SB Rathbale

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.

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, 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?

Tag: SB Rathbale

Bounty etc.

Cory’s Slipway