Maritime Museum Records Raided.....

...............by volunteer Martin Corfe to reveal local artist V C Boyle's paintings and writings.

Martin has trawled North Devon Maritime Museum's archives to find all existing items of the Bideford-born artist's work. Martin has been digitising the work as there has been some deterioration in condition over the years, and sensitive image editing has allowed them to be preserved in an accessible form.

There's a remarkable trove of local views, but there's a huge range of work as Boyle also lived in South Devon and fought as a sergeant in the Devonshire Regiment in the 1st World War in India and Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq and Iran), recording what he saw in watercolour and pen-and-ink.

Boyle recorded in writing many stories of local interest, including fishing, rescues, a visitor missing at sea, and a mysteriously moving buoy which turned out to have a seal caught in it's mooring rope.

All pictures courtesy of Appledore's North Devon Maritime Museum : from top, Boyle on the Estuary in the 1930's, self-portrait probably as a sergeant in the army, Bideford scene at the Long Bridge, panorama of the Bideford waterfront, Arab Dhow and buoy, and Church Rock.