LUKE HONEY'S Enthusiasms

This Month: Clockwork Toy Boats

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Just messing about on the river' - could there be anything better? As the old Tony Hatch song goes, 'There are long boats and short boats and all kinds of craft, and cruisers and keel boats and some with no draught...' The next best thing, perhaps, is an antique or vintage toy boat, propelled by the gentle whirring of a clockwork mechanism on a lazy Sunday afternoon - exquisite pieces of miniature engineering.

So, I've spent the last few days eyeing up some choice examples online, made by evocative names from the past - Hornby, Sutcliffe, Bowman, Bing, Carette, Märklin and Arnold - and the naive, colourful tinplate toy boats of the postwar Japanese makers: Bandai, Marusan, Masudaya and Yonezawa. But, while you might have to take out a small mortgage to pay for the rarest, earliest boats (from the finest German makers), many stylish clockwork boats from the 1930s are still relatively affordable, especially from the famous British makers.