CHAPTER IV

‘Dulcedo loci nos attinet.’

The primitive explorers who came up the Thames in their rough craft examined the site of what was afterwards to be London, and saw that it was good. London is where it is because of the river. It is strange that Londoners should know so little, below bridges, of the river that made them. The reason, of course, is that the means of seeing it are very poor. How many Londoners could say how to come upon even a peep of the lower river within a distance of five miles of London Bridge? The common impression is that the river is impenetrably walled up by warehouses, wharfs, docks, and other forbidden ground. A simple way is to go by steamer when steamers are plying, but the best way is to be taken on board a sailing barge.

Taine said that the only proper approach to London was by the Thames, as in no other way could a stranger conceive the meaning of London. And from the water only is it possible to see properly one of the most beautiful architectural visions in the world—the magnificent front ofGreenwich Hospital, rising out of the water, as noble a palace as ever Venice imagined.

If this is the most splendid spectacle of the lower Thames, the most characteristic sight is that of the sailing barges, of which you may pass hundreds between London Bridge and the Nore. These are vessels of which Londoners ought to be very proud indeed; they ought to boast of them, and take foreigners to see them. But, alas! the very word ‘barge’ is a symbol of ungainliness and sordidness. What beauty of line these barges really have, from the head of the towering topsail to the tiny mizzen that lightens the work of steering! There is no detail that is weak or mean; a barge thriddling (as they say in Essex) among the shipping of the winding river in a stiff breeze is boldness perfectly embodied in a human design. The Thames sailing barges are one of the best schools of seamanship that remain to a world conquered by steam.

The Thames barge is worthy to be studied for three reasons: her history, her beauty, and her handiness. She is the largest sailing craft in the world handled by two men—often by a man and his wife, or a boy—and that in the busiest water in the world.

One hundred to one hundred and twenty tons is the size of an average barge nowadays. Seventy-five to eighty feet long by eighteen feet beam are her measurements. With leeboards up she draws about three feet when light and six when loaded; whenshe is loaded, with her leeboards down, she draws fourteen feet.

For going through the bridges in London or at Rochester, or when navigating very narrow creeks, she will pick up a third hand known as a ‘huffler’ (which is no doubt the same word as ‘hoveller’)[1]to lend a hand.

[1]A hoveller is an unlicensed pilot or boatman, particularly on the Kentish coast. The word is said to be derived from the shelters or hovels in which the men lived, but such an easy derivation is to be mistrusted.

Some explanation must be given of how it is possible for two men to handle such a craft. In the first place, the largest sail of all, the mainsail, is set on a sprit, and is never hoisted or lowered, but remains permanently up. When the barge is not under way this sail is brailed or gathered up to the mast by ropes, much as the double curtain at a theatre is drawn and bunched up to each side. The topsail also remains aloft, and is attached to the topmast by masthoops, and has an inhaul and a downhaul, as well as sheet and halyard. Thus it can be controlled from the deck without becoming unmanageable in heavy weather. It is an especially large sail, and so far from being the mere auxiliary which a topsail is in yachts, it is one of the most important parts of the sail plan, and is the best-drawing sail in the vessel. It requires none of the coaxing and trimming which the yachtsman practises before he is satisfied with the set of the little sail which stands in so different a proportion and relation to his other sails. Often in a strong wind you may see a barge scudding under topsail and headsails only. The truth is that when a barge cannot carry her topsail it is not possible to handle her properly. The foresail, like the mainsail, works on a horse. These and several other things too technical to be mentioned here enable the barge to be worked short-handed.

THE SWALE RIVER

From Land’s End to Ymuiden the Thames barge strays, but her home is from the Foreland to Orfordness. Between these points, up every tidal creek of the Medway, Thames, Roach, Crouch, Blackwater, Colne, Hamford Water, Stour, Orwell, Deben, and Alde, wherever ‘there is water enough to wet your boots,’ as the barge skipper puts it, one will find a barge.

