Category: Sailing ships

Worm in old Poole Harbour carving threatens UK wood jetties, archaeology and boats

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Merman carving found in Poole Harbour contains warm water ship worm

Merman carving found in Poole Harbour contains warm water ship worm

The Poole Harbour merman. I’ve been unable to find any
decent royalty-free images of the blacktip shipworm – please
point us to any you know!

An old carving found off Poole Harbour by Bournemouth University archaeologists has been attacked by a warm-water ship worm that could threaten boats, archaeological sites and wooden structures around the UK.

The carving of a merman in the Swash Channel near the entrance to the Harbour is said to be an important find, but the discovery of the warm-water ship worm Lyrodus pedicellatus or blacktip shipworm in both the carving and in timbers of the wreck could be rather more significant.

‘The presence of this type of borer can be interpreted as an indication of global warming, as it typically lives in more temperate waters, such as the Mediterranean,’ said one of the academics, Paulo Palma.

‘If this species of ship worm continues to spread at its current pace it poses a major threat to all submerged wooden structures around the British coast including jetties and piers, as well as to our underwater heritage.’

It seems pretty sure that this creature eats wood, it’ll attack many of our most important old boats too.

Undergraduate marine archaeology students from BU have spent the last three summers mapping the Swash Channel wreck which emerged in 2004 following dredging work. The wreck is believed to date from the early 1600s, although its exact country of origin remains unknown.

Click on the link to see Bournemouth University’s announcement.

A junk and some Ozzie sunsets from Jeff Cole

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Jeff Cole's junk painting

Jeff Cole’s been busy moving house, and turned up this splendid painting of a junk. Here’s what he said about it:

‘Hi Gavin, my house move(s) are going along, a very exhausting process mate! Here’s a pic that might interest the viewers of your site.

‘My maternal great grandfather was an officer in the British Merchant Marine and had learnt Japanese which he taught to my grandmother. In the early 1920s she taught english to Japanese naval officers training at Portsmouth and some embassy officials. One of those men, Takeo Fukuda, became Foreign Minister and Prime Minister in post war Japan. One day in the 1950s he turned up at my grandparents house in the Australian bush (they had migrated in 1928) with gifts including needlework from his mother and this painting of a junk. The artist’s signature symbol is under the mask. It’s one of the family heirlooms now.’

Inspired by some of my shots of the Swale recently, Jeff also sent over some photos of some local sunsets in his part of Australia.

Jeff Cole\'s sunset 1 Jeff Cole\'s sunset 1

Alfred Wallis, artist and chandler of St Ives

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Examples of Alfred Wallis’s work. Click on each one
for a larger image

Like most other areas of human activity, the art establishment tends to favour its own – so no matter how bohemian they may be, most artists are cultured and educated, and quite often rather posh. But every now and again the art establishment finds an artist whose work it finds so interesting and charming that the usual rules no longer apply. Beryl Cook was one of these – and Alfred Wallis was another.

Wallis seems to have had many roles – he was first a basket-maker, then a hand on merchant seaman, then a deep-sea fisherman, and then ran a business as marine stores dealer in St Ives, buying scrap iron, sails, rope and other items until his business closed in 1912. He then went to work for a local antiques dealer, an experience that may provided some understanding of the world of objets d’art.

He seems to have begun painting in earnest after his wife died. Short of money as he was, he painted on whatever objects came to hand and his subjects were often seascapes painted from memories going back to the era before the steamships took over from sail.

Life changed for him in 1928 when a group of artists led by Christopher Wood and Ben Nicholson set up the well known artists’ colony in the little town, for their arrival led to Wallis’s discovery by the art world.

Recognition doesn’t seem to have brought riches, for he eventually died in the workhouse in Penzance, but  Wallises are now highly collectible, and the artist behind them has become a legend. I gather that examples of his work have even been minaturised and made into fridge magnets…

Read all about Alfred Wallis and see the galleries of his work at http://www.alfredwallis.org.uk.

Wallis meets Ben Nicholson in 1928,
photographed by Christopher Wood