Geoffrey Prout (1894-1960) (pseudonym Roland Spencer) [1] was an English boat builder, soldier, and author. From the 1910s to 1960s Prout wrote non-fiction boating works and juvenile adventure fiction. [2]
Geoffrey Prout (1894-1960) (pseudonym Roland Spencer) [1] was an English boat builder, soldier, and author. From the 1910s to 1960s Prout wrote non-fiction boating works and juvenile adventure fiction. [2]
Prout was born in Saxilby [3] in 1894 [4] to Anne Isabel and William Henry Prout, a customs officer and Devonshire native, [5] and Geoffrey Prout spent at least part of his youth in Plymouth [6] [5] By 1911 Prout was working for an auctioneer in Plymouth, [5] and he began publishing extensively in The Boy’s Own Paper regarding boating related topics and then in various other publications. Prior to World War I he "had six years' experience of cruising round the South Coast." [7] During World War I Prout joined the Devonshire Regiment in 1914 and trained at Aldershot before being sent to France where he saw major action over several years at Loos, Somme, and Ypres. [8] [7] While recovering from war injuries at a French hospital in London he met and married a Swiss woman, Marguerite Louise Grandpierre in 1919. [6] They had two sons and in 1922 the family moved via motorcycle and sidecar to Canvey Island, Essex where they built a bungalow on the Point made partially of driftwood. [6]
After the War, Prout continued writing about boats and juvenile fiction, including publishing several books. In 1935 he founded G. Prout and Sons of Canvey Island [9] after receiving a patent for his collapsible canoe in January 1935. [10] The company initially built folding dinghies, canoes and kayaks, but by the 1950s, the company shifted to producing larger boats, particularly, catamarans. [11] Geoffrey's sons Francis and Roland were canoeists who took part in the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, and joined him in the business and focused on the production of catamarans. [12] In the flooding of 1953 Prout was instrumental in saving at least one hundred lives, and he was featured in the newsreels. [13] Geoffrey Prout died on 15 April 1960, and was buried in the St. Katherine Churchyard on Canvey Island. Many of his early writings in The Boy's Own Paper are still available online via the HathiTrust library.
His 1931 book Scouts in Bondage (Aldine Press), which has been described as "a simple adventure story of its time, designed to promote the values of Scouting", [14] inspired a secondhand bookseller from Lewes, Michael Bell, to compile Scouts in Bondage: And Other Curious Titles From Bygone Times With Titles That Might Cause Vulgar Minds To Misapprehend Their Content (2007, Aurum Press: ISBN 978-1845131968), published in the United States by Simon & Schuster as Scouts in Bondage: And Other Violations of Literary Propriety ( ISBN 978-1416549239).
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A catamaran is a multi-hulled watercraft featuring two parallel hulls of equal size. It is a geometry-stabilized craft, deriving its stability from its wide beam, rather than from a ballasted keel as with a monohull boat. Catamarans typically have less hull volume, smaller displacement, and shallower draft (draught) than monohulls of comparable length. The two hulls combined also often have a smaller hydrodynamic resistance than comparable monohulls, requiring less propulsive power from either sails or motors. The catamaran's wider stance on the water can reduce both heeling and wave-induced motion, as compared with a monohull, and can give reduced wakes.
Canvey Island is a town, civil parish and reclaimed island in the Thames estuary, near Southend-on-Sea, in the Castle Point district, in the county of Essex, England. It has an area of 7.12 square miles (18.44 km2) and a population of 38,170. It is separated from the mainland of south Essex by a network of creeks. Lying only just above sea level, it is prone to flooding at exceptional tides and has been inhabited since the Roman conquest of Britain.
Henry Warington Smyth Baden-Powell KC, known as Warington, was a British admiralty lawyer, master mariner and canoeist. He wrote a book on Sea Scouting and held positions in The Boy Scouts Association, formed by his brother, Robert Baden-Powell.
Sea Base, formerly known as Florida National High Adventure Sea Base, is a high adventure program base run by the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) in the Florida Keys. Its counterparts are the Philmont Scout Ranch in northern New Mexico, the Northern Tier National High Adventure Bases in Ely, Minnesota as well as Manitoba and Ontario in Canada, and The Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve near the New River Gorge National Park in southern West Virginia.
