maritime history

Enjoying the wait

/ Bill

The trapeze artist said: “Living is walking the wire. Everything else is waiting.”

The finest Sunday of the summer. The sun shone, the wind blew. A brilliant day for a sail.

But there was something wrong with the car. . . and, as I have damaged my thumb, sailing was out.

So we took the train to Exeter . . .

Teignmouth – Dawlish – Dawlish Warren – Starcross – Exeter St Thomas.

This is the coast-line – to be more exact, Isambard Kingdom Brunel‘s line, the line of his Atmospheric Railway.

The sea sparkled the way it does here when the wind blows from the west and stirs the calm surface to catch the morning sun.

A mile or so off the beach, a ketch, in full sail, was reaching across the bay. Each time we emerged from one of short tunnels through the cliffs, she had stretched away further south towards Hope’s Nose and Berry Head.

We stopped in Dawlish, then Dawlish Warren, (disembarking families carrying beach clothes and picnics), before we turned inland along the Exe estuary.

The tide was high and the Folkboat (I always notice her) was on her mooring. I had thought of keeping Blue Mistress here before settling on Plymouth.

It seemed that people were taking to the water wherever we looked.

In Exeter, they were enjoying the river, including the short crossing on Butts Ferry.

The ferry is left over from the wonderful and much lamented Exeter Maritime Museum.

The warehouse that housed the museum is still there. I have always thought, whimsically perhaps, of the boats moored along the canal as ganging up in sympathy for the small gem of a museum that has been lost forever.

We had come to Exeter to visit our son and spent the day doing ordinary things – walking and talking, greeting and eating, before returning to the train.

Along the Exe, the tide was now very low and the Folkboat closer to the shore – well, close to the bird flocked mud flats.

And in Teignmouth, in the late afternoon, there was gig racing. On shore, rowers were hurrying to their boats, busying themselves before the start of their race.

Offshore they were heaving on their oars, some boats flying, some labouring, all working to a common cause.

Today the rowers had been out ‘walking the wire’, while we were ashore ‘waiting’ and doing ordinary things – walking and talking, greeting and eating  . . .

and we were all having a thoroughly enjoyable time.

For love of a boat – in Northumberland, England

/ Bill / 2 Comments

Seahouses, Northumberland, UK 2004

AA commented to my last post:

“I have often heard it be mentioned for aircraft “If it looks good it will fly good”.
I guess it applies to all things, boats included 🙂
Beauty, efficiency, utility, it all lies with the right proportions, maybe just the right mix of good and bad design (as nothing is perfect).”

I definitely agree with this. There is also the thought that “form follows function”.

When they reached the final design for the coble, they must have explored a whole seried of boat forms before they decided that this was the one that ideally suited the coast on which it was to be launched.

In the image above, there is the opportunity to compare the coble with the more recently designed Drascombe lugger – conceived and built in the south west of England.

This should also please Mr Boating who commented: “Looks good but I think you can add more photos from other sides, can you?”

Sometimes you take several images, sometimes you don’t.

For love of a boat – in Northumberland, England

/ Bill / 3 Comments

Seahouses, Northumberland, UK 2004

For a Cornishman used to Atlantic swells and surf-swept beaches, inshore craft have always been a facination. As a teenager, I read Edgar March’s ‘Inshore Craft of Britain: in the Days of Sail and Oar’ and was hooked. The facination comes from the way boat design developed over the centuries to suit specific coastlines. Local conditions and local materials requred local solutions.

(WIth no apology for repeating myself) . . . as the world gets flatter, and commercial and political expediency blur the old boundaries, we have gradually (rapidly in many cases) lost the individuality in skills, knowledge and experience that go with it. You can still find it (as with this coble) – but you have to look hard.

The coble may work as a boat in Cornwall but it was shaped to deal with the tides of the North Sea and the beaches of the North East of England, no less than the boats of Southern Europe were shaped to deal with the relatively tideless Mediterranian.

Enjoy the difference and keep looking.

For the origin of this series – here

For love of a boat – in Crete

/ Bill / 1 Comment

Aghia Galini, Crete 2005

I had intended posting a single image each week with no text. However, there was a comment to my initial post that took me by surprise and has made me reconsider.

Usually when I wander round a harbour looking at boats, especially in the Mediterranean, I am far too late to see the boats going fishing – they would all have been out earlier in the morning.

Therefore, of the many images I have collected over the years, only a few show boats as they should be seen – with crew – working. This image of a gentleman from Aghia Galini, rolling his sleeves up as he sets off, has long been a favourite. There is a promise of more to come – and a fine boat to accomplish it. Look at the wake.