She is the genius of that maze of sands and mudbanks and curious tides which is the Thames Estuary. Among the shoals, swatchways, and channels, she can get about her business as no other craft can. The sandbanks, the dread of other vessels, have no terror for her; rather, she turns them to her use. In heavy weather, when loaded deep, she finds good shelter behind them; when light, she anchors on their backs for safety, and there, when the tide has left her, she sits as upright as a church. Then, too, she is consummate in cheating the tidesand making short cuts, or ‘a short spit of it,’ as bargees say. In this the sands help her, for the tide is far slacker over the banks than in the fairway, where her deep-draught sisters remain. While these are waiting for water she scoots along out of the tide and makes a good passage in a shoal sea.

What do all the barges carry? What do they not carry? were easier to answer. They generally start life—a life of at least fifty years if faithfully built and kept up—with freights of cement and grain, and such cargoes as would be spoilt in a leaky vessel. From grain and cement they descend by stages, carrying every conceivable cargo, until they reach the ultimate indignity of being entrusted only with what is not seriously damaged by bilge water.

Barges even carry big unwieldy engineering gear, and when the hatches are not large enough, the long pieces, such as fifty-foot turnable girders, are placed on deck. The sluices and lock-gates for the great Nile dam at Assuan were sent gradually by barge from Ipswich to London for transhipment.

Hay and straw—for carrying which more barges are used than for any other cargo except cement—must be mentioned separately. After the holds are full the trusses of hay or straw are piled up on deck lo a height of twelve to fifteen feet. At a distance the vessel looks like a haystack adrift on the sea. The deck cargo, secured by special gear, often weighs as much as forty tons, and stretchesalmost from one end of the ship to the other. There is no way from bow to stern except over the stack by ladders; the mainsail and foresail have to be reefed up, and a jib is set on a bowsprit; and the mate at the wheel, unable to see ahead, has to steer from the orders of the skipper, who ‘courses’ the vessel from the top of the stack. To see a ‘stackie’ blindly but accurately turning up a crowded reach of London River makes one respect the race of bargees for ever. How a ‘stackie’ works to windward as she does, with the enormous windage presented by the stack, and with only the reduced canvas above it, is a mystery, and is admitted to be a mystery by the bargemen themselves. One of them, when asked for an explanation, made the mystery more profound by these ingenuous words: ‘Well, sir, I reckon the eddy draught off the mainsail gits under the lee of the stack and shoves she up to wind’ard.’

The Thames barge is a direct descendant of the flat-bottomed Dutch craft, and her prototype is seen in the pictures of the Dutch marine school of the seventeenth century. Both her sprit and her leeboards are Dutch; the vangs controlling the sprit are the vangs of the sixteenth-century Dutch ships; and until 1830 she had still the Dutch overhanging bow, as may be seen in the drawings of E. W. Cooke. The development of her—the practical nautical knowledge applied to her rigging and gear—is British, like the invincible nautical aplomb of her crew.

Those who have watched the annual race of the Thames barges in a strong breeze have seen the perfection of motion and colour in the smaller vessels of commerce. The writer, when first he saw this race and beheld a brand-new barge heeling over in a wind which was as much as she could stand, glistening blackly from stem to stern except where the line of vivid green ran round her bulwark (a touch of genius, that green), with her red-brown sails as smooth and taut as a new dogskin glove, and her crew in red woollen caps in honour of the occasion, exclaimed that this was not a barge, but a yacht.

A barge never is, or could be, anything but graceful. The sheer of her hull, her spars and rigging, the many shades of red in her great tanned sails, the splendid curves of them when, full of wind, they belly out as she bowls along, entrance the eye. Whatever changes come, we shall have a record of the Thames barge of to-day in the accurate pictures of Mr. W. L. Wyllie. He has caught her drifting in a calm, the reflection of her ruddy sails rippling from her; snugged down to a gale, her sails taut and full, and wet and shining with spray; running before the wind; thrashing to windward with topsail rucked to meet a squall; at anchor; berthed. Loaded deep or sailing light; with toweringstacks of hay; creeping up a gut; sailing on blue seas beneath blue skies; or shaving the countless craft as she tacks through the haze and smoke of a London reach, she is always beautiful.

