As a very young boy in the early 1960’s, my grandmother would read me Rupert Bear by Mary Tourtel and one particular book. It was called Rupert’s Mysterious Flight, a story about Rupert’s birthday present, which had arrived in a huge wooden crate. Excitedly, Rupert opened to the crate, to find an instruction manual and a number of aeroplane parts. Assisted by his Daddy, Rupert assembled the airplane, donned his flying suit and goggles and after a quick goodbye from his parents, he took off and few up into the clouds to find a wonderful aerial kingdom inhabited by toucans - magical. As a 4 year old, I was utterly transfixed and wanted to be Rupert from that day - my imagination was continually ‘running away with me’……

 I attended Wellingborough School, but I didn’t enjoy school life very much, apart from art and target rifle shooting. My grandfather had been a keen artist and had shot for the England team at Bisley - it’s funny how genes run in families. My first job as a trainee shoemaker within the family business called Barker Shoes , then selling cars, a spell in the local police force, before I finally found something I love doing: photography. I’ve run my commercial photography business called Charles Ward Photography since 1985.

As a family, we would often holiday in Devon and it wasn’t long before we discovered Salcombe, returning most years. It was natural that I would then start to bring my own family back there in future years and that is where our story starts. I created The Salties around 27 years ago, while reading bedtime stories to my boys James and Freddie, during our annual holiday to Salcombe. Assisted by my wife Katie, we recorded the stories in a small red book, in the hope that we might publish them one day. The red book lay in a drawer for 10 years, when Katie found it and we both decided it was time for The Salties to become reality. I had already designed a range of characters - Captain, the harbourmaster (based on on my Milo) and a number of little sea creatures, all living and working in Salty town. Allow me to introduce them to you:

I decided to ask my good friend and professional illustrator, Phil Garner to help re-work my ideas. Over the next 12 months, we met each week to finalise the branding and the artwork, eventually producing a full range of marketing materials to promote The Salties. With everything ready, I decided to take an exhibition stand at Brand Licensing Europe (BLE - October 2-3 2007) to exhibit my ideas and hopefully find a licensing and merchandising partner. It was at BLE that I met Francis Fitzpatrick and we formed a partnership to promote The Salties around the world. Francis introduced me to Tiger Bells and they created our very first animation (shown below) Another BLE contact was Funtastic (now called Fantastic) magazine and they started featuring The Salties each month and proved to be excellent publicity for us.

The Salties website followed shortly afterwards and I was contacted by Anton Mullan who very kindly offered to write The Salties very first soundtrack. I travelled down to Bristol to meet Anton at his home and listened to his recording - it was superb and I will always be grateful to Anton for so generously donating his time and expertise completely free of charge. Please click the screen above to listen to Anton’s production.

Francis and I visited an number of animation studios, including HIT Entertainment in London. Pictured right is Francis and me, together with my son James in a Skipper suit. We had great fun sending him up to see once of the chief execs in the list!

Our next trip was to Cannes, to visit Francis at MIP TV an international TV market and somewhere that Francis knew well. It was at MIP COM that Francis had sold his own show called Jakers a story of rural life in Ireland conceived by Francis’ wife Denise. James bravely donned The Skipper suite again and we both made tracks for sunny France.

The years past and Francis kept in touch to keep me up to date with the news from the trade fairs. He’d always made it clear that finding a production company willing to make the animated shows would be difficult. Then we would need to find a TV station that would broadcast The Salties to a pre-school audience at the correct time slot. Finally, we would only monetise the animation via a toy manufacturer and other licensing companies - it would be an up hill battle to find them!

One day, I received a call from Francis to say that he’d just attended Kidscreen in New York and had news about The Salties. Apparently, he had met someone who thought Cosgrove Hall might be interested and had suggested a meeting. This was most encouraging news, but first, I needed to learn more about Cosgrove Hall. A quick Google search, revealed this to be one of the of the most famous British animation companies, founded by Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall. Known for it’s animation series Danger Mouse, The Wind in the Willows and Count Duckula, the company had recently closed (2009), so I wondered what Francis had discovered in New York?

Francis arranged for us to meet the Cosgrove team at the premises of 422 TV in Manchester. I seem to recall it was February 2011 and I collected Francis from Manchester Airport. I had collected everything together for the meeting; folders full of character images, the Salty Cove world, printed bibles (see examples below), clay models of Captain, Squeeze the octopus and Scurry the hermit crab and lastly, the little red book, where the idea started.

We entered a very swish boardroom to find a group of people sitting expectantly. After a brief introduction by Francis, I began opening up folders and flight cases on the table in front of everyone and much to their surprise and amusement. I don’t think they could quite believe that this ‘crazy photographer’ from Northampton could have gone to quite such an effort an expense with an idea for an animation. However, it seemed they though The Salties had potential, because they told me that they would start to re-work my idea and asked Francis and I to return for another meeting in a few weeks. Exciting times!

A few weeks later, we did indeed return and this time we would meet some of Cosgrove Hall’s ex-employees, who had been asked to come up with some new ideas. Mark Hall explained that he felt we should keep “Captain’ (now called ‘Skipper’) was a grandfather type character and would become the narrator of the stories. Cosgrove Hall had a fine reputation for storytelling and it seemed they would call upon the best for The Salties. Mark and Brian had also introduced a brand new character, called Pip and I was told that pre-school children needed to see a character of approximately their own age, so Pip was born. I managed to grab my phone and took a quick photo of them as they discussed the characters with Ben Turner. I also recorded a few seconds of video as Mark spoke. Little did I know the photograph would become so important in the years to come.
More meetings followed and I realised that I now needed to start taking some photographs of the new team. Mark , Brian and Francis had decided to for a new company called Cosgrove Hall Fitzpatrick (CHF) and Pip would be the company’s first animation. To think that Mark and Brian had come out of retirement to make my ideas a reality, was quite incredible and I will always be grateful to them.

