Shortly after purchasing Smuggler, Jim and I decoupled the marine motor from its drive-coupling before bringing it home for essential repairs. To carry this out effectively we introduced a “Fenner” Taper-lock coupling to de-couple and re-couple the tail-shaft from it’s primary drive.

When craning the Henry Meadows onto our cellar bench (at home) we used a block & tackle to winch it through the side window of our house. Once in, we proceeded to remove the cylinder head only to find that all four Pistons had seized ‘solid’ in their bores. I recall it taking hours to free off each Piston one by one! For this, copious quantities of DOT3 brake fluid and Paraffin was poured into each bore to release each piston from its respective sleeve!

Furthermore, each of her engine ‘dowel threads’ had to be re-cut. Jim completed the remainder of the engine work in less than five months, and recollect him saying just how unusual it was to find oil-ways on pre-war motors that had actually been cast into their crankshafts!

The refurbished Henry Meadows 28 h.p. Kittiwake Petrol Marine Engine (above), was successfully re-installed after completing here over-haul. Thereafter, our Henry Meadows Power-Four marine motor powered “Smuggler” between 1991 until 1997, whilst an as-new Brooke Hundred 40-F28/30 marine motor underwent completion by John Brooke, prior to being installed by Colin Wood into “Smuggler”.

In 1991 I took Dave Brown and “Smuggler” out for her first time on the River Weaver Northwich. Then powered with the 28 h.p. Henry Meadows Motor, David observed that she was substantially quicker than other boats that had far more engine power to “Smuggler”. As we increased and the throttle we noticed Smuggler’s prow pop up at around Six Knots and quite naturally, reducing the power had the opposite affect. At this point David and I then new that we were in charge of a very early speedboat!