So much for the romance. It was AA’s comment that concentrated my mind. He has kindly given me permission to quote the following:

“The preservation of some of these boats is an issue that is not met positively in Greece as well (which is where i am coming from originally)

Only for the last year or so there has been a society formed for the preservation of these boats but things are moving very slowly.

The boat you are showing is “lucky”. It has not been swept away because of a political decision to scrap it, like this one:

http://www.greektube.org/content/view/21126/2/

The government (prompted by some EU financial analysis) is trying to decrease “Professional Fishing” by giving money to fishermen to give away their older wooden boats. So, what do you do with a wooden boat once you have “bought” it in this way? Well, you scrap it in the most hideous way.

Some people have found ways to convert the bigger old fishing boats to recreation vessels for small tours and things like these but the majority of these boats end up chip wood.

The way i see it, these boats are products of a tradition that goes way back. Looking at them is like looking at a compact form of knowledge and experience…The boat is like a library but it has the fate of the Library of Alexandria.”

The last paragraph says it all. Watch the video carefully.

Now my simple pleasure has gained an extra dimension – and I add ‘Maritime History’ to the category list for this series of posts. There’s more to come.

For love of a boat – on the Dalmation Coast, Croatia

/ Bill / 7 Comments

The problem is this: here is a fine-looking, well-built, working boat sitting on a beach.

“

It’s not in its original condition. The hot sun shines on it every day, the seams have opened, a piece of the forefoot has come away. Whether this is repairable or not is irrelevant, this boat is no longer required for its original purpose and it will finish its life as a theatrical prop on a beautiful beach in Croatia.

So, do we care? After all, there are plenty of other boats in the world. What’s special about this one?

Well,  somebody had the idea to build it. Perhaps he designed it – or perhaps he took the lines off another boat-  (I say ‘he’ because it’s less likely in this country to be ‘she’ – but not impossible). Somebody sawed the timbers and found the rest of the materials required, then they built it. Maybe he sold it or maybe he used it himself to fish from, and certainly he would have put in the time to maintain it.

You see, this boat has gathered a history around it. It is the story of a life lived on the water. We may never know the details of that story, but it deserves some respect and, at the very least, it can be preserved in a picture.

I hope to post pictures of similar boats (most of them in a better state than this one) regularly.

Curious dreamer AND practical realist

/ Bill

In my last post – On Becoming a Skipper, there are two adjacent branches of the mindmap: ‘curious dreamer’ and ‘realist’. I have put a key against each one, because I think they are both important. 

You might say: “What! A dreamer and a realist? There’s a crew problem before you start.” Well, yes, there could be, but we are talking about one person – you, the skipper, plus a great deal of common sense. 

The practical realist keeps his/her feet firmly on deck and practices the art of the possible – here – now. The realist says, “This is the problem, these are the current resources available – (time, crew, experience, money). This is the solution, Let’s get on with it.”

The curious dreamer says, “What if. . .?” The dreamer uses his/her imagination and creates a wider framework for the realist to work in. The dreamer in you stretches the boundaries, expands the horizon, looks beyond the present and explores the possibilities. The realist in you expresses the solutions in current time. You need a realist when caught in a gale on a lee shore – although if he had listened to the curious dreamer he might have been able to avoid it in the first place.  

The realist will say, ”Your great-grandfather was an example of a practical man. Look how he coped with that storm.”

The next morning it moderated a bit when we soon got and entered the Bay of Biscay, when the wind shifted around to the South West and blew very heavy and we had to heave to. We found her a miserable sea boat. She would not come up and take the seas end on, but merely fall off and allow the seas to roll over her in the trough of the sea. We smashed away a good deal of the lee bulwarks to try and relieve her. After two or three days the wind veered to the North West, still blowing very heavy, when we had to get her on the other tack and smash away more bulwarks. (here)

The dreamer would say, “But he was a dreamer too. Look how things opened up for him because he signed on for that trip to Shanghai. He saw there were possibilities that would come out of the voyage and he took the opportunities when they came to him. Surely, he was both a dreamer and a realist. The two work together.

”He went and told the Captain, when I was called aft and explained to the Captain that I had served 4 years at sea mostly in the Bristol Channel. When I was appointed pilot. We worked down the north shore to the Nash when the wind went a little more to the north, and the next morning we was going between Lundy Island and Hartland Point. We had a fine time down passed the Scilly Islands. The Captain was very pleased with my pilotage and thanked me very much. He hoped to repay me before we parted, which he did by lending me books and instruments and learning me navigation, that, within a fortnight of terminating the voyage, I went in at Plymouth and passed my first examination! (here)

So what of this blog? The realist will tell you, “This is not sailing. This is talking-about-sailing. It’s not the real thing at all.” The dreamer will say, “Ah, yes. But look how the framework changes. Every time I step on board I have a better understanding of what I am doing and a greater excitement in carrying it out. There are possibilities here that I have a mere inkling of, and, if the past nine months are anything to go by, many more that I no nothing about out about yet.”

