Literary Merit.

[tillergirl]

I have just re-read the passage about Hole Have from F B Cooke's Cruising Hints [1st published 1928].
He waxes lyrical over it's charms, describing it as a "Mecca" for all good yachtsmen, and says that the anchorage would become packed with yachts on Saturday night. A bit different now.

You just prompted me to re-read the 1906 version. Pretty much the same except perhaps "one must telegraph or write to the Lobster Smack Inn at Hole Haven and have a trap sent to meet the train"? His description of Brightlingsea is hilarious "I never could understand why Brightlingsea should be such a favourite resort of yachtsmen: if ever a place needed a harbourmaster"

 

[Dan Tribe]

You just prompted me to re-read the 1906 version. Pretty much the same except perhaps "one must telegraph or write to the Lobster Smack Inn at Hole Haven and have a trap sent to meet the train"? His description of Brightlingsea is hilarious "I never could understand why Brightlingsea should be such a favourite resort of yachtsmen: if ever a place needed a harbourmaster"

He didn't have a high opinion of the place. My 1928 edition says
"Brightlingsea cannot be recommended, my advice is to shun the place as you would the plague!"
Say what you really mean Francis.

 

[Kukri]

Thanks - I shall look into that one. I had not seen it mentioned, and I'm not sure it has as high a profile as Gunn's work - which perhaps has some relevance to your claim in the OP. (I'm not being deliberately contentious, as I was genuinely surprised at the apparent lack.)

I can’t claim that it is as popular or even as good, but it is certainly similar.

Towering over both is « Pêcheur d'Islande » by Pierre Loti, written in 1886, iirc.

 

[Kukri]

He didn't have a high opinion of the place. My 1928 edition says
"Brightlingsea cannot be recommended, my advice is to shun the place as you would the plague!"
Say what you really mean Francis.

I thought it was Cooke who gave, as the reason for his objection to Brittlesea, the “hordes of little boys who infest the hard and offer to “watch your dinghy for you, Guv’nor?” in exchange for a tip”, and, should you fail to pay, you would inevitably find your dinghy afloat and well beyond wading distance.

But I have checked Dick Wynne’s Cooke Booke, and the story isn’t there.

 

[Kukri]

With a tip of the yachting cap to Fred Drift, when I first sailed into Woodbridge, as an 18 year old, camping in an 18ft half decker, on the 2nd September1971, I anchored in the river as the tide was making and went ashore to buy a Primus stove and to meet my little sister, who had been allowed to join me (we had very tolerant parents where sailing was concerned).

I had left the dinghy on the shingle near the Ferry Dock shelter. As we were about to set off back to the boat, a dapper elderly man with a goatee beard asked us if we could put him off to his own tender, as the tide had covered the anchor.

It was, of course, Maurice Griffiths, and he had selected perhaps the only two people in a boat in Woodbridge who didn’t recognise him and who had not yet read the opening pages of “The Magic of the Swatchways”.

 

[Poignard]

With a tip of the yachting cap to Fred Drift, when I first sailed into Woodbridge in 1971, aged 18, I anchored in the river as the tide was making and went ashore to buy a Primus stove and to meet my little sister who was allowed to join me (we had very tolerant parents where sailing was concerned).

[..]

The 'Rippingilles no: 3' being no longer available, I presume?

 

[Kukri]

The 'Rippingilles no: 3' being no longer available, I presume?

A Rippingille no.3 would not have fitted into the boat!

The Primus was bought from Webb’s the iron mongers in Church Street (they are still there) and it was a replacement for a folding one that I had borrowed from my parents and which had chosen to imitate a flame thrower at Pin Mill. (The packing where the burner screws onto the reservoir tends to fail...)

With great presence of mind (not) I hurled the thing overboard ... and then looked down to see that I had thrown, not the stove, which was still busy setting fire to the boat, but the kettle, OB.

I hurled the stove after the kettle and jumped into the pram dinghy to recover the kettle, which was still floating and hadn’t gone far...

 

[tillergirl]

I thought it was Cooke who gave, as the reason for his objection to Brittlesea, the “hordes of little boys who infest the hard and offer to “watch your dinghy for you, Guv’nor?” in exchange for a tip”, and, should you fail to pay, you would inevitably find your dinghy afloat and well beyond wading distance.

But I have checked Dick Wynne’s Cooke Booke, and the story isn’t there.

Quite, 'youthful ruffians'. An overview "In the summer months..... the place wears a rather dead-alive aspect". Compared with today, Clacton is gently handled* in 1906 "With a shudder we turn our backs on Clacton and hasten away down the Wallet"

* = pathos!

 

[Rosie1963]

I think we can claim Erik Blair too, seeing as his nom de guerre was inspired from the River?

 

[Kukri]

I think we can claim Erik Blair too, seeing as his nom de guerre was inspired from the River?

Lived in Southwold, but seems not to have messed about in boats.

George Orwell's Southwold home gets fresh plaque

 

[ianc1200]

Lived in Henley on Thames too - several rented houses his family had here, and Shiplake too (also on the river).

 

[Hydrozoan]

Lived in Henley on Thames too - several rented houses his family had here, and Shiplake too (also on the river).