Of course the bargees pay their toll of lives like other sailors. They are not always in the quiet waters of liquid reflections that seem to make their vessels meet subjects for a Vandevelde picture. Many stories of wreck, suffering, and endurance might be told, but one will suffice—a true narrative of events. The bargeThe Sisters, laden with barley screenings, left Felixstowe dock for the Medway one Friday morning. She called at Burnham-on-Crouch, and on the following Friday afternoon was between the Maplin Sands and the Mouse Lightship, when a south-west gale arose with extraordinary suddenness. Before sail could be shortened the topsail and jib were blown away. The foresail sheet broke, and the sail slatted itself into several pieces before a remnant could be secured. Under the mainsail and the remaining portion of the foresail the skipper and his mate steered for Whitstable. Then the steering-chain broke, and nothing could be done but let go the anchor. They were then in the four-fathom channel, about three-quarters of a mile inside the West Oaze Buoy.

The seas swept the barge from end to end. Darkness fell, and for an hour the skipper burnt flares, while his mate stood by the boat ready tocast it off from the cleat in an emergency. The emergency came before there was a sign of approaching rescue. The barge suddenly plunged head first and disappeared. The mate, with the instinct of experience, cast off the painter of the boat as the deck went down beneath his feet. Both men went under water, but the boat was jerked forwards from her position astern as the painter released itself, and the men came up to find the dinghy between them. It was a miracle, but so it happened. They grabbed hold of her before she could be swept away, climbed in, and began to bail out the water. With one oar over the leeside and the other in the sculling-hole they made for the Mouse Lightship. ‘If we miss that,’ said the skipper, ‘God knows where we shall go!’ For four hours they struggled towards the Mouse light, although they could not always see it, and eventually came within hailing distance. They shouted again and again, but the crew of the lightship, though they heard them, could not at first see them. At last the boat came near enough for a line to be thrown across it. The boat was hauled alongside and the men were drawn up into safety, ‘eaten up with cramp,’ as the skipper said, and numb with exhaustion and exposure. At the same moment the boat, which was half-full of water, broke away and disappeared.

Perhaps the best time to see a barge is whiledeep laden, she beats to windward up Sea Reach, on a day when large clouds career across the sky, sweeping the water with shadows, as the squalls boom down the reach, and the wind, fighting the tide, kicks up a fierce short sea. Then, as the fishermen say, the tideway is ‘all of a paffle.’ As the barge comes towards you, heeling slightly (for barges never heel far), you can see her bluff bows crashing through the seas and flinging the spray far up the streaming foresail. It bursts with the rattle of shot on the canvas. You can see the anchor on the dripping bows dip and appear as sea after sea thuds over it, and the lee rigging dragging through the smother of foam that races along the decks and cascades off aft to join the frothy tumult astern. You can see the weather rigging as taut as fiddle-strings against the sky. Now she is coming about! The wheel spins round as the skipper puts the helm down, and the vessel shoots into the wind. She straightens up as a sprinter relaxes after an effort. The sails slat furiously; the air is filled with a sound as of the cracking of great whips; the sprit, swayed by the flacking sails, swings giddily from side to side; the mainsheet blocks rage on the horse. Then the foresail fills, the head of the barge pays off, and as the mate lets go the bowline the stay-sail slams to leeward with the report of a gun. The mainsail and topsail give a last shake, then fill with wind and fall asleep as the vessel steadies on hercourse and points for the Kentish shore. As she heels to port she lifts her gleaming side and trails her free leeboard as a bird might stretch a tired wing. She means to fetch the Chapman light next tack.

In Sea Reach

A fleet of barges shaking out their sails at the turn of the tide and moving off in unison like a flock of sea-birds is a picture that never leaves the mind. And darkness does not stop the bargeman even in the most crowded reaches so long as the tide serves. Every yachtsman accustomed to sail in the mouth of the Thames has in memory the spectral passing of a barge at night. She grows gradually out of the blackness. There is the gleam of her side light, the trickling sound of the wave under her forefoot, the towering mass of sombre canvas against the sky, the faint gleam of the binnacle lamp on the dark figure by the wheel, the little mizzen sail right aft blotting out for a moment the lights on the far shore, and the splash-splash of the dinghy towing astern. There she goes, and if the fair wind holds she will be in London by daybreak.

‘And sometimes I think a soul was gi’ed them with the blows.’

When the bargeOspreyberthed at Fleetwick Quay to unload stones for our roads we went on board, and took our old friend Elijah Wadely, the skipper, into our confidence.

