Tag: David Rye (Page 1 of 2)

Westmoreland Needs Your Cash

Westmoreland Just Giving page

Westmoreland Just Giving page by Claire Curling

This is a story we, and probably you too, have been following since the hull of the Westmoreland was rescued from the mud of Standard Quay just before I moved from Kent to Ireland. Our frequent contributor David Rye has tipped me off to the most recent stage, following the Council at High Halstow having now given tentative permission for the hull to be moored there for her restoration pending gaining Lottery Money.

David sends me a link to an article in Kent On Line as follows

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/sittingbourne_messenger/news/dream-of-returning-barge-to-12382

where you can read all about the project. As they say

A berth has been offered for the next 25 years by the parish council to allow the restoration and operation of the vessel provided the trust, which was set up to oversee the £1m project, is successful in its bid for Heritage Lottery funding.

Until then it only has a temporary lease of 27 months during which volunteer members of the Westmoreland Trust Community Interest Company (CIC) must submit their application.

As a result she will remain in the creek on a mooring until it is approved.

A total of £2,000 was needed to move her from Otterham where she had been moored for the last couple of years.

The main reason for the post today, though is that…..

THEY NEED YOUR MONEY!

Any amount you could spare will help them reach their target of £2000 to pay for the move. This is dead easy nowadays, if you are on line, as it is working through the ‘Just Giving’ website at https://www.justgiving.com/yimby/Westmoreland

The way this works currently is that you go in and pledge your cash, giving debit card details, but no money is taken yet, till they see if they will reach their target.

Get in there and give generously; help save this fine old Conyer Brickie and former Faversham mud-wallower.

 

 

Behind the Scenes

Nozz paints Cambria

Nozz paints Cambria in Feb 2011, Picture by Matt Care

I am ashamed to say that I pick up a barge book sometimes and enjoy the thorough, detailed factual stuff there-in, but completely take for granted the hard, pains-taking research that goes on behind the scenes to uncover these facts. Then every now and then I get a glimpse of the digging. delving, cross-checking and decyphering, not to mention the leg work nipping between archives and libraries and the hours spent at desks and dusty filing shelves. I get copied in sometimes on email ‘threads’ running between these researchers, for example when one of them needs to throw open a question to the wider barge audience on a “does anyone out there know” basis.

Most recently I was passed one from Friend of Cambria and frequent contributor to this blog, David Rye. He is among a gathering of guys in the Society for Sailing Barge Research (the group who do a bulk of this research) looking out the story of a swim headed lighter named Montreal. We pick up the story as four of them, David Rye, John Green, Mike Miller and John White are discussing recent sightings. Mike confirms to John that “SB Montreal of London recently sank on her moorings in Battersea and was eventually deemed un-repairable due to extensive keel rot. She was broken up on here moorings a few months ago to make way for more houseboats on the site.” John notes that “Montreal had left Battersea some months ago and believes (he) sighted her hull without spars or leeboards  bows in at a dock just above Erith YC while on Balmoral this summer.  (He has) been trying to obtain confirmation from EYC and to find time and weather to go down to look landward to see if I was correct.  Certainly other craft have taken her berth at the Old Church.  (He asks) Can Mike Miller tell us any more, Montreal hadn’t been out for some years but her gear looked worth saving for another hull” and so it goes on.

David Wood writes to David Rye “Ron Green believes you are based somewhere in the Erith region and might be able to throw some light the whereabouts of this swimmie ex Bowaters lighter which Mike Miller mentions in his email to the Hon.Sec. SSBR  which he circulated to the committee earlier today  I wonder if you    are indeed a local and have any idea what the lighter hull / hulk may be, I could make out buff decks, bittheads and a square blue transom but the channel is somewhat distant from the shore, the light was poor my glasses misted etc. etc.”

Mike Miller comes back in with “As I understand the owner of Montreal Vadim Jean was unable to cover cost of repairs when required. I had a friend live onboard Montreal nearly five years ago now in Battersea and even then she was fighting a losing battle against keel of this lighter rotting away. It was not until this year that things had got so bad that frames started to shift and planking sprung and she sank at her moorings. As I understand she was towed away to Erith to be stripped of rig and as much salvageable kit as possible. The rig was in very good condition along with sails and most deck equipment so should find its way to another barge soon.
I last heard she was deemed un-economic and too extensive a job to repair so was due to be broken up. Does anyone know if this has happened yet?  It was a shame as she was sailing up until 8 years ago but time up river with rig down being used as a house boat has seen her suffering with the perils of fresh water ingress.   Kind regards  Mike”

It is fascinating to get a peek into these comings and goings. This is just one barge the guys are trying to nail down. The Compendium Team looked into the histories of over 4000 hulls during the making of the tome. The barge community should, for sure, thank these people and respect and appreciate their hard work. Obviously, if anyone ‘out there’ does know anything about Montreal, the team at SSBR would love to hear from you.

