Tag: sailing barge

Sea Change Trust commissions new Thames sailing barge

blue-mermaid-plans-mum-b-day-centre-p-118

It’s great to see that the Sea Change Sailing Trust has commissioned shipwrights to build its new steel Thames sailing barge.

The yard involved is C Toms & Son of Polruan in Cornwall yard. See a story published by the Cornish Guardian here.

(Naturally, I’m aware that the claim that this is the first steel built sailing barge in 85 years isn’t quite true… but it might be the first cargo carrying steel-built barge.)

Sea Change currently provides residential opportunities for young people and vulnerable adults to learn and develop life skills on board chartered Thames sailing barges, including taking responsibility for their contribution and making group decisions. The target groups include those not in employment, education or training (NEET), young offenders and those in danger of offending, those experiencing social exclusion, those with special needs or who struggle in traditional educational settings, and those considering a maritime career.

The new sailing barge to be built for the trust is to be a replica of the steel-built Horlocks vessel Blue Mermaid, which in 1930 was the last sailing barge to be built, but which was sadly lost during the war.

The new Blue Mermaid will continue the trust’s established work, and extend it by carrying cargo and trainees who will gain sea time learning traditional seamanship skills.

The Sea Change website includes a nice quotation from Frank Carr, the first curator of the Greenwich Maritime Museum, original saviour of the Cutty Sark and noted author. Considering the diminishing fleet of trading sailing barges in 1951, he wrote that it might ‘be possible to run a fleet of sail-training barges as a venture almost economically self-supporting, in which, under ordinary trading conditions, large numbers of apprentices could receive a short period of training in sail, counting for sea-time, in which they would receive a very valuable grounding in real seamanship of a kind which they could never gain in steam.’

Check out the organisation’s appeal here.

Westmoreland Trust publishes North Kent brickmaking booklet online

Bricks Brickmen & Barges

Bricks Brickmen & Barges tells the story the brick-making industry of the Faversham, Conyer and Lower Halstow area of North Kent, and of how barges carried the bricks up-river, where they were used to build Victorian London.

It is published by the Westmoreland Trust, which aims to restore the last remaining Kent brick barge, Thames sailing barge Westmoreland, as a training vessel and working exhibit of the age when the brickfields and barges of North Kent ranked alongside Chatham Dockyard as the leading local employer.

In particular the Trust focuses on Westmoreland’s links with Lower Halstow – for her entire working life she was owned and operated by Eastwoods Brickmakers, which had works in the village.

For more information, see the Westmoreland Trust website.

EW Cooke painting and drawing in North Kent

Holly Shore Boats on Shore BM E W Cooke 1832

Following the recent post about EW Cooke, Faversham historian Arthur Percival has alerted me to the existence of this Cooke drawing of the scene at Holly Shore on Oare Creek – this is the spot we now know as Hollowshore.

This low-resolution image is all I’ve been able to get hold of up to now – the original is held by the British Museum but I have not been able to find a record of it on the museum website.

The entrance to Oare Creek and the Shipwright’s Arms will be familiar to anyone who has visited. The barge itself is of the old swim-headed type from long before the Henry Dodd established sailing barge races in the 1860s.

A long-standing fan of EW Cooke’s work, Mr Percival says the artist visited the area on the 9th July 1832.

Another find from searching the Internet is the image below of a sailing barge loaded with hay with a retired man of war in the background. I think this is very likely to depict a scene on the Medway, and is therefore of particular interest to those of us who sail in the area.

The man of war with its masts cut down is clearly not a prison hulk, because they were closed down a few years before EW’s visit.

The image of the hay barge is a thumbnail from the Magnolia Box prints and pictures website, which offers the image in various sizes – the title given is ‘Hay Barge and Men of War on the Medway, 1833’.

EW Cooke prison hull and sailing barge

Cooke clearly had a particular interest in hay barges – there’s another similar scene of a hay barge in still weather being handled under sweeps off Greenwich here.