’Ef yaou’re a goin’ to buy a little ould barge, sir,’ said Elijah, ‘what yaou wants to know is ’er constitootion. My meanin’ is, ef yaou knaow who built she, yaou’ll know ef she was well built; and ef yaou knaow what trade she’s bin’ in you can learn from that. Naow ef she’s a carryin’ wheat, or any o’ them grains, what must be kept dry, yaou’ll knaow she can’t be makin’ any water, ordo, she ’ouldn’t be a carryin’ ’em. Then agin, water don’t improve cement, and that’s a cargo what’s wonnerful heavy on a barge is cement, and ef bags is spoilt that’s a loss to the skipper, that is. So you can take it that barges what carry same as grain and oilcake and cement and bricks and such-like is mostly good too.

‘And when yaou knaows what she’s bin a carryin’ yaou wants to know where she’s bin a carryin’ it to; for some berths is good and some iswonnerful bad, specially draw-docks,[2]and what sort of condition she’s in is all accordin’ to where she’s bin a settin’ abaout. I’ve knaowed many a barge strain herself settin’ in a bad berth, whereas a barge of good constitootion settin’ in the same berth will maybe wring a bit and make water for a trip or two, but she’ll take up agin. Yes, sir, ef yaou’re a goin’ to buy a little ould barge—and there ain’t a craft afloat as ’ud make a better ’ome, as my missis ’as said scores o’ times—yaou must study ’er constitootion.’

[2]Berths on the river bed, where carts come alongside at low water to unload the barges.

‘How’s trade, Lijah?’

‘Well, sir, I’ve bin bargin’ forty years, and I don’t fare to remember when times was so bad in bargin’ afore.’

‘What do you think we could get a decent 120-ton barge for, Lijah, supposing we wanted a big one?’

‘I doubt yaou ’ont get ’un under five or six hundred paounds. Yaou see, sir, what bit o’ trade there is them bigger barges same as 120 tons and up’ards gits, for they on’y carries two ’ands same as we, what can on’y carry 95 ton, though by rights they ought to carry a third ’and.’

‘Do you think we could get a sound 90 tonner for two hundred pounds, because that’s the size we’ve practically decided on?’

‘I don’t want to think nawthen about that, Iknaowyaou can. Why, on’y last week theAdawas sould for one ’undred and sixty pound, as good a little ould thing as any man ever wanted under ’im. But yaou wants to be wonnerful careful-like in buyin’ a barge. Yaou know that, sir, as well as I do, and my meanin’ is there’s barges and barges. As I was a tellin’ yer, yaou wants to know her constitootion first, and then yaou wants to knaow her character. Yaou don’t want to take up with a craft what yaou can’t press a bit, or what’ll bury ’er jowl or keep all on a gnawin’ to wind’ard or ’ont lay at anchor easy or is unlucky in gettin’ run into.’

‘Why, you’re not superstitious, are you, Lijah?’

‘No, no, sir. I’m on’y tellin’ yer there’s barges and barges. Look at this little ouldOsprey, sir. Yaou can see she’s got a new bowsprit. Well an’ that’s the third time she’s bin in trouble since yaou’ve knaowed she, ain’t it? We’d just come off the loadin’ pier at Southend to make room for another barge, and we layed on that ould moorin’ under the pier right agin the foot of the beach ready for the mornin’s high water. Well, she took the graound all right, for she d’ent on’y float there about faour hours out of the twelve, and I went belaow to turn in for a bit. She ’adn’t barely flet when I felt her snub, and there was a barge atop ’o she and aour bowsprit gone. I knaow wessels has laid on thatould moorin’ for the last twenty year, and never ain’t heard tell of one bein’ in trouble afore.

‘Soon as we’d got t’other barge clear, I went up and tould the guvnor. “Lijah,” ’e says, “ef I was to put that little ouldOspreyin my back-yard she’d get run into.” Yes, that’s the truth, that is; you can’t leave that ould barge anywhere, no matter where that is, but the ould thing’ll have suthen atop o’ she. And what’s more, the guvnor’s lost every case he’s took up on ’er so far, though he was allus in the right.

‘Naow theAlma, what my wife’s cousin Bill Stebbins is skipper of, is all the other way raound. That ould thing’s bin run into twice since Bill’s had ’er, once on her transom and once on her port side just abaft the leeboards, and there warn’t no law case nor nawthen, but each time the party what done it agreed on a sum and paid it, and the ould thing made money over it for ’er guvnor.