Might Binfield Heath (of the 'Orwells' pub) claim a bit of him, too - though Lower Binfield probably counts as Shiplake, I guess?

I think we may include W G Sebald as an East Coast writer, which puts a distinctly literary weight into the scales.

 

[Kukri]

Sabine Baring-Gould (“Mehalah”)

 

[PeterWright]

I think he is buried in the local churchyard.

I had heard that he was buried in the Friends' burial ground, next to th Friends' Meeting House in Turn Lane, an alleyway between Church Street and Cumberland street.

When the Friends no longer required it, the Meeting House was converted to a dwelling house by Frank Carr of the Maritime Museum, anticipating his retirement. However, he changed his plans and never moved in, selling it on to my parents, who lived there happily for their last couple of decades up to the early 1990's. At one stage, Mum took a lease on the burial ground (from the Friends, who still owned it) to use as a vegetable garden and her vegetables thrived in it. The lease had a clause in it prohibiting digging more than one spade's depth when cultivating the plot, so we never uncovered any bones.

Peter.

p.s. My understanding is clearly wrong - Wikipedia tells me he was buried in the churchyard of Boulge, a hamlet to the North of Woodbridge and makes no mention of any connection with the Friends. Indeed, it says "he grew disenchanted with Christianity and eventually ceased to attend church". The article includes a photo of a rather grand grave in the Boulge chuchyard, which rather explains why we never found any reference to him on the sorry collection of stones propped against the wall between Mum's veg patch and Woodbridge prep school grounds. P.

 

[Jan Harber]

I had heard that he was buried in the Friends' burial ground, next to th Friends' Meeting House in Turn Lane, an alleyway between Church Street and Cumberland street.

When the Friends no longer required it, the Meeting House was converted to a dwelling house by Frank Carr of the Maritime Museum, anticipating his retirement. However, he changed his plans and never moved in, selling it on to my parents, who lived there happily for their last couple of decades up to the early 1990's. At one stage, Mum took a lease on the burial ground (from the Friends, who still owned it) to use as a vegetable garden and her vegetables thrived in it. The lease had a clause in it prohibiting digging more than one spade's depth when cultivating the plot, so we never uncovered any bones.

Peter.

p.s. My understanding is clearly wrong - Wikipedia tells me he was buried in the churchyard of Boulge, a hamlet to the North of Woodbridge and makes no mention of any connection with the Friends. Indeed, it says "he grew disenchanted with Christianity and eventually ceased to attend church". The article includes a photo of a rather grand grave in the Boulge chuchyard, which rather explains why we never found any reference to him on the sorry collection of stones propped against the wall between Mum's veg patch and Woodbridge prep school grounds. P.

We went to Boulge churchyard on a walk a couple of years ago and were surprised to discover that Old Fitz is not buried in the grand mausoleum but in a separate grave nearby. It seems he had fallen out completely with his family, who he declared to be quite mad, and made it clear that he was not to be laid to rest alongside them. There is a rose at the head of his gravestone, which is supposed to have come from a cutting taken from Omar Khayyam’s grave in Iran.

 

[Kukri]

Boulge Church, from the admirable Simon Knott’s
Suffolk Churches

 

[Tomahawk]

I submit ‘The art of coarse sailing’ by Michael Greene
Every year I am inspired by his writing and find myself yelling ‘for god’s sake turn right!’ at my crew.

I had a copy of the art of coarse cruising with a note by Mr Green to his niece ... something about a burnt stew.
I had acquired it by dint of sharing a house with said niece.
I leant it to the then Commodoor of Clacton SC .. I seem to recall his name was Phill Stanton.
I sometimes wonder if he still has it?

 

[Dan Tribe]

How can we have overlooked JDS , Des Sleightholme? Perhaps not truly great literature but his tales of Old Harry were always the first page to turn to in Yachts & Yachting and Yachting Monthly.
I'm re-reading a collection of these in Anchor's Aweigh, still relevant today.

 

[Gary Fox]

Lived in Southwold, but seems not to have messed about in boats.

George Orwell's Southwold home gets fresh plaque

In the last few years when he was dying of TB, and writing 1984, he lived in a house on Jura, near Corryvrechan. (Pic, I think it's a B&B now)
One day he took his small family into the notorious Strait, their dinghy was capsized, and they were lucky to escape with their lives.
His famous work, which he is perhaps best known for, would have remained unfinished and unpublished, without that lucky escape from a reckless fishing trip. He's one of my absolute literary heros, but in real life he could be a bit of a tw@t..

 

[banger]

Regarding Nightfall, I had a boat moored in Downs Road yard when it was owned by Dickie Richardson in 1970s, Nightfall appeared on his listing at £1,200, and was just up from my boat so I had to have a look, she was totally original as described by MG, except for the engine which was the inevitable Stuart Turner. The word in the yard was that she was a bit rotten in places, true or not I don't know.
She was bought by a chap who moved on with his family, wife and, I think, three children, didn't, as far as I know, sail it, he worked as a mechanic for a local plant hire firm, don't know how long they were there as I sold my boat so lost contact.