Category: Medway, Swale and the Kent coast

Medway, Swale and the Kent coast

Pathé News films of Faversham shipbuilders’ famous sideways launch

Here are a couple of Pathé News clips from long ago showing the famous sideways launch used by Faversham shipbuilders in action. My thanks to my old friend Ian Lawther!

PS While we’re on the subject of Pathé newsreels, reader Ed Maggs has let me know about another Pathé clip shot in 1954 that records the occasion when Lady and Lord Docker entertained some 45 miners on board their yacht, MY Shemara. I’m not at all sure about Lady Docker’s ‘sailor’s hornpipe’ by the way – I think it may owe a little more to ‘Naughty Norah’s’ background as a chorus girl than to that ancient tradition. Read about the scandalous Dockers here and here, though perhaps you might think reading about Shemara here and here might be more seemly. She’s just been done up and relaunched, and is described as a ‘classic superyacht’.

I gather MY Shemara had a distinguised career during WWII, when she was requisitioned and used as an anti-submarine training ship.

Thanks Ed!

Canoe sailing on the Medway

Someone took a camera aboard as they went canoe sailing on the Medway last weekend and here’s the result. My thanks to Paul Mullings for spotting this one.

Now, bearing in mind that Deadman’s Island is where folks who died on board the prison hulks that used to lie in Stangate Creek and the Medway were buried in the past*, would you say that was a human bone?

*Were the Nore mutineers’ leaders buried there too, I wonder?

Colin Frake returns to Faversham – and sets up shop in the Purifier Building

Colin Frake block maker

Many folks will be delighted to to hear that traditional block-maker and deck fittings maker Colin Frake has returned to Faversham – he’s been away for a couple of years after he took the difficult decision to leave Standard Quay a couple of years ago.

The new workshop is again by the waterside in the Purifier Building, which is leased and managed by the Faversham Creek Trust.