‘I once see’d theAlmado a thing what I wouldn’t ’ave believed not if forty thaousand people told me. She was a layin’ in Limehouse reach, stackloaded and risin’ to abaout twenty fathom o’ chain. There was a strong wind daown, and she was a sheered in towards the shore. Bill’s mate was a goin’ ashore for beer, and I ’eard Bill tellin’ ’im to ’urry up. I knaowed why he tould the mate to be quick, because that blessed ould ebb was running wonnerful ’ard, and sometimes that’ll frickle abaoutand make a barge take a sheer aout, and p’raps break her chain, which barges do sometimes in the London River. Well, suddenly I seed that little ouldAlmasheer right off into the river and snub up with a master great jerk what pulled her ould head raound agin. Then I see’d ’er with her chain up and daown a drivin’ straight for the laower pier, where I reckoned she’d be stove in or suthen, and there was Bill alone on board as ’elpless as a new-born babe, as the sayin’ is, for a’ course ’e couldn’t lay aout no kedge nor nawthen by ’isself.

‘Well, as true as I’m a settin’ ’ere that lucky ould thing come a drivin’ athwart till she fetches into the eddy tide below the upper pier, and then she goes away to wind’ard, although there was a strong wind daown, mind yer, till she fetches up alongside another barge, theMabel, what was a layin’ there, and all Bill ’ad to do was to pass theAlma’sstay fall raound theMabel’sbaow cleat and back agin. Yes, sir, that was the head masterpiece that ever I did see.’

A few days afterwards we happened to see theNorah Emilydown in the mouth of our river. This was the barge commanded by Bill Stebbins, the former skipper of theAlma. We took a rather mischievous pleasure in going on board to find out whether Bill Stebbins would confirm all Elijah had told us. We fancied that Elijah would have spoken more circumspectly about the unfailing luck of theAlma, if he had guessed that Bill was likely to come round our way. But our doubts soon became remorse. Elijah was vindicated.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Bill, ‘that ouldAlmawas the luckiest ould basket ever built; that d’ent matter where yaou left she, she d’ent never git into trouble. There was faour on us once’t a layin’ in the middle crick below the Haven, theLucy, theSusan, theFanny, and my little ouldAlma. We had to wait our turn at the quay for loadin’ straw, so the mate and me went off home for a day or two. Well, that come on to blaow suthen hard, that did, and all they there barges was in some kind of trouble, but theAlmashe just stayed where she were and d’ent come to no manner o’ harm.

‘Then agin, same as in the London docks, yaou ast any barge skipper yaou like haow long a barge can lay there without a lighter or a tug or suthen wantin’ she to shift. None the more for that, I’ve bin, there plenties o’ times with that little ouldAlma, and she warn’t niver in no one’s way. I remember off Pickford’s wharf, Charing Cross, we ’ad to shift to make room for another barge. I ’ad to goo off to fix up another freight, but reckoned to be back by six o’clock, so I tould the mate to git a hand to help shift she and make fast in case I warn’t back tide-time. Well, arter I got my freight I meets one or two friends, and what with one thing and another, I den’t git back till eleven o’clock o’ night.I couldn’t find that mate, or,do, I’d a given he suthen, for there was that blessed ould thing made fast with a doddy bit o’ line no bigger’n yaour finger, whereas by rights she ought to have had three or faour of aour biggest ropes to hold she from slippin’ daown the wind. Anyway, there she lay end on just right for slippin’ off, and niver even offered to move. As yaou knaow, sir, scores and scores o’ barges ’av bruk the biggest rope they carry that way and gone slidin’ daown the wind. TheMary Janedid, just above Bricklesey[3]on the way to Toozy,[4]and buried her ould jowl that deep in the mud on t’other side of the gut that I was skeered she wasn’t goin’ to fleet.

[3]Brightlingsea.

[4]St. Osyth.