Sidney George Hedges was a British writer of books and articles on swimming, games and hobbies for young people. He also wrote young people's fiction. He was born in Bicester, the second son of George William Hedges, a draper and outfitter, and Mary Ann Hedges. He married Mary Dixon at Bicester in 1929; their son Anthony Hedges was born in 1931.
Hilary Aidan Saint George Saunders MC was a British author, born in Clifton near Bristol.
Herbert Strang was the pseudonym of two English authors, George Herbert Ely (1866–1958) and Charles James L'Estrange (1867–1947). They specialized in writing adventure stories for boys, both historical and modern-day.
Magazines intended for boys fall into one of three classifications. These are comics which tell the story by means of strip cartoons; story papers which have several short stories; and pulp magazines which have a single, but complete, novella in them. The latter were not for the younger child and were often detective or western in content and were generally greater in cost. Several titles were published monthly whereas the other two categories were more frequent.
Des Plaines Valley Council is a former Boy Scouts of America local council that was headquartered in La Grange, Illinois, United States. In 2014 the council merged with Calumet Council, Chicago Area Council and Northwest Suburban Council to form Pathway to Adventure Council.
Francis Prout was a British sprint canoer who competed in the early 1950s. He was eliminated in the heats of the K-2 1000 m event at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki.
Roland Prout was a British sprint canoer who competed in the early 1950s. He was eliminated in the heats of the K-2 1000 m event at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki.
High Adventure Bases of the Boy Scouts of America are outdoor recreation facilities located in several locales in North America operated by the Boy Scouts of America at the organization's national level. Each facility offers wilderness programs and training that could include wilderness canoeing, wilderness backpacking trips, or sailing, and provide opportunities for Scouts to earn the 50-Miler Award. These bases are administered by the High Adventure Division of the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America.
James Wharram was a British multihull pioneer and designer of catamarans.
St George Henry Rathborne, who also wrote as Harrison Adams and many other names, was an American author of boys' stories and dime novels. He is believed to have produced over 330 volumes of fiction in the course of a 60-year career. He had a proclivity for and skill in producing outdoor adventure stories, and his best works fall within that category.
Tom Bevan (1868–1938), who also wrote under the pseudonym Walter Bamfylde, was a British writer of boys' adventure stories. Originally a schoolteacher, he also wrote non-fiction books for children.
William James Herbert Hayens was an English novelist and editor. He was well known for his juvenile fiction and books written for schools.
Charles James Louis Gilson, who published as Captain Charles Gilson and Major Charles Gilson and Barbara Gilson (1878–1943) was a British officer and a popular author of science fiction, adventure stories, and historical fiction books for children. Some of his stories were illustrated including at least one book, The Refugee; the Strange Story of Nether Hall, by Arthur E. Becher. Cyrus Cuneo also illustrated his writing. His fiction included works about the Pygmies of the Upper Congo. He also depicted Boxer Rebellion era adventures. Some of his stories were serialized in magazines. Many of his stories are available online through resources such as Project Gutenberg.
The Shearwater III is a type of two crew racing catamaran, produced originally by G. Prout & Sons of Canvey Island, Essex, and was first sold in kit form. It is a "restricted development class". According to the UK's National Maritime Museum, The Shearwater III was the world’s first production catamaran.
G. Prout and Sons of Canvey Island, Essex, in the United Kingdom, was initially a builder of folding dinghies, canoes and kayaks founded in 1935. In the 1950s, the company moved to the construction of small sailing catamarans with Shearwater I and later Shearwater III, which the National Maritime Museum describes as the first production catamaran in the world. The company then developed from small catamarans to larger cruising vessels. G. Prout & Sons was dissolved in 2002.
William Murray Graydon was an extremely prolific American writer who also wrote under the pen-names Alfred Armitage, William Murray, and Tom Olliver. He wrote adventure, historical fiction and Sexton Blake detective stories for boy's story papers.