Prunella

'Prunella', a gentleman's yacht, was built in 1938 for her first owner, Mr Francis Heron Muirhead, on Slip 7 (the largest slipway) at the J.I. Thornycroft Hampton Launch Works, on Platts Eyot in Hampton on Thames. The yard is still there, but has changed hands.

Mr. Muirhead was a personal friend of the great Marconi, and he gave Muirhead one of the very first depth gauges that Marconi invented and which still stands in the wheelhouse of 'Prunella' to this day.
'Prunella' has had only four owners to date and is unique in many ways: her engines, generator, engine controls and electronics all date back to 1938 and are still in working order.

'Prunella' was invited to shoot the new Dunkirk movie just three days after her new owner bought her. During filming, she was asked several times to get closer to the camera. And, well, after the fourth time, you can imagine the animosity in the air, because 'Prunella' was not an official Dunkirk Little Ship and there was no evidence that she had been to Dunkirk and so she wasn't considered a member of the elite Dunkirk Little Ships. One of the objecting skippers rudely asked over the radio why they wanted 'Prunella' at the front? And the answer came right back: because she was the tattiest boat of them all.
It is believed she was not in Dunkirk in 1940 because at the time she was serving in Scapa Flow in Scotland and was too far away to be back in time for "Operation Dynamo" which took place from May 27 to June 4, 1940.

Unfortunately, the official war records of 'Prunella' have been lost and we can only rely on what we learned from conversations with relatives of her previous owners and other people who knew her and her owners. It is said that she had a cannon on the foredeck and that her davits were replaced by heavy naval davits to pick up dummy torpedoes, but who knows what she did. It is certain that she served as a gunboat in Brightlingsea and also in Scapa Flow from the beginning to the end of the war and survived and has now been lovingly restored to carry on her life as part of British history.