Gavin Atkin's weblog for the sort of people who like looking inside boat sheds. It's about old boats, traditional boats, boat building, restoration, the sea and the North Kent Coast
Albert Strange Association member Richard Rouse has put the beautiful Albert Strange designed gaff yawl Charmina up for sale after having owned her for 29 years.
She was built in 1923 by Ernest Woods of Cantley in Norfolk, and is of pitch pine on oak frames.
Charmina has had just six owners, including the prolific writer Keble Chatterton, who is said to have written several books about her, including Charmina on the Riviera.
She’s 28ft LOD, and has 3-4 berths, a Bukh 8hp engine, and her original compass and oil lamps, and is said to be in excellent order.
Charmina has won many races in the Solent area, and her owner says she makes a wonderful cruising boat.
If you’re interested, contact Richard through the ASA website.
Adrian Nowotynski and his partner Ken are making real progress on their Falmouth quay punt, Teal, and deserve a cheer or encouragement.
Read all about it on their weblogs, which can be found here.
Here’s what Adrian had to say at the end of last week:
‘I just thought I’d send you an update on our progress with Teal as we passed one of our major milestones today when the ballast was refitted.
‘To date we have replaced her entire center-line structure, including her keel, aft deadwood, stern knee, stern post, transom, stem, apron, bow knee, mast step, all the lower futtocks of the sawn frames and all but one of the transverse iron floors.
‘We will be moving on to planking very shortly but hope to save a lot of it, as apart from damage most of her original pitch pine is in very good order. It’s a bit too soon to tell but we will get a clear picture once the paint comes off in the coming weeks.
‘She will be getting a new deck, new cockpit, new interior, a new main mast and a small
inboard engine in the very near future so stay tuned – I try and keep the blog bang up to date for anyone who takes an interest in such masochism!
‘Best regards
‘Adrian’
Teal was launched in the summer of 1914, and was built by WE Thomas of Falmouth for a young author named Percy Woodcock. She’s had various names and owners since that time, including a two-season engineless trip to the Baltic in the hands of Andy Rankin following a lightning two-month refit job – an account of this period appeared in the magazine Classic Boat some years ago.
Adrian and Ken, who believe they are her 19th owners, are undertaking an extensive restoration at Hegarty’s Boatyard near Cork – the yard is also where the project to restore the AK Ilen is based.
I must say the job sounds arduous to say the least.
Adrian’s weblog reveals that her bronze nails were all brittle and loose in her frames and that only her copper fastenings have held her together. All her lower futtocks were either brittle or rotten, and her steamed timbers aft are doubled and even tripled, and had to be removed.
The plan is to replace the interior following the original layout but in Iroko and red deal rather than the original teak, pitch pine and kauri, and with oil lamps and a parafin stove rather than modern equivalents, and a bucket instead of a sea toilet.
The deck will be replaced with a new pine one covered in canvas and the coachroof will be kept but fitted with a new skylight.
The cockpit will have folding seats, if her new engine allows – Teal was originally built with an engine but the plan now is to fit a very compact diesel with a folding prop to one side of the stern post, as the original stern knee and post where never really heavy enough to take the stern tube.
By the end, we’re promised that she will look more original when we’re finished than she has for a very long time, and that probably still have 50 per cent of her original timber.
My thanks to Annie Dearman and Steve Harrison for letting me post this copy of their version of the broadside ballad The Death of Parker.
Parker was the leader of the Nore Mutiny.
The year 1797 saw two important mutinies in the British Navy that between them put the wind up the British ruling classes – who naturally feared the French led by Napoleon might invade, or that another revolution might arise on home soil.
From what I read, poor pay and conditions were behind both mutinies – in particular, the sailor’s pay had been fixed for nearly a century and a half and by the late 18th century was worth very little.
The first mutiny, at Spithead near Portsmouth, went on for about a month until the Navy met the men’s main demands. However, the Admiralty of the time made a fatal mistake in restricting the new pay and conditions to the ships that had been involved at Spithead – and the natural result was a second mutiny among ships stationed on the Thames.
This second mutiny was a somewhat different affair. The ships were scattered along the Nore, a sandbank in the Thames Estuary, and were more difficult to organise than they had been at Spithead.
However, they did establish what was called the ‘Floating Republic‘ made up of no less than 28 ships, and elected a leader, Richard Parker.
Parker was an interesting figure. He had been a naval officer and had risen to the rank of master’s mate, before a dispute with a fellow officer led to a court martial and the loss of his commission in 1793. He then became a manufacturer of golf balls, went bankrupt and finally rejoined the Navy as a crewman – though it is said he was so reluctant to do so that he attempted to jump into the sea on boarding his ship.
No doubt Parker was chosen for the role for many reasons, but perhaps the most important would have been his ability as a navigator. Others might well have been his knowledge of how the Navy did its business at the time, and the fact that while he was clearly on the side of the sailors he would be difficult to dismiss as a typically uneducated if rebellious crewman.
The mutineers made demands for improved pay and conditions to match those won at Spithead, and for pardons for the mutineers and their leaders.
Then, as the mutinying ships briefly blockaded the Thames and the Port of London, the game changed. The mutineers demanded that peace should be made with the French – something that must have seemed close to unthinkable to Royalist rulers on this side of the Channel.
Most historical sources tend to take one side or another, and I’m naturally skeptical about some of the things that are said of Parker, including that he was a supporter of the revolution in France, as earlier he had enjoyed a largely successful career in the Navy.
However, what seems to have happened next was that the mutineers were denied supplies, and sea marks were removed from Thames Estuary’s complicated channels.
This would have made it nearly impossible to sail safely out to sea using the navigational tools available at the time. Having sailed the Thames, I’d say this would have caused havoc among other vessels using the estuary, and it would be interesting to know what fishermen and others thought of this move.
Things became desperate and Parker gave the command for the mutineers to hoist anchor and attempt to sail out of the estuary, no ship moved. Parker and 28 other mutineers were captured and hanged. Most of the mutineers were not punished, however, I guess because they were not seen as strongly political, and in any case were needed to crew the ships now back under Admiralty control.
But the story doesn’t end there. Parker was buried in a shallow grave, much to the outrage of his wife. With the help of women friends she dug him up by night and carried him to a church in London, where he was given a more conventional burial.
It’s said that a guard of some kind passed by while the women were moving Parker- and that they hid him by sitting on him and covering him with their skirts.
There are various accounts and scraps of historical information here, here, here and here. The engraving of the scene shortly before Parker was hung is from the Wikipedia.
