Burnt-out Freeman 22 River Boat Scrap
Boatbreakers were recently called by a marine surveyor to come and recover a fire damaged scrap boat from Pyrford Marina in Surrey. The boat was a Freeman 22 riverboat which was completely gutted by the blaze.
According to the former owner and other boat owners at the Marina the fire gutted the boat from start to finish in under 10 minutes. Apparently it was caused by an undetected gas leak that caught a spark when the engine was turned over. No one was hurt in the fire and no other boats in the marina were damaged.
The Freeman had been towed around to the slipway at the marina so it could be winched out of the water with relative ease, well that’s what we thought anyway. When our team arrived it became clear that the water that was used by the fire brigade to extinguish the fire was still inside the boat. This meant that instead of floating the boat was weighed down and sat on the slipway.
The next step was to return to the marina with a high powered water pump and a water tank to pump the waste water into. Despite us initially thinking there was lots of oil mixed into the water it became clear that the water was just black because of the charcoal remains of the boat’s wooden topsides. It still took us a while to clear all the water as the pump was constantly getting clogged by the charcoal fragments. Our team realised that we needed something to filter out the pieces and we decided that a £3 wire-mesh bin would do the trick.
We eventually removed around 3 tonnes of waste water and the boat was able to be re-floated and manoeuvred onto our boat trailer. Once the boat was back to our yard in Portsmouth it was crushed down and the waste fibreglass pieces were sent to landfill.
Written By: Luke Edney
Luke completed a journalism degree in Brighton University and fortunately for us uses this in his communications, Facebook posts, Tweets and emails to tell all our enquirers and followers what we are up to. Without Luke we would be lost, he runs the office, keeps us organised and is like a terrier and never lets a tricky boat disposal job go un-photographed or Tweeted about.
He also manages all of our enquiries passing them to whoever in the team is the best suited to deal with it. We are teaching Luke how to drive a motorboat or sail a yacht so while he’s learning we suggest you keep out of the Solent!
When he’s not at work he’s a massive football fan (his Dad used to play for Portsmouth FC years ago) and seems to know everything there is to know about any player, anywhere. Next time you ring and he answers, think of a tricky football trivia question and ask him
Date Published: June 28, 2017
Last Modified: June 28, 2022
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