The Edith May

Are Britain’s most picturesque and charismatic old ships in danger, or is their heritage safe? Nick Ardley looks at the love for Thames sailing barges.

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Spritsail barges are an evocative sight. They are probably the most photographed, painted or sketched craft afloat. They are thoroughbreds and their design evolved into something that could carry anything from around 100 to 300 tons. Even at their largest they could be operated by two people. The saying, ‘Man and boy...’ is not a myth. The similarly sized west country schooner required anything up to five men. Yet the remainder of this illustrious fleet of British sail traders grows ever smaller.

Other commercial craft dwindled too and many fizzled out, however a number of our fishing smacks were preserved, lovingly, as yachts. Other vessels, such as the Brightlingsea Skillinger Smack, Pioneer and the Lowestoft Trawler Excelsior have been preserved and rebuilt by trusts with help from heritage funding. Yet, yards are littered with stalled projects and many more of all types have quietly died in some backwater...

The last cargo fleet is made up of the ubiquitous spritsail barge.

This has, in my view, approached a core level. In the financially constrained times we see in 2011 it will become ever harder to earn sufficient income to maintain these ships to required standards. Will it shrink further? The numbers of barges has been steadily dropping since the demise of sail and, latterly, motorised barges. Some were used as house barges, or sailing homes (such as the May Flower, the author’s childhood home), but around 1964 the advent of charter work began. This provided a boost. However, barge hulls continued to slip away one by one to be dumped along a lonely marsh bank, while others were burnt or broken up. Hulked barges last a long time in a marsh, up to 50 years even.

People walking the river and creek banks of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Kent will have come across barge remains and not realised it, not recognising what the few bits of rotting wood were... Those waterways were the highways for the tan-sailed workhorses, arriving on a tide and leaving on the next. Now the backwaters provide many a resting place.

After 1962, except for the Cambria, remnants of the barge fleet largely began to fall into the fledgling charter business.

Keeping a barge purely as a sailing home had become an impossibility by around 1970 too. The life of many re-rigged motor barges was short: their hulls were tired and survey requirements became prohibitive. The list of their names runs long.

The cost of operating a barge in 2011 is phenomenal. Topsail Charters, of Maldon, have indicated that typically; the cost of running a Class V or VI vessel, like Hydrogen or Thistle is around £70,000 per annum, and a little less for a 12 person barge, like the Reminder. The Hydrogen and Thistle can ‘load’ up to 50 passengers on river trips. The costs do not include any structural outlay.

Currently the Lady Daphne is having her planking and frames along one side renewed at a yard in Faversham, Kent. She is owned by the Z/Yen Group Ltd and they should be applauded for their commitment. Only a few barges remain privately owned and the most famous must be Faversham’s lithe Mirosa, a gracefully built Essex girl. The Thames Sailing Barge Trust based at the Hythe, Maldon, struggles to keep two craft sailing. They desperately need funds to complete works to the aft runs of their Pudge to enable her to pass a survey and return to chartering.

Amongst the fleet, just three barges, owned by charitable trusts, the Thalatta, Dawn and the Cambria have attracted heritage grants to help with major rebuilds. Essentially, Britain’s maritime heritage has been a private affair and in comparison to many recipients, it is an honourable use of heritage funding – except for the Cutty Sark and the less said about her the better.

Heritage grants help three of the best

Since 1967 the Thalatta, a large coasting barge, 67nrt, built in 1906 at Harwich, has been operated by the East Coast Youth Sail Training Trust taking school children on five day trips around the Essex and Suffolk coast and rivers.

The trust was started by Jane Benham, daughter of Essex historian and newspaper editor, Hervey Benham; John Kemp, and others in 1966 with Thalatta’s purchase and transference of gear from the Memory (a failed attempt to keep a barge trading and now hulked in the marshes at Tollesbury).

What a wonderful job Thalatta has done during that time. She’s given enjoyment to thousands of youngsters who will forever hold their memories within – fantastic! The Thalatta got old and by 2005 needed major works.

During 2010 a stalled reconstruction staggered on.

The work is taking place in sleepy St Osyth at the bottom of Essex’s Tendring Peninsular in a yard dating from c1215, probably Britain’s oldest. The Trust’s money is short. They’ve had many benefactors, but what is her future? Will 2011 allow her to sail on? The Dawn, a much smaller vessel, 54nrt, built in 1897 at Maldon as a stacky barge to carry fodder to feed London’s horses had a different experience.

The barge was re-rigged c1966 by the Swift family. Later she spent fourteen years carrying inner London school children on trips from Maldon while owned by the Passmore Edwards Museum, Newham, East London, and then she languished at Hoo awaiting major repairs... I watched her for over eight years on sailing visits, firstly some progress was seen, then nothing.

Decay set in... The Dawn was rebuilt with a lottery grant between 2004 and 2008 under the auspices of the Dawn Sailing Barge Trust at Heybridge in Essex. She was a lucky escapee from Hoo: that corner of Kent holds the hulks of nine relatively recently abandoned spritsail barges. This clearly contradicts what Jamie Campbell said about a barging revival (Anglia Afloat - Last Word – May/June 2010): numbers regularly under sail are decreasing – there are no hulls lurking... Further, the spritsail barge revival (chartering) had nothing to do with Bob Roberts trading Cambria until 1970. Bob had little time for the amateur bargeman. The revival happened because amateurs kept barges sailing during the era from late 1940 to the early 1960s as yachts or sailing homes, encouraging owners to rig barges to try out chartering.

(See my book, The May Flower A Barging Childhood).

