, Peace and Hives decided to establish a boatbuilding concern in the small Norfolk town of St Olaves, near Great Yarmouth in England. They roughed it at first, living in an old shed and eating fish and chips for supper, working on experimental light-metal hydroplanes.

Corsair

The first hydroplane was ‘Corsair’ a 12 foot, 3-point hydroplane, powered by an E93a which would do 40 MPH.

Corsair

Symphony

Then followed ‘Symphony’ which was a 15 foot hydroplane, also designed by Peace and powered by a pre-war Lea Frances Formula 1 engine. She was built for the chairman of Norwich city football club.

Symphony

Albatross marine began

In late 1949, when Peace and Hives decided to set up a proper company, news came from the USA of an amphibian aircraft which had just gone into production by Grumman who designed the SA-16A but was known as the ‘Albatross’. With fond memories of their time in America, Hives and Peace decided Albatross Marine would be a good name for their fledgling company, and for the two-seater aluminium craft which Peace had just designed using aircraft principles.

The key to construction of the Albatross sports boat was the way in which they decided to have the riveting process done in reverse. Normally, you hammer the tail end of the rivet and hold the dolly on the countersunk end; but they found out from bitter experience that this system would not seal, so they did it the other way round.

Early one off design

In 1950, still unsure of which way the company should go, they tried their hand at designing and building a river cruiser called ‘Beaver Bell’. With three cabins and powered by an E93a, she was to remain a one off, but still survives today.

Beaver bell

The Albatross protoype

By late 1950, Albatross Marine had built a two-seater prototype with a length of 12ft 9in (3.9m), a beam of 4ft 7in (1.4m) and 1ft 6in (0.5m) draught, weighing just 160lb (72kg). It was powered by a Ford Anglia E93a side-valve engine putting out 26-27hp. Peace did his own marine conversion, designing a complex thrust bearer to take the drive from the front cover end of the engine.

Hives and Peace consulted some marketing experts for their small company, only to be told that that they were wasting their time and that the Albatross was a ‘no-goer’. But, being a very stubborn man, Archie pressed on, taking on work for other clients to keep going.

Albatross prototype drawings

Bruce Campbell

Bruce Campbell sitting in an albatross in the south of France

In 1951 the company took on a third partner; Bruce Campbell who joined the firm shortly after the first demonstration of the prototype. Campbell who had previously worked as a stock broker, was an RAF pilot and a test pilot with de Havilland. He had married the chairman of Hoover’s daughter and he owned a 100ft (30m) steel yacht called Rinansey upon which he carried an albatross or two while cruising the Mediterranean to promote the Albatross. His trick was to moor in one of the bays in the south of France and then drive around the big yachts in the Albatross until he was called over to show off the boat, where upon he would sell the boat to them.

1952

In 1952 ‘Toby’ Sutton, a wealthy member of the Oulton Broad Motorboat Club, had the Albatross workforce coach build in aluminium the 17ft (5.2m) Ventnor three-point prop-rider. Fitted with a six-cylinder Wayne Chevrolet engine developing 210hp at 4800rpm, and 70 mph, Rooster was unbeatable in races on Oulton Broad for the next two seasons.

Rooster

Albatross go into production

Using the finance brought in by such ventures, Albatross Marine went into production with its first batch of two-seater runabouts, fitted with the famous Ford E93a engine, and priced at £500.

Albatross MK1

The rich and famous

Campbell was very successful in spreading the word. Most Albatrosses were soon going to the big yacht owners in the Med. Everybody who was anybody wanted one. Customers included Aristotle Onassis, Stavros Niarchos, Prince Rainier of Monaco, Prince Phillip, the Prince of Greece, Prince Bira of Thailand, Lord and Lady Docker and Brigitte Bardot to name a few.

Escort boats churn up the waters of Monaco Harbor as Prince Rainier III and his bride-to-be, Grace Kelly, stand on bridge of his yacht on April 12, 1956 on way to Monaco dock. The Prince and Grace are in the right background alongside uniformed officer. In center foreground are Miss Kelly’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. John B. Kelly, who came ashore with their daughter from the liner constitution. (AP Photo)

Worldwide fame

As well as selling a lot of boats to Europe, Albatross Marine were successful at finding new markets elsewhere in the world. During their peak production, they exported to 24 countries worldwide including New Zealand, Sarawak, and the USA.

Albatross and Bentley being loaded onto a Silver City Airways Bristol 170 Superfreighter

Waterskiing

The Albatross became popular as the waterskier’s workhorse, as David Nations, the trainer of two world champions, relayed in his ‘Guinness Guide to Waterskiing’

“In 1952 I had a phone call from Bruce Campbell, inviting me down to Great Yarmouth to see this boat. I took Marc Flachard of France, the reigning European Champion then at Ruislip, to ski as my guest. Flachard looked at this boat and exclaimed, ‘Shoosh! I will pull it from the water, David! So Bruce Campbell said, ‘I’ll tell you what, it will pull two of you up together.’ So we took a double tow and sat there, and damn me, it bloody well pulled the both of us up. So I bought one for Ruislip Lido.

