NB Grapple is art - and part of RAF history

Janet of NB Grapple emailed me several weeks ago and - my apologies - it rather got buried in my house move:

My husband and I are amateur painters who live on narrow boat Grapple. We cruise the canals in the summer and paint during the winter at our home marina. We recently decided to sell our original paintings and prints so started a website - www.grappleart.co.uk

Our paintings are scenes from the boat and near the canals that we have visited. Please would you look at the site and if you feel it is appropriate add a link to your site and we will do the same for your site.

Janet, sorry I've taken so long to get around to it. No reciprocal link required, don't worry!   I'm a great believer that you should write about what you genuinely believe to be interesting. 

And I was also fascinated by the story behind the name of the boat: 

'Grapple' is very distinctive with her yellow panel that displays her name and logo in red. She is named after Operation Grapple, Christmas Island 1957, which was Britain's thermonuclear test programme.

Neil chose the name as he was the air frame mechanic on the Vickers Valiant that dropped the first bomb of the series. The logo of frigate bird on a grapple hook was the emblem for the operation.

Wow, speaking as a boy who read The Eagle comic at the time (full of exploded diagrams of airframes) that's real history!  There's an article about Operation Grapple here.  And a picture below of what inspired the name of NB Grapple.  Good lord, that reminds me there was a time when the UK could actually design and build its own aircraft. 

At least we can take pride in the fact that we can still build our own narrowboats. 

Comments

[Andrew Denny]

Late news: Janet writes sadly just before Christmas to say:

"I am writing with the sad news that Neil Brown, the oil painter from Grappleart, passed away suddenly on December 4th 2009.
At the moment the site is still running and there are a limited number of his paintings still availble for purchase. Of course prints will still be available. The watercolours are also still available but I am not sure yet if or when new ones will become available. I have not decided whether I want to continue painting without him."