Ace ferretter out of bizarre barge stories, Dave B, publishes this picture of the spritsail rigged barge Rosie Probert moored in Ipswich (Dave and Mrs B are up there for the Pin Mill match) and asks “Does anyone know anything about her?”
Half sized barge Rosie Probert, Picture by Dave Brooks
I went on a little internet scurry and was only able to find the following, which is probably not a very good answer (so if anyone out there knows any more, please pile in).
You can buy a 6 by 4 inch picture of her on ebay at http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/rp5607-UK-Sailing-Barge-Rosie-Probert-Photo-6×4-/390426304421?pt=UK_Collectables_Postcards_MJ&hash=item5ae7389fa5#ht_2541wt_905
Rosie Probert is actually a character from Dylan Thomas’s poem, Under Milk Wood, where (so Wikipedia tells me on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Milk_Wood) , she is “Captain Cat’s deceased lover, who appears in his dreams.” We are told that “During dinner, Mr. Pugh imagines poisoning Mrs. Pugh. Mrs. Organ-Morgan shares the day’s gossip with her husband, but his only interest is the organ. The audience sees a glimpse of Lord Cut-Glass’s insanity in his “kitchen full of time”. Captain Cat dreams of his lost lover, Rosie Probert, but weeps as he remembers that she will not be with him again. Nogood Boyo fishes in the bay, dreaming of Mrs. Dai Bread Two and geishas.” There you are – culture already!
I also found this in the “Maldon Little Ships Club Newsletter” at http://new.mlsc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/MLSCNewsletterNov10.pdf . On page 10/11 Di and John Rogers describing an East Coast Cruise say “John and Di went to the top of Orford castle with its splendid views across to Orfordness with its strange wartime pagoda like buildings. Whilst looking upstream towards Aldeburgh we even spotted my brother’s “half size” barge Rosie Probert coming down the Alde from Snape. We managed to book a meal in the famous Butley Oysterage and then John Boyce decided that it was time for afternoon tea……” and so on.
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Rosie Probert was indeed named after that lady from Undermilkwood – one and only love of cpt cat and many other sailors too – and so she is. She was designed and built by Pete Rogers in his garden 1985-1988, dragged over the sea wall and plopped in the water July 1988. Since then she has been all over the place – across the Leeds Liverpool canal, through the Caledonian Canal, down to the Solent, up to the Falkirk wheel, London and the Medway, Snape and Walton Backwaters, and round Lincolnshire from the Trent and through to Boston many times. She’s based in Ipswich at the moment because we want some simple sailing (compared to the mighty Humber), plus we occasionally live on board when work takes us down south.
The pic is fab – and so is Rosie. She has the Thames barge spritsail rig (although purists might say her sprit is on the wrong side… but it’s better that way for her), but Pete tweaked traditional lines to make her stable and comfortable – she’s a bit beamier that most small barges for that reason.