READER Vic Scott got in touch about one of the River Ouse waterfront photographs we carried in Yesterday Once More last week. The photo was undated, and showed swans on the river, with a floating, shed-like structure moored near to the bank of King's Staith behind. Did any readers know what that shed was, we asked?

Step forward Vic. The floating shed belonged to the boatbuilding and boat rental business that was, for many years, run by his grandfather Thomas Henry 'Tommy' Air. Tommy had a boatbuilding shop on Cumberland Street (just down from the Grand Opera House, in what used, until a few years ago, to be Silvano's restaurant), and he also rented out boats, which were kept moored just downriver of King's Staith. The 'floating shed' was where the oars and seats would be kept overnight, Vic says. The floating structure also held a small coke-burning stove, so that boatyard employees could keep warm during the cold

The Airs had been boatbuilders, watermen and Freemen of the City for generations, Vic says. His grandfather Tommy, in addition to running his boat business, also used to be paid to pull dead bodies out of the Ouse. Bizarrely, he would be paid 20 shillings for pulling them out on the King's Staith side of the river, and 30 shillings for pulling them out on the Queen's Staith side. "So he made sure he always pulled them across the river!" says Vic, 72, who lives in Bishopthorpe.

Tommy sold up the business when Vic was just 11, in the late 1950s. But Vic has four great photographs that capture the heyday of Air's boatbuilders.

Two, taken just before the Second World War, show Tommy and his daughter Annie - known to everyone as Nancy - launching a boat from King's Staith. The boat was named Nancy in Annie's honour.. It was lowered into the Ouse by crane, while a crowd of interested observers looked on.

A third photo was taken inside Air's boatbuilding shop, with two wooden boats under construction. And there's also great photo of Vic's mum Laura walking along a gangplank from a boat to scramble through the window of the flooded Ship Inn on King's Staith. The pub was owned by the Air family at the time. Vic thinks the photo must have been taken during the 1947 floods.

Stephen Lewis