It is 2011, ‘...and what of the Dawn’s future?’ I ask. The barge seemingly does little. I did see her underway last year ... she motored out from her berth in the Quarters, West Mersea, and anchored off as a ‘base’ for the local yacht clubs’ combined cadet week. ‘At least she’s working with children,’ I’d thought... ‘but what else is she doing?’ Sadly, her web site is stagnant.

A couple of years ago I’d been ambling up Pin Mill’s hard talking to my crew about Dawn: she was sitting idle under the National Trust woodland. I’d been muttering about her passing a group of bargemen coming ashore for their supper (it was the Pin Mill barge match the next day) I heard one, voice my thoughts, ‘...that barge needs rescuing from her rescuers...’ I chuckled: I concurred.

Reconstruction work on the Thalatta and Dawn has been carried out in East Anglia however ‘we’ don’t hold a monopoly on these east coast jewels. Just across the Thames estuary up a muddy creek sits the Cambria, once a regular trader deep into Norfolk, delivering cereals to Norwich and coal to Kings Lynn. It should be said, as a Thames estuary sailor, I consider the North Kent coast as part of our patch, its land edge being our boundary. The world of our south coast brethren lies beyond, but Kent’s muddy creeks and rivers are inextricably entwined with all the rivers and creeks between Orford Ness and the North Foreland.

The Cambria, a coasting barge of 79nrt, was built by Everard at Greenhithe, Kent, in 1906. She ceased cargo carrying under sail in 1970.

Her last owner and skipper, Bob Roberts, sold Cambria to the Maritime Trust in 1971. The organisation was ostensibly set up to preserve Britain’s Maritime Heritage, a laudable thing, however, how many vessels they ‘destroyed’ is unrecorded: Cambria languished in St Katharine Dock, fresh water seeped in, slowly rotting her from the inside out, while used as a shop! Cambria was sold to another trust c1988 and kept, sort of afloat, at the now defunct Dolphin Barge Yard Museum in Kent. That yard is now closed: as I write, across Milton Creek a road bridge is being built severing it from seaborne navigation.

Barges represent us in Olympic celebrations In 2007 the Cambria was ‘rescued’ by a Lottery Heritage grant. In September 2007 she was taken to Faversham and placed in a floating dock, work commenced in December. Now, in 2011, her rebuild nears completion. She was due to be launched in February ready for rigging out and summer sea trials. Currently she is to represent Kent at the 2012 Olympics. Imagine: the Kent horse, rampant, on a tanned topsail for the entire world to see.

Come and visit Kent – it will shout! ‘What are our East Anglian coastal counties doing?’ I ask.

Imagine: Suffolk, they could send Excelsior and Essex could send the Pioneer... or another vessel, Thalatta perhaps ... the Essex Seaxes resplendent on her topsail? All of those vessels would extol the virtues of integrating modern education into Britain’s sail trading heritage, bringing children together whatever their abilities.

Late in 2010 I sailed into Faversham and visited Cambria.

The barge was deemed a new build by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), the regulating body for commercial craft, and one of the questions asked by them was, ‘where’s the engine room?’ trust secretary Basil Brambleby told me.

Grinning he added, ‘...so we took the surveyor for a sail on the Mirosa, an engine-less barge, and showed him why one wasn’t needed!’ Others can argue the reverse of course. Basil enthused about the Cambria’s future, but remains realistic about operating costs and income. “We need to balance the trust’s books down the line” he said. Aboard the barge it was mind boggling, to say the least even for me with my barging background, the size and quantity of wood in her structure is truly impressive. The work has been led by the same shipwright who ran Dawn’s rebuild, Tim Goldsack, with his redoubtable crew of shipwrights, including apprentices and volunteers. Tim is the owner of the Essex based graceful Decima, a lovely steel barge, based at Heybridge Basin on the River Blackwater.

For the Thalatta, a return to her previous work with school children is anticipated. The Port of London Authority is keenly involved with Cambria’s future.

During 2011 a berth is being prepared for her at Greenhithe (Kent) with dry access from a floating pontoon to allow disabled youngsters to board: her work is being planned around schools and the environment.

In 2007, in The May Flower A Barging Childhood, I wrote: ‘I believe that the most important criteria is the rig; how it is operated and used to manoeuvre vessels, in the manner of our forefathers. Thus, it is these skills that need to be preserved to enable the sailing traditions to be handed down to future generations: surely it is this which is of paramount importance. Eventually, if this is to be on new purpose-built steel spritsail barge, then so be it.’ My words were prophetic. A new barge has been built in Kent, based upon a typical river craft of c1900. She is used as the owners’ home and was rigging out during August 2010. She has been named, cannily, Defiance and will be sailing in 2011.

The regular sailing fleet stands at around 20. There are others, but many need major work to survive beyond the near future.

A 2010 returnee to the fleet was the 104-year-old Edith May.

Based at Lower Halstow in Kent she has had a lovingly crafted ten year restoration and hopes to rejoin racing in 2011.

There are few others left to join her. Maybe, the Defiance is the forerunner to the future preservation of this area of our maritime heritage? The round of annual barge matches has generally attracted fewer and fewer vessels during the past decade. So what is the 2011 challenge for current spritsail barge owners and operators? I think it is this: bring us back the fleets of 15 or more, rather than the paltry six that turned up at Southend-on-Sea in 2010.

And your barge racing needs to be more of a spectator event, to instil a modern interest: it is that interest that pays your bills.

Courses far out to sea are meaningless to a punter, unless aboard. Further, does the number of events need to be reduced? Thinking ahead, beyond 2011, imagine: it is 2012, the biking event is taking place on Hadleigh Downs, on the waters of the Thames estuary panned by the world’s television cameras, there is an evocative sight. The splendid tan sails of Britain’s heritage are majestically jousting for their own Olympic prizes.