1. The Characters

Skipper: Skipper is the harbourmaster in Saltytown. He is quite old, but very friendly and he makes sure everyone is safe when they sail their boats. Skipper has a little office near the harbour which looks a bit like a kennel and outside he has a lovely brass telescope that he uses to see what is happening. Sometimes, he sees Razor going much too fast in his speedboat, making huge waves, so Skipper has to tell him to slow down. The Cockles love to visit Skipper and listen to stories about shipwrecks and smuggling and naughty pirates.

Pinch is the lifeboat Captain in Saltytown and he is very brave and strong. Sometimes, Pinch has to rescue The Cockles when they fall out of their boats and he must quickly launch the lifeboat. Pinch has two little helpers called The Shrimps and they help him push the lifeboat out of its shed. They all put on their lifejackets and the lifeboat shoots down the ramp and into the sea with a huge splash! Then Pinch switches on the lifeboats engine and they all race across the harbour to help with the rescue. Sometimes Splat helps them by flying ahead and pointing to where they need to go. It’s very exciting.

Crusty drives a wonderful old sea tractor that he keeps in a little shed near the beach. Crusty meets Tricky’s ferry and helps bring the Cockles onto the beach so they don’t get their feet wet. Crusty’s sea tractor is very powerful and can drive into the water right up to the top of it’s huge wheels. The Cockles get very excited as the sea tractor drives back up onto the beach and then they climb down a little ladder. At the end of the day, Crusty always cleans his sea tractor and gives it a polish before he drives it into the shed.

Splat lives high up on the cliffs in a place called Splat Point. It’s a bit of a messy place, full of old fish bones and white ‘goo’. Splat is very funny, but quite naughty and often flies over the roofs in Saltytown making big splats.... which is very naughty indeed! Splat can see everything that happens in Saltytown and often helps Pinch to find Cockles if they need to be rescued.

Razor runs the waterskiing school in Saltytown. He drives a very fast speedboat and can often be seen racing across the sea towards Shark Rock. The Cockles think it’s great fun to go fast with Razor, but Skipper is always chasing him, telling him to slow down. Razor’s new speedboat has huge exhaust pipes and a big engine. It can pull four Cockles on waterskis at once, but Razor is already planning to buy an even bigger speedboat next year.

Tricky takes the Cockles over to the beaches in his ferryboat and is very funny, often telling the Cockles jokes or juggling. Tricky’s ferryboat has an old steam engine and you can often see the little puffs of smoke in the sky as he travels across the harbour. Sometimes, Twinkle gives Tricky pieces of driftwood to burn in his steam engine and the Cockles love to hear it go ‘chuff chuff chuff’.

Squeeze loves to swim under the water around Saltytown looking for old shipwrecks and buried treasure. Sometimes, she takes The Cockles along in her amazing submarine and they look at the fishes through the portholes. Squeeze has found lots of treasure and puts it in the Satytown museum, so everyone can learn about the old coins and pirate ships. Squeeze wears a brightly coloured wetsuit and a diving mask.

Gallop lives on an old houseboat in the harbour and runs the Saltytown sailing school. The houseboat is very big and the young Cockles can live onboard when they come on holiday. The little sailing boats are kept alongside the old houseboat and everybody waves to the little Cockles as they set off for lessons each day. Gallop teaches the Cockles how to put up the sails and steer the sailing boats around the harbour. Sometimes the wind is strong and they go very fast, but when there isn’t any wind, they go to the beaches and make sandcastles.

Gripper has lived in Saltytown all his life and some of the Cockles think he might be over one hundred years old! Gripper makes beautiful old wooden boats in his workshop and then lifts them into the water with his very powerful crane. Like Skipper, Gripper is a wonderful storyteller and can remember what it was like to live in Saltytown when all the boats had sails and engines hadn’t been invented. It can take Gripper a long time to build one of his wooden boats and when he is ready to launch it, everyone in Saltytown comes down to the harbour to clap and cheer.

Twinkle likes to keep the beaches nice and clean and free from rubbish. She has an old tricycle which she peddles up and down the beach looking for things that might have been washed up by the tide. Twinkle collects them in her little trailer and takes them home to see if they can be re-cycled. Twinkle teaches the young Cockles not to drop rubbish and to look after the lovely countryside around Saltytown. Every morning, she can be seen raking the sand on the beaches so it’s nice and clean for the new day.

Juggle can often be seen high up polishing the glass in her lighthouse.
At night time, Juggle switches on the big light to warn boats about the rocks near to the harbour. There is a very big rock next to the lighthouse called Shark Rock and it is very dangerous. Before the lighthouse was built, lots of boats crashed onto the rocks and sank to the bottom of the sea. Because Juggle works at night, she likes to sleep during the day in her deckchair near the beach.

The Cockles come to Saltytown for their holidays and love to swim in the blue water and play on the sandy beaches. The Salties always look forward to the Cockles arriving in the summer and arrange lots of fun things for them to do during their holiday. The Cockles especially love the Saltytown Regatta, when everyone gathers together for lots of competitions and a big firework display. Eventually, the Cockles must return home, but they always look forward to coming back to Saltytown.

Scurry! But we mustn’t forget little Scurry the hermit crab who loves to play hide and seek with the Cockles. See if you can find him in the two big pictures at the front and back of this book.