Captain Malins 1927 OEC Temple Pictures
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Some wonderful photos of a pair of rare motorcycles! They show Capt Geoffrey Malins and his mate prepared for their round the world trip started in 1926. After the trip Capt Malins wrote a book about their experiences titled ‘Going Further’. This was published by Elkin Mathews & Marrot, 54 Bloomsbury Street, London, WC1 in 1931. You can still come across it in secondhand book shops.
Apparently Capt malins was an official cinematographer during WW1 and was well known for two films,’ Battle of the Somme’ and ‘Battle of the Tanks’.
The start of their ‘Round the World ‘ expedition was reported on pp 68, 74 & 75 of the December 1st issue of MotorCycling as having left ‘Saturday last’.Their motorcycles were OEC Temples powered by 1000cc ohv British Vulpine engines and the sidecars were special built Hughes.These didn’t stand up to the journey too well and both sidecar chassis were replaced in Melbourne, Australia. He doesn’t say what make the new chassis were but it is suspected they were Melbourne made as by that time the Australians had long since discovered the frailties of stiff English sidecar chassis and built our own local product using Silentbloc bushes to give the necessary compliance and slight flexibility.
Many thanks to Kerry Pratt of the Cayman Islands for sending me the first picture and to Bob McGrath for providing all of the history.
The third and fourth pictures are kindly sent in by Elaine Al-Fattal who has scanned them from her husband’s photo album. These were taken with the lads from No55 Bomber Squadron, Baghdad sometime during the intrepid journey. Fantastic!
And thanks also to Dave Martin for providing the second picture showing the pair after their return.
The fifth and sixth pictures were sent in by Christopher Russell. They were taken from his grandfathers RAF photos taken in Iraq. A lovely piece of history.
