In September last year, reader Vic Scott got in touch with some photographs of the River Ouse boatbuilding and boat rental business that was, for many years, run by his grandfather Thomas Henry 'Tommy' Air.

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

Another photo was taken inside Air's boatbuilding shop, with two wooden boats under construction. And there was also a 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, and Vic thinks the photo must have been taken during the 1947 floods.

Vic, 73, from Bishopthorpe, has now brought in some more photos of his grandfather's boating business, photos which he found recently while having a clearout at his house.

Once again, they bring alive an era when the Ouse was a busy river - plied by barges and pleasure cruisers, and home to boatbuilders and warehouses.

Tommy's boatbuilders' workshop was actually on Cumberland Street (just down from the Grand Opera House, in what used, until a few years ago, to be Silvano's restaurant). He also rented out boats, which were kept moored just downriver of King's Staith.

The company had two 'floating sheds' where the oars and seats for rental boats would be kept overnight, Vic says. One of the 'new' photographs he has supplied shows one of these sheds. The floating structure held a small coke-burning stove, so that boatyard and boat rental employees could sit around it keep to warm during the cold - you can see the stove's chimney sticking through the roof in our photo.

Another photo shows Tommy and some of his friends and colleagues on board the company's pleasure boat, The Summer Breeze, which used to take passengers up and down the Ouse to Bishopthorpe Palace and back. Tommy and his friends are all dressed in 1940s-style trenchcoats with homburg hats.

There are a couple of photos showing The Summer Breeze itself - in one, it seems to be moored on the Ouse at Selby, which suggests it could when needed take passengers much further than Bishopthorpe Palace. One thing Tommy used to do every year was take firefighters from the fire station just behind his boatyard the other way up the Ouse on the Summer Breeze towards the confluence with the Nidd, Vic remembers. There they'd put a plank down, and all the firemen and their families would go brambling.

There's also a photo of Tommy and Vic's Auntie May standing on the steps of the Ship Inn on King's Staith while floodwaters lap at the steps. This may possibly have been taken during the floods of 1947.

Tommy sold up the business when Vic was just 11, in the late 1950s.

But this slice of colourful life from York's riverfront past lives on in these great photos...

Stephen Lewis