Tag: History

Australians find photos of Alan Villiers ship Joseph Conrad in Australia

The crew of the Joseph Conrad

The Australian National Maritime Museum has published a series of photos of Alan Villiers’ ship Joseph Conrad and it’s on Flickr.

Legendary writer, photographer and sailor Villiers bought the old square rigger, Georg Stage just as the training ship was about to be scrapped, renamed her the Joseph Conrad and set out from Ipswich on a circumnavigation in October 1934. The crew were mostly boys rather than men, as the photo above shows.

The ship crossed the Atlantic Ocean to New York City, then turned south to Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, and across the Indian Ocean and through the East Indies.

After stopping at Sydney, New Zealand and Tahiti, Joseph Conrad rounded Cape Horn and returned to New York on 16 October 1936, having traveled a total of some 57,000 miles.

Villiers wrote three books about the trip: Cruise of the ‘Conrad’, Stormalong and Joey Goes to Sea.

For more on the Joseph Conrad, click here, and for more on Villiers click here.

Buckler’s Hard and its Ships, published 1906

 

 

A history of this important old centre for ship building, and now a destination for yacht owners and tourists.

‘Many cottages, now no longer needed, and falling to pieces, have had to be pulled down, and closed is the inn kept once by Mr Hemmons, where the shipwrights and caulkers were paid; as is the New Inn, with its traditions of a ”Smuggler’s Hole,” kept till much later times by Mr. Wort, who was succeeded by his son Joseph. James Bown, probably the ancestor of the Bound family today, no longer fires the kiln, and only hollows in a meadow and by the waterside tell where the ”top and bottom sawyers” laboured. The site of the mould-loft in the lower yard can still be pointed out. The blacksmith’s shop, part of which existed in the writer’s time, and which only ceased operations in 1885, is no more. The last of the Buckles went away with its disappearance, to settle down again as a repairer of agricultural implements and traction engines beyond Lymington.

‘Some three miles by land and five by water, away up the wooded estuary lie the shipwrights and caulkers resting in in the peaceful churchyard of Beaulieu Abbey, side by side with the last Hampshire iron-founders from Sowley Pond.

‘The only actual link with the past which has been known to me personally was an old copper riveter, named Glasby, whom I remember quite well, who died at the ripe age of ninety-one. He could well remember working at the ships in his youth, and was proud to talk about his memories of the time when oak, not iron, ruled the waves’

River Tamar fisherman and great character Allen Jewitt passes away

Alan Jewitt obituary Tamar fisherman

Weir Quay Boatyard has published a tribute to River Tamar fisherman Allen Jewitt that can only be called beautiful.

The Tamar has clearly lost one of its characters, and many of his neighbours will miss a treasured friend.

Allen Jewitt, who died suddenly a few days ago at the age of 70, lived on the water for many decades and was the last full-time net fisherman on the river until that business had to be ended in order to sustain stocks. From that time he  caught eels until just last year.

In reading the Weir Quay folks’ obituary, I feel I can almost hear the snap of another link with history being lost forever.

YouTube has a nice documentary in which he talks about his life and demonstrates how he made his living catching eels in the lovely River Tamar, and it’s immediately clear why he was held in such affection by his neighbours on the river.

I particularly like one line that makes me smile in particular: ‘They call these things danbuoys – they must have been named after a man called Dan Boy.’