Calendar Received

Today I received through the post, my Cambria 2013 Calendar and, now that I have seen it in the flesh, I can confirm that it is a lovely thing to have and to put on the wall. I love the big glossy photo’s (as I said, taken mainly by Mark C in bright sunshine during the races) and also (always a concern for making a calendar useful rather than just pretty) there is plenty of space to write your events per day. Mine is already ‘up there’ and has a number of 2013 events written into it. I am not sure whether there is any more point me hawking this, as they may well be sold out. I have emailed Cathy C to check. I will let you know.

Head marking on Cambria jib

Head marking on Cambria jib; pic by Matt Care

Meanwhile ace rooter-out of bizarre, sailing-related video on You-Tube, David Rye, has come up with a Thanksgiving Day related video showing the USA Founding Fathers’ Mayflower 2 reproduction tall ship, built in the 50’s for a film and now on display to the public. The film includes interviews with the Project Director, various carpenters and some of the actors who now show people round the ship while dressed in period costume.

Nice one, David. Thanks for that.

Loose Ends

A bitty old post today as I catch up a few loose ends.

Newspaper Cutting

Newspaper Cutting showing the Pihama Girls receiving their award from HRH Princess Anne; Photo from Faversham Times Thurs Nov 15th 2012

First  up, those Pihama Girls got themselves into at least three Kentish local papers (The Faversham Times, The Faversham Gazette (Kent Messenger) and the Ashford Kent Messenger with this nice picture and a good write up including comment from their School Headmaster, David Anderson.

 

2nd, David Rye, former “Occasional Contributor”, fast becoming “Regular Contributor” has found some more good links, including the next two sections of that instructional video on sailing the square rigger Solandet at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlRbcTsm2rc&feature=youtu.be (Part 2)

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3jU9Xz_GHE&feature=youtu.be (Part 3)

plus some nice assorted sailing vessels on

and then the moving of a big chunk of a new Aircraft carrier by sea on

HMS Queen Elizabeth prepares to depart Rosyth side by side with HMS Prince of Wales - May 2019

 

And, last but not least, the latest from SB Westmoreland modelers, Dave and Tony Brooks who tell us that by,

“14th November. An undercoat has been applied to the hull to show up any major blemishes, then final touches applied to our windlass and yet more cleaning up.  After this we decided to take a look at the mainmast furniture, namely the hounds and topmast cap that take the cross trees and house the topmast. Careful manipulation of brass and we had something that looked remarkably like the real thing. The brass for the topmast cap was gently rolled around a bar and then soldered. Once they were finished we glued both pieces to our mast and while we were at it we squared off the bottom of the mast to fit the mast case”.

Thanks all of you. I will put some of Dave’s latest pictures of the model up over the next few days.

Sailing the Sorlandet

Sorlandet

Norwegian sail training ship, Sorlandet; picture a screen grab from You Tube noted by David Rye.

A bit of a treat today with a link found by our friend and occasional contributor, David Rye.

 

Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6DZIvMZWzQ&feature=youtu.be

 

This is a video explaining how to sail and manouvre a square rigger. This link is to part 1. The video claims to explain all sorts of manouvres from weighing anchor and getting under way, through tacking, heaving to and finally anchoring under sail but part 1, 11 minutes long manages only to explain the sail plan and get under way. I presume the other parts will cover the rest. It is fascinating stuff mainly for the myriad ropes (sheets, buntlines, braces, halliards etc) and huge amount of people needed to crew the ship. In this case it is the Norwegian sail training ship Sorlandet. Get a look at it, if only for the beauty of the ship and the snippets of info you will be able to drop into conversation if it all goes quiet in the snug tonight. A ‘ship’ for example was a fully square rigged vessel with squaresails on the mizzen, anything less, for example a mere ‘Spanker’ on the mizzen, and you were a ‘barque’. The commentator also sounds worryingly like Rebuild Project Manager, William Collard, to me anyway!

Thanks very much for that, David!

 

Bounty etc.

HMS Bounty

HMS Bounty, Image from news website.

There can not be many of my readers here who do not know by now that replica ship HMS Bounty, built for the filming of the Brando movie “Mutiny on the Bounty” was unfortunately sunk and lost in the recent storm “Hurricane Sandy” which hit the Eastern seaboard of the USA.  Our friend David Rye, though, has found a rather nice video about the ship on the National Geographic website at http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/ which includes, among other footage, pictures of shipwrights using mauls and adzes. Thank you for that link, David. Incidentally, go grab a look sooner rather than later because this link is to NG’s ‘front page story’ rather than the Bounty piece, so as Bounty falls off the front page it may disappear from this link.