Yesterday we went to the theatre in Plymouth. On the way we stopped to check Blue Mistress was secure. At 1700 on a Saturday evening in August in one of the crowded anchorages of Devon, in the drizzle and wind, only one boat was away from its moorings. This summer is for the curious dreamers. The practical realists are pacing up and down in frustration.

The Fate of the “Ceres”

/ Bill / 1 Comment

Taken from an article in the Bideford Weekly Gazette dated December 1st.1936. 

FATE OF THE “CERES”

The 125 years old “Ceres”, veteran of the merchant service, her course now run, lies at the bottom of Bideford Bay, somewhere off Baggy Point.

The “Ceres” sprang a leak on Tuesday night while on a voyage from South Wales to Bude, and foundered after her crew had put off in her boat and had been picked up by the Appledore lifeboat.The Captain is Mr Oswald Jeffery, a married man, whose home is in Richmond Road, Appledore, and the mate Mr Walter Ford, a married man of Irsha Street,, Appledore.They reached Appledore in the lifeboat at about 11 o’clock, and on arrival the Rev Muller offered a short prayer of thanksgiving for their safety.

Captain Jeffery said,” We left Swansea on Tuesday bound for Bude with a cargo of slag.. Because of the weather we intended to go in over the Bar for the night as it was to rough to venture on to Bude. At 8 o’clock I went below to rest for an hour, leaving the mate in charge. An hour later he told me there was water in the engine room. We manned the pumps. We tried to get the ship over the Bar, but the water made her roll badly, and I gave the order for the ship’s rowing boat to be launched. I fired two rockets, and we abandoned the vessel. We lay in the shelter of the “Ceres” which was sinking, and were taken onboard the lifeboat.

Dr. Valentine stood by in case medical assistance was needed, but although wet through, neither the captain nor his mate appeared any the worse for this ordeal.

The “Ceres” was owed by a Bude firm of coal merchants, and was built in Salcombe.  

 Ketch Ceres   1811 – 1936.

Built in Salcombe, Devon in 1811.She carried stores as a revitaling ship at the blockade of Brest during the Napoleonic wars. Was the oldest sea-going vessel afloat until she sank in Croyde Bay one November evening in 1936. My late father Walter Ford always maintained that she sank because the vessel had recently had a new timber set in, and this had swollen and had displaced the much older timbers which surrounded it.

The night she sank was flat calm and the sky clear.

This is one of a number of posts on the Ketch “Ceres”. They are presented in a random order as and when I have found, or been given, new material. If you are interested in maritime history and would like to read more, please use the Search facility on the top right-hand side if this page (‘Ceres’).  If the Search box does not appear on your current screen, then click on ‘Bill’s Boat Blog’ – (or the title of this entry, then ‘Bill’s Boat Blog’), to be taken to the correct page.

The picture on page 90

/ Bill / 2 Comments

Ceres of Bude

Re picture on page 90.

The ketch Ceres is said to be the oldest sea-going craft in existence. She was built at Salcombe, Devon, in 1811, and began by trading to Northern Spain, more than once having narrow escapes from French and American privateers. In the years 1818 and 1814 she was employed by Government carrying British military stores in connection with Wellington’s Peninsular War operations, subsequently reverting to her owners and resuming ordinary trading. She first came back to Bude in 1826, and has been in the ownership of her present owners since 1852. She was altered in rig in 1865, and subsequently was cut in two and lengthened by 13 feet, being registered 44 tons and carrying 85 tons. In 1912 she was successfully transformed to a motor ship by the successful installation of a 30 h.p. semi-Diesel engine, which enabled her to keep close to the shore and so avoid the fate of several other coasting vessels sunk by submarines off the North Cornish coast during the Great War. Ceres is still in active commission, having passed her four-year Board of Trade survey in 1930.

(Photo by J. H. Petherick, Belle View, Bude. Sent by Mr. J. W. W. Banbury, Lloyd’s Agent, Bude, Cornwall.)

This is one of a number of posts on the Ketch “Ceres”. They are presented in a random order as and when I have found, or been given, new material. If you are interested in maritime history and would like to read more, please use the Search facility on the top right-hand side if this page (‘Ceres’).  If the Search box does not appear on your current screen, then click on ‘Bill’s Boat Blog’ – (or the title of this entry, then ‘Bill’s Boat Blog’), to be taken to the correct page.