‘But there y’are, thatMary Jane’ouldn’t never set anywhere where any other barge would; and ef her rope was strong enough she’d have tore the main cross chock or anything else aout o’ she. That’s the masterousest thing, that is, but I s’pose that’s all accordin’ to the way her bottom is. But that ouldAlma—well, I’ve heard plenties o’ times afore I took she what a lucky bit o’ wood she were. Look at here, sir. We was up Oil Mill Crick by Thames Haven there and the wind straight in, and us had a bit o’ bad luck comin’ aout, for us stuck on that slopin’ shelf o’ mud right agin the salts there. I felt wonnerful anxious, for there warn’t three foot to spare, and ef she’d a slipped off she’d a bruk’erself to pieces. I don’t reckon any other barge ’ud have hild on there, but that ouldAlmadid. She just set up there same as a cat might on a table.

‘In Shelly Bay, too, just above the Chapman Light, she done a thing what no other barge ’ould have done. Us couldn’t let goo our anchor where us wanted to, as there was another barge, theLouisa, agin the quay. I had to goo off to see the guvnor, so I ast the skipper o’ theLouisato give my mate a hand when theLouisacome off, for a course theAlmahadn’t got near enough chain aout. Well, that bein’ a calm then my mate tould the skipper o’ theLouisanot to trouble, as he warn’t goin’ to shift till the mornin’. That bein’ a calm then warn’t to say that ’ud be a calm in the mornin’; and it warn’t, for that come on to blaow a strorng hard wind straight on shore.

‘That ould thing begun to drag her anchor, but as soon as ever her ould starn tailed on to that beach her anchor hild, and she lay head on to the sea as comfortable as yaou could want to be. There ain’t a mite o’ doubt but what ninety-nine barges out ’er a hundred ’ud have paid off one way or t’other, and come ashore broadside on and done some damage, for there’s a nasty swell comes in there.’

Barges came and went in our river. We inspected some at the quay, and sailed down in thePlaymateto talk to the skippers of others. We soon learned enough about barges to fill a book. We heard how the day theInvictawas launched she ran into another vessel and her skipper’s hand was badly cut; how his wife tried (in the Essex phrase) to ‘stench’ the bleeding; how the skipper swore that the ship would be unlucky, as blood had fallen on her on the day she was launched; and how the wife herself died on board on the third trip. We heard of good barges and bad, of lucky barges and unlucky; of barges that would always foul their anchors, and others that never did; of barges that would carry away spars or lose men overboard, or break away from their berths, and of others that were as gentle as doves.

Barges at an Essex Mill

It seemed that barges are much like human beings; when young, they can stand strains and do heavy work which they have to give up when middle-aged. If they have a weakness of constitution it reveals itself when they are young; but having passed the critical age, they settle down to a long useful life, and it is not uncommon for them to be still at work after fifty or sixty years. But the most important result of our researches was the universal opinion that a sound 90 tonner was to be got at our price.

At least, that was the most important fact from my point of view; but I ought in truthfulness to say that while I had been making notes likely tohelp me to buy a good barge with a sound constitution, the Mate had looked upon our accumulated information from a different angle, and had been giving her attention to barges’ characters.

I might have foreseen this, for she always looked on thePlaymateas a living thing. She has the feeling of the bargemen, who say of an old vessel, ’Is she still alive?’ I was not prepared, however, for her to tell me that, however sound a barge might be, I was not to buy her unless her character was good. I argued in vain.

‘Do you think I would be left with the children on board a barge like theOsprey, always being run into? Or like theMildred, always dragging her anchor? Or theCharlotte, who has thrown two men overboard? Not I!’

I pointed out that she had so successfully acquired the spirit of barging that she was evidently made for the life. The suggestion was received with favour. We were indeed now so deep in the business that we were beyond recall. Nothing remained but to choose our particular 90 tonner with a good character.

‘Ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats and water-rats, land-thieves and water-thieves.’

The next thing that happened was that we received an offer of £375 for our cottage. After an attempt to ‘raise the buyer one’—an attempt that would have been more persistent had our desire to become barge-owners been less ardent—we accepted the offer. We ought to have got more, but as the barge market was flat we salved our consciences on the principle that what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts.

We entered the barge market as buyers. It is impossible to ‘recapture the first fine careless rapture’ of those days. In every 90-ton barge we looked on we saw the possible outer walls of our future home. The arrival of the post had a new significance, for we had made known far and wide the fact that we were serious buyers. We turned over our letters on the breakfast-table every morning like merchants who should say, ‘What news from the Rialto?’