 

Meanwhile, Rebuild Project Manager, William Collard provides some more detail on the Cory’s slipway and SB Rathbale, which story we featured a few days ago. William says, “I may be able to give you a little information about Cory’s Slipway.

In Ken Keenan’s excellent book ‘ The Fires of London’ – A History of the Thames lighterage operations of William Cory & Son Ltd, he quotes that on the 15th October 1896 William Cory & Son amalgamated with seven other coal handing companies and become a limited liability company.  In so doing it became the biggest fuel handling company in the Britain and quite possibly in the world.
Two of the companies in the formation were Lambert Bros and Beadle Brothers Ltd.   Ken notes that with Beadle Brothers came Charles Beadle and Mr J C Hamilton Creig together with the thriving business at Erith where the wharf rivalled Cory’s Victoria Dock premises in throughput. The same aerial picture of Erith is shown in the book and is attributed to the 1920s and was originally published in the Cory house magazine ‘Black Diamond’
Francis Lambert of Lambert Brothers personally owned the sailing barges Giralda, Surf (sure you are fast) and Surge (sure you are Giralda’s equal)  and raced them all successfully in the annual barge races, though Giralda was notably the best.
SB Rathbale is noted in both Racing Sailormen and Spritsail barges of the Thames and Medway where details of the 1896 Thames race say the barge was one of the first steel barges to race but proved a disappointment in finishing sixth.  However, she struck a fresh note in colour schemes being resplendent in a light blue hull and dark blue wale!”
So now you know. Thank you very much for that, William.

 

Cory’s Slipway

Today, instead of my endless trying to blag stories and research out of you guys for this blog, you have a chance to possibly help out friend and sometime contributor, David Rye, who is doing some research around an old barge location and asks for our help.

 

Corey's Slipway

Corey’s Slipway, Photo provided by David Rye.

“Some of you will be aware”, says David, “that I am trying to research S.B. Rathbale built at Erith in 1896 by Easton & Anderson, previously E.A. & Goolden. Recently Ken C. kindly took myself and a cousin to what is left of the site – the slipway where we believe she was built – it is now concreted over. He also provided me with the attached photo. In the right-hand corner you will see a building with a double white roof and another to its right – in between is the slipway. On it appears to be a Cory’s tug, white band on funnel with a black diamond on either side if I remember correctly, together with perhaps another tug and two dumb barges. E. & A. originally owned the slipway but eventually Cory’s took it over presumably when E. & A. ‘went out of business.’ I will attach a photo of Giralda on the slipway. As to Cory’s wharf Ken knows all the details but briefly the one in the photo was replaced by the present larger one which extends perhaps one third further out into the river. The public can now use it – a bit like a pier in the old days – certainly not when we were children. It was out of bounds even for the most bold! Finally, again looking at the photo, everything to the left of the slip as far as perhaps two thirds of the way across the photo is now a Morrisons, with flats beyond towards the river, a pathway and then the river. Any information or photos of Rathbale would be gratefully received”.

 

Thank you for that, David. Maybe one of our readers will comment?

Erith in 1880

While we’re on old documents, I was emailed today by frequent contributor David Rye, a copy of this old photograph of the Thames from Erith taken in 1880 supplied to him by barge enthusiast Ken Chamberlain. David has entitled his email “How many sailing barges”. I can count at least about 32 on the original 13 meg picture (I love the detail on these old pre-digital photo’s where silver nitrate molecules were basically the ‘pixcel’. Digital is getting there but you still need to spend £££s on the camera body before you get one anything like as finely acute as old celluloid film!).

Erith at around 1880

Erith at around 1880; Picture supplied by Ken Chamberlain (via David Rye)

Ken C. says the shot is “From the sale catalogue for Belvedere Tower which I think was c1880. Royal Corinthian Yacht Club and St John’s Parish Church to the left, and the Ballast Wharf to the right. The  Erith Gas Works is carefully hidden behind the tall trees (which I strongly suspect have been inserted) in the centre. After all we can’t overlook a gas works can we?” (Is he talking to you there, Tricia Gurnett?)

Thanks for that David and Thanks too to Ken C.

Swanscombe development?

New frequent correspondent and now Ace Ferretter-out of interesting barge related stories, spotted this interesting item about a possible development in the “Disneyworld” stylee, on the banks of the Thames.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-19867695 The plan is apparently to build on the peninsular a £2 billion resort about which the report says ”

Developers have been granted a licence from Paramount Pictures to use its name on a resort on the Swanscombe Peninsula, near Dartford.

The scheme has been offered “support” by Dartford and Gravesham borough councils.

The site’s developer, London Resort Company Holdings, is now looking for further investment for the project.

It estimates the park, which would be based on a former cement works, would create up to 27,000 jobs.

