British Seagull

The British Seagull Co Ltd was a British manufacturer of two-stroke outboard engines in Poole, Dorset from the early 1930s until the mid-1990s. Although their "Classic" engines were for decades an exemplar of rugged simplicity and reliability, the company eventually failed when customer tastes changed and as tighter emissions regulations took effect. The British Seagull company no longer manufactures complete outboard engines, but they continue to produce and supply spare parts from their Oxfordshire base.

British Seagull outboards were first sold under the name Marston Seagull. They were developed at John Marston Ltd's "Sunbeamland" factory in Wolverhampton by development engineers John Way-Hope and Bill Pinninger. This pair later bought the manufacturing rights and marketed outboards as Bristol Seagull, later moving to Poole and settling for the name British Seagull®.

The Seagull outboard motor had a simple single cylinder water-cooled two-stroke engine. Atop the engine was a magneto, and on its port side was a simple carburetter with no air filter. Even a rudimentary rubber "storm cowl" was an optional extra, and induction noise when running was pronounced. Above the cylinder head was bolted a small brass fuel tank whose 10:1 fuel/oil mix was gravity-fed to the carb via a clear plastic tube that served to capture dirt particles in its U-bend. A simple plastic filter filter on the banjo union to the carb gave rudimentary secondary filtering, but it was still not unusual for the carb jets to become blocked. Starting was effected with a hand-wound pull-rope, although a recoil starter became an option in due course. Connecting the motor to the gearbox and propeller werere two downtubes, the forward one containing the drive shaft and the aft tube serving as the exhaust, which vented underwater. This arrangement meant that the engine could not be rotated 360 degrees as can more modern engines. The Seagull handbook advises that the engine can be safely run at full throttle (partly to prevent the spark-plug from oiling up) but adds that is wasteful to try to exceed the maximum design speed of a displacement hull, suggesting a "one-third open throttle" usually suffices. The engines proved very rugged as they used high quality materials, and would last for years even in harsh marine environments and in developing countries. Seagull outboards were utilitarian in nature with a relatively slow-turning prop, and so were ideal for use in dinghies, tenders and small yachts. The Silver Century Plus model could propel a displacement hull of up to 26 feet in length; but all Seagull outboards were unsuitable for high speed craft.

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