The Elwin Room was full to overflowing for the John Coates Memorial lecture, which in fact was a multi-speaker (and multi-media) event.
 
First Julian Coates gave an illustrated talk on his father John, who was Britain’s Chief Naval Architect and, with his wife Jane, a key contributor to the rebirth of BRLSI in the early 1990s. Then Prof Boris Rankov, famous as a six-times winning crew member for Oxford in the University Boat Race, spoke about ancient Greek Trireme warships – and Olympias, the modern reconstruction which John Coates co-designed in retirement, and which both men helped to run in sea trials from 1987 onwards. Finally there was the first showing of a short video of the Olympias in action, shot in 1990 by feature film director Christopher Miles, with narration written by John Coates and read by Julian Coates, and edited by Paul Stephens for BRLSI.
A full report by the evening’s Chairman, Martin Sturge, is coming soon, but in the meantime you can see the video – Sea Trials of the Trireme Olympias – by clicking on the image at the top of this story.