The 900-acre brownfield site is next to Ebbsfleet International station, which is 17 minutes from London and two hours from Paris.

‘Economic growth’

Tony Sefton, project leader, said the company hoped to open the site in 2018.

He said: “Over the next 12 to 18 months we will be progressing the planning application,…. blah blah…. (Readers should go chase up the link of interested).

David Rye notes, in an email to a gent named David Wood (who, I regret, is not known to me) that he is “not sure if there is a barge connection in this area but if so suggest its history be researched and recorded before it is too late”

Clock and Barometer

Clock and Barometer on Cambria; Photo by Matt Care

David Wood quickly responds to DR saying “Thanks email 8 Oct 2012, at 19:02, with news from BBC and ITV  calling for an investigation of the hulks and other maritime remains to south of Broadness  in the creeks and marshland on the ness opposite Grays (St.Clements/ Fiddlers Reach/ Northfleet Hope)  in the Swanscombe Area of Dartford BC  ref. 9.1.c.3. TQ.60.76 of the current Hulks list extending to the Northfleet area of Gravesham Borough 9.1.d.2 TQ625.747.

This could affect any remains of John Byford, Warwick, and Windward and the various semi residential hulks / boats in the creeks which I recall being visible from the river, never having myself ventured so away from Greenhithe on foot.  I do not know if the dozen or so hulks listed in Northfleet remain or could be affected.   I would urge the Committee of SSBR to consider whether the Society should re-survey the area, perhaps before the next meeting bearing in mind the absence of craft affected by the Thames Gateway, the loss of Trojan and the querie about Montreal near the yacht club.

I have mentioned your email to the SSBR Chair who suggested that we should contact the archaeology dept of the Museum of London to see if their foreshore study has any relevance and of course Gravesham and Dartford Museums as well as the local yacht clubs.  No doubt the bird lobby will have the proposals in their sights and the Society should add the proposal to the agenda.”

and David Rye remarks

My goodness David I did not realise such a suggestion would bring forth such information so quickly.

My thoughts were that gathering any existing information needs a bit of forward planning and presumably next year’s ‘good weather months’ might be the last chance in some parts of that area.
Thank you for following up – regards David.
All of this was also pinged around the relevant bodies, persons and societies such as the SSBR, Tony Farnham and so on.
So, well done the two Davids and now everyone else for getting on the case so quickly. We don’t need any more Trojan surprises.

A good hammock

Friend of Cambria David Rye follows up on my stuff about Charles Dickens’s features in the Mainsheet magazine a couple of days back by sending me a link just in case we’d not spotted it. This is from the blogger “In the Boatshed” and is at http://intheboatshed.net/2012/09/27/dickens-goes-off-on-one/ and is amusingly and disrespectfully titled “Dickens goes off on one” . (Those of you who read the earlier stuff will know my lack of love of Dickens so you can imagine how I was amused by someone else ‘dissing’ the old gasbag). In this the blogger picks up on  the book “Dickens’s Dictionary of the Thames from its Source to the Nore” written by Dickens’s son, also called Charles D, as follows…

 

Hammock

Mr V.V. chills in the Hammock on board Cambria, Picture by Matt Care.

“Writing is often about making an argument, and an argument well made can provide fine entertainment, particularly if they’re extended, draw in evidence from many sources and finally achieve the status of a good rant.

Charles Dickens’s Dictionary provides several of these and the following quotations about the geezers who manage dumb barges on the River Thames is one of the best.

Barges. – Although the extension of the railway facilities in the country through which runs the Upper Thames has has very considerably reduced the number of up-river barges, there are still many engaged in the carrying trade. That they are useful may be taken for granted; that they are possibly ornamental, may be a matter of opinion; that they are a decided nuisance when a string of them, under the convoy of a vicious steam-tug, monopolises a lock for an hour or so, admits of no doubt. And the steam tugs themselves are an abomination. They are driven along with a sublime disregard of the interests of persons in punts and small boats – in this respect resembling their more distinguished cousins, the steam launches – and raise a wash which, one would suppose, can be as little beneficial to the banks of the river as it is to the peace of mind of anglers and oarsmen. Nor are the manners and customs of their crews, or of their associates the bargees, such as to conduce to the comfort of riparian proprieters or pleasure seekers. Practically, they seem to have things all their own way, and to do and say just what they like. All that can be done is to give them as wide a berth as possible, and to be thankful, at all events, that there are not more of them.

…and so it goes on, rather Brilliantly! I will leave you to follow the links and read more yourselves, but thank you David Rye, and especially thank you to Mr “In the Boatshed” (Mr Gavin Atkin on this occasion).

One of the joys of being able to live on the barge is the chance to try out the hammocks. I leave you with this picture of yours truly chilling on board. I like a good hammock.

 

« Older posts

© 2024

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