“It was a brand new machine, which still had its teething troubles. They were to base all their modifications on our feedback. For example, during the water-testing, we would get evaporation; the boat would go for 100 yards and then stop. We found out that the Carburettor was so near the heat manifolds that the petrol would vaporise. We were telling them all the problems by phone and they were modifying it back at their yard, such as lowering the seating and coming up with a new design of rudder for improved manoeuvring. “Later on, I bought another Albatross, because they were ideal boats for teaching.”

Gay Jane

Albatross had not restricted themselves to small boats. In 1953, Peace had designed the aluminium 42ft (12.8m) craft called Gay Jane, which was made to order for Louis Wasey, an advertising executive from New York, and it was delivered to his private island North Cat Cay in the Bahamas for big game fishing.

Gay Jane

High speed cruiser

Albatross Marine made four 24ft sports cruisers, based on a scaled-down motor torpedo boat (MTB), surmounted by a weird flybridge with a deflector on the top with comfortable living and sleeping compartments, each powered by different power plants.

Albatross sports cruiser

Ray Wright

Ray Wright joined Albatross Marine in May 1954 after he left the forces and saw a job advert. He had no previous experience other than as an architect’s lad at Norfolk County Council, but thanks to Peter Hives’ father he was sent to the technical drawing office at Rolls Royce for three months to learn about their design and engineering standards, and then back at the factory Archie Peace taught him about the design processes.

Wright worked closely with Peace; drawing, building, testing and racing the boats, and is credited to have done a lot of the design work on the later models such as the A-series and the Alpine slipper models.

He left the firm in 1963 and set up his own company Delta Marine, joined by a few of the Albatross Marine employees. The Delta was aluminium like the albatross and slightly bigger than the A-series model, then moved to GRP construction in 1969.

More than two decades after the closing of the Albatross Marine factory, with the interest in vintage speedboats on the increase, Ray Wright was instrumental in the restoration of many Albatross boats in the 1990’s using his knowledge and many spares he had collected over the years.

Ray Wright sitting in an Albatross Continental

Albatross Marine expands

By the end of 1954, the company had another bigger shed built to deal with increased demand. Business later grew to the point where at its peak, Albatross Marine employed 60 people, turning out 150 boats per year. British Rail even built a special siding for the firm at Little St Olaves station, from where box-cars loaded with five two-seaters each could start their journey to Europe.

With A Duke's approval

In 1955 the Aluminium Development Association presented an albatross to the Duke of Edinburgh. Painted to match the colour of the Royal Yacht HMY Britannia, on which it was carried, its engine was so highly polished that it positively gleamed.

Duke of Edinburgh with an Albatross

The FWA 1097cc Coventry Climax

Peace’s favourite saying was that there was no substitute for capacity, and in 1955 Albatross started to install the more powerful 1097cc FWA overhead valve four-cylinder Coventry Climax engine into their hulls. A big improvement over the E93a ford engine.

“We took the first Climax Mk2 FWA into Loch Earn in Perthshire,” Wright remembers. “The Lochearnhead Hotel was owned by Ewan Cameron, a former Scottish Highland Games heavyweight champion, standing 6ft 4in and weighing 22 stone. Until then, it had taken two Albatrosses to get him up on water-skis. Now it took just one Climax powered boat.”

More power started to bring more racing successes for the Albatross boats.

Albatross racing

In 1955, the royal Motor Yacht Club hosted the Lady Brecknock Trophy race at Poole. Five of the 11 competitors drove Albatrosses. First, second and third places were gained by Peace, Campbell and Hives. Later that year a Frenchman named Mallet, driving an Albatross Super Sports runabout, won the premier award in the Grand Prix de France d’Endurance, better known as ‘Les Six Heures de Paris’

Wright and Foreman Jack Wilkinson entered an Albatross in the same event several years later.  “We were leading for about three hours but then the bolt retaining the rudder quadrant sheered off” says Wright. “We ended up about sixth”.

That was no mean feat, because the event was a notorious boat breaker. Some 80 boats had started, but only 20 finished. “I can distinctly remember the wreckage. Most of the boats then were wooden, and they were self-destructing like matchboxes. There were drivers and cranes everywhere. We were racing through tow-ropes and between barges”.

Paris six hour race

The 1220cc Coventry Climax

In 1957 Lotus launched the Elite and Climax had made the FWE1220 engine for the car. Albatross Marine had started making the new Continental model in 1957 and first got their hands on the larger FWE Climax engine in 1958 and fitted it to the continental. It was a revelation. It was all Aluminium, very light, and in standard form gave about 68bhp. “We had ‘stage two’ with the twin carburettors, which pushed it up to about 90bhp, In the later A series from 1960 then if you went the whole hog, with high-lift cam, gas-flowed heads, fettled ports and so on, you squeezed just over 100bhp from it. We raced the A series two-seater with great success. It used to do about 54mph.”

