The Old Ways

[Poignard]

Quite right but if you look carefully, the barge in the foreground does have a topmast, lowered (as they did) down the front of the mainmast.
It is indeed laden, and I would guess the rig is raised to allow loading or unloading, either there at anchor or at a wharf nearby. They certainly would have had to dip the rig shooting London Bridge.

Yes, I think you are right.

 

[banger]

Down Topsails by Hervey Benham will give you more than enough information on Thames Barges.

 

[Kukri]

This snap of the Will Everard and an Everards’ motor coaster - Sedulity - at Colchester Gas Works must have been taken in the early Sixties; it shows the Hythe as I remember it as a boy. The Will Everard was sold out of trade in 1966.

We are looking North across the turning basin at close to High Water. I liked it better then than now...

 

[Hydrozoan]

Down Topsails by Hervey Benham will give you more than enough information on Thames Barges.

I suppose ‘more than enough’ depends on the nature of your interest. My wife enjoyed Bob Roberts’ Coasting Bargemaster (or said she did, and I believed her) but I think she might find Down Tops’l less engaging overall, despite its also having some great anecdotes. I found it fascinating and enjoyable, if a bit ‘listy’ at times - though that's obviously part of its interest, even to me but especially to a born East Coaster or barge aficionado - and I would have appreciated a glossary, despite knowing many of the technical terms.

 

[Poignard]

I suppose ‘more than enough’ depends on the nature of your interest. My wife enjoyed Bob Roberts’ Coasting Bargemaster (or said she did, and I believed her) but I think she might find Down Tops’l less engaging overall, despite its also having some great anecdotes. I found it fascinating and enjoyable, if a bit ‘listy’ at times - though that's obviously part of its interest, even to me but especially to a born East Coaster or barge aficionado - and I would have appreciated a glossary, despite knowing many of the technical terms.

More enjoyable and informative books on sailing barges:

"Sailing Barges" Frank G. Carr
"Spritsail Barges of Thames & Medway" Edgar J. March

 

[Hydrozoan]

More enjoyable and informative books on sailing barges:

"Sailing Barges" Frank G. Carr
"Spritsail Barges of Thames & Medway" Edgar J. March

Thanks!

 

[Kukri]

In the snap of the Hythe in the early Sixties are two other vessels that I remember:

The Borough Council’s bucket dredger, which lived a very long, very muddy, life, and Everard’s Sedulity. The dredger lived just upriver from the gasworks berth.

The “Sedulity”, all six hundred and fifty tons deadweight of her, led a long and blameless life too. In the days when town councils had gasworks accessible by creek, she made economic sense. But when she got to the age of thirty, along came North Sea Gas, and so she was sold to Greece and chalked up another decade.

 

[Greenheart]

Why are old ships so much nicer to look at than their modern equivalents? New ones are as angular and ugly as new yachts. ?

In about 1981 I saw the David Gestetner, previously the Ethel, tied up at Dell Quay. Not my pic - here she was at Exeter (I think).

I read that she made it across the Atlantic in the mid-eighties, and eventually met her end on the Thames River, Connecticut.