The first barges we heard of were, according to the advertisement, the ‘three sound and well-found sailing barges, theSusan, theEthel, and theProvidence, of 44 tons net register.’ Each of these was about 90 tons gross register, and at that moment of optimism the chances seemed at least three to one that one of them would suit us.

Let it be said here that the net registered tonnage of barges is a conventional symbol. Whether a barge carries 100 or 120 tons, the net tonnage is always 44 and so many hundredths—often over ninety hundredths. If by any miscalculation in building she works out at 45 tons or more, a sail-locker or some other locker is enlarged to reduce her tonnage, for vessels of 45 tons net register and upwards have to pay port dues in London.

It is, of course, the ambition of every owner, whether of a 5-ton yacht or theLeviathan, to get his net registered tonnage as low as possible, so as to minimize his port and light dues. One well-known yachtsman who was having his yacht registered kindly assisted the surveyor by holding one end of the measuring tape. In dark corners the yachtsman could hold the tape as he pleased, but in more open places the surveyor’s eye was upon him. The result was curious; the yacht turned out to have more beam right aft than amidships. ‘She’s a varra funny shaped boat,’ said the surveyor doubtfully. Luckily his dinner was waiting for him, andhe did not care to remeasure a yacht about the precise tonnage of which no one would ever trouble himself.

We hurried off to consult Elijah Wadely about theSusan, theEthel, and theProvidence.

‘Not a one o’ they ’on’t suit yaou, sir,’ said Lijah. ‘That little ouldSusanwas most tore out years ago—donkeys years ago. And that ouldEthel—- well, she’s only got one fault.’

‘What’s that?’

‘She were built too soon,’ chuckled Lijah. ‘And that ouldProvidenceis abaout the slowest bit o’ wood ever put on the water. No, no, sir; none o’ they ’on’t do.’

We were disappointed, of course, but not long afterwards we heard of another barge laid up near a neighbouring town, and went to see her. She had been tarred recently and looked fairly well, but we did not trust the owner. Not long before he had tried to sell us an old punt (also freshly done up) for twenty-five shillings—a punt which we discovered had been given to him for a pint of beer. We looked over the barge accompanied by the owner, who rather elaborately pointed out defects, which he knew, and we knew, were unimportant, in a breezy and open manner, as one trying to impress us with his candour.

When the Mate was out of hearing he used endearing and obscene language about the barge, asone who should say, ‘Now you know the worst of her and of me.’ However, the memory of the punt, and what Falstaff describes in Prince Hal’s eyes as ‘a certain hang-dog look,’ convinced us that the barge would never stand a survey, and we learned afterwards that she was as rotten as a pear below the water-line.

We had hardly returned from this inspection when we heard of three more barges to be sold. They were engaged in carrying cement to London and bringing back anything they could get, and at that moment were lying off Southwark.

We went at once to London. The next day we visited theElizabeth, one of the barges, and were invited into the cabin by the skipper and his wife—not any of our Essex folk, worse luck. I began to make use of some of the knowledge I had acquired. In this I was checked by the lady of the barge, who said, ‘It seems to me, mister, yer wants to know something, and if yer wants us to speak yer ought to pay yer footing.’

I sent for a bottle of gin, already painfully recognizing that looking at barges in our country was one thing, and in London another. The skipper and his wife appeared to be thirsty souls, for soundings in the bottle fell rapidly. We discussed the weather and things generally while I took stock of these people, who were to me a new and disagreeable type. I wondered whether they would be more likelyto speak the truth before they finished the gin—which they seemed likely to do—or afterwards. Meanwhile I looked round me.

TheElizabethhad a small cabin and no ventilation worth mentioning, and as the atmosphere grew thicker, in self-defence I lit my pipe. Then I tried again.

‘Well, yer see, mister, it’s this ’ere way. You wants to buy the barge, and if I says she’s all right you buys ’er, and I lose my job; and if I says she ain’t all right I gits into trouble with my guvnor.’

‘Quite so,’ I said, ‘but the survey will show whether she is sound or not, and I want to save the expense of having a survey at all if she isn’t sound. If I do have her surveyed and she is sound your owner will sell her anyhow. So you may just as well tell me.’

‘D’yer mind saying all that over again?’ remarked the skipper.

I did so, and the pair helped themselves to gin once more. ‘What I says is this,’ said