Stand by for Launching: The Luxury Thames Launch

The slipper launches were fitted with mahogany keels and sides, the chines were pine and the stern deadwood oak. The mahogany decking planks over the oak frame were well-varnished and displayed good quality grain, and a particular feature on some of the Andrews launches was the use of contrasting alternate light and dark planks. Deck fittings were chromed and the boats displayed swivel-mounted spot lamps at the front and the red ensign at the stern mast. A flush-fitting hatch in the sloping stern was perfect for stowing the wind-up gramophone, champagne and punnets of strawberries.

The popularity of the slipper launches lasted through to the fifties when tastes in boating on the upper Thames began to change and more fibreglass and plastic cabin cruisers began to be seen. Then , as so often happens with a good classic design, nostalgia took over and the slipper launch enjoyed a revival in the eighties. Old launches were dusted off and lovingly restored while new launches were built to the old Andrews classic design. At the forefront of the revival was the boatyard of Freebody and Company at Hurley near Marlow, producing beautiful elegant craft to Andrews’ timeless design.

The family boat building concern with its three hundred year plus history of fine craftsmanship and boat design managed to weather the recession at the end of the eighties, and is still building those elegant slipper launches with their distinctive mahogany-and-spruce or mahogany-and-teak contrasting planking. You can now buy a twenty-five foot launch, splash out on the thirty foot version, or pay a little extra and you can go green and buy yourself the electric powered option.

The modern Thames slipper launch, together with the electric canoes and Edwardian-style saloon launches built by the yard today, may indeed be a rich man’s toy, but Peter Freebody is a true craftsman of the old school who designs a boat by feel and with an eye for the right line, who puts in more than the design demands in terms of quality materials and aesthetics, so that each craft is unique, and so keeping the Thames slipper launch alive in its rightful place.

So that if you fancy an afternoon of thirties elegance on the river, find yourself a wind-up gramophone and some scratched old 78s, pack yourself a picnic hamper with strawberries and cream and chilled wine and don your Oxford Bags and straw boater, and get yourself down to Henley or Oxford where you can hire yourself a Thames slipper launch and a slice of nostalgia for the afternoon.