Albatross Coventry Climax FWA

Albatross Continental

Demand grew for a four-seater, so in 1957 Peace scaled down the sportscruiser to create the 15ft 3in single-engined Continental. Sales took off.

First Albatross continental

Ford Cortina Engines

As they became available, 1100, 1300, and eventually 1500 Ford Cortina motors were used to power Continentals and A series from 1960 which replaced the Ford 100e engine.

Ford 1500 pre crossflow with gearbox

Alpine editions

There were also limited editions, which were the brain child of Ray Wright (who went on to form Delta Marine) such as the Corsair (with a Roots engine) of which less than a half a dozen were built, and around 21 of the double cockpit slipper-stern model (a lengthened Continental with a twin-carb Sunbeam Rapier engine) dating from the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Albatross racing slipper

Albatross A series

The A series was conceived in 1960, 13ft long with a beam of 4ft 10in and 1ft 6in draught. Albatross Marine tried different construction methods, and instead of developing the hull from cylinders, they used cones. ‘It worked well because we got a better shape. We had the first prototype on the water by January 1960, and were racing it locally that year.’

“Archie always believed in local racing, purely for improving the breed. He reckoned you could get about five years ‘of normal use into a season’s racing which show up the weak parts. “

Albatross A series

A change of the guard

Tragically, by 1957 Archie Peace had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at the age of 40. MS is relentless, and his health deteriorated rapidly. He couldn’t see very well so drawing his new ideas became harder. His mobility was greatly affected which meant that even walking was difficult. Injections and medication helped to a certain degree, but it was obvious that he was not a well man.

Following his diagnosis, there was a severe disagreement between Archie, Bruce Campbell and Peter Hives regarding his health and the future of the company, but being stubborn as he was, Archie was protective of the brand that they had built, and still had ambitions for Albatross. The other two left the firm.

Bruce Campbell had been a close school friend of Dick Fairey when they both attended Harrow 20 years previously, and he joined Fairey Marine in 1957 on Richard Fairey’s offer to expand the business into power boat production.

Setting up his own company, Bruce Campbell Ltd, he was positioned as the sole agent to sell all of the Fairey motorboats and he helped Alan Burnard with development of the original 23′ based on Hunt’s design. The first Hunt boats didn’t sell, so he bought the boats himself and rented a yard at Badnam Creek upriver of Hamble Village and then rebuilt them as Christinas, adding luxurious cabins.

After leaving Fairey, Bruce became a successful friendly rival to Fairey in the golden age of offshore powerboating.

Peter Hives moved to Hertfordshire after he married and went on to be a director at the management consultancy firm Urwick Orr and Partners Ltd, and died at the age of 53 in 1974.

The show must go on

Albatross Marine continued to produce good quality boats for a number of years after Peter Hives and Bruce Campbell left, but with a smaller workforce, until the demand dropped off with the increasing availability of fibreglass boats and outboard motors which were comparably cheaper and required less maintenance.

The MkV

One of Archie Peace’s last ideas was a MkV, to be built in fibreglass which was quickly coming into fashion. There was an 18-footer on the drawing board, to be powered by a 4.2lt Jaguar engine, which would have caused quite a stir. But eventually Peace had to give up due to his poor health.

Albatross Marine closed down in 1967 when they sold the land and the buildings along with the tools and the machines. Archie died in 1969, survived by his wife and two sons, Ian and Duncan who have helped enormously with what we know today about the history of Albatross Marine.

The revival

With the rise in popularity of classic and vintage vehicles and boats in the late 1990s and 2000s, people were finding old Albatross’ to restore or sent them to Ray Wright for restoration. The Classic Motor Boat Association actively encouraged people to get on the water with their classic crafts, as did similar associations around the world.

Many abandoned boats had been cannibalised by car enthusiasts who knew these boats had automotive power plants, and some have been cut about to take outboard motors or jet drives.

In 2007, John Fildes set out to find a project albatross to restore By chance he found A-series A1 as a complete wreck and set on a mission to bring her back to life. He searched the length and breadth of the country, and contacted all those who had a connection with Albatross to try and unearth the history of Albatross Marine.

Having gleaned information and photographs from Archie’s sons, Duncan and Ian Peace, as well as some of the ex factory workers, and past and current owners. He wrote to Royal connections, trawled through museum archives, and began setting up this website for people to register their boats. Over the years he has collated his own archive on all things albatross. He has restored many boats back to their former glory, enthused owners to get on the water by running events and he even managed to reinstate albatross racing on Oulton Broad and Windermere for a few years before the change in powerboat racing administration.

Today, it is clear that there is still enthusiasm all over the world for these wonderful little boats and for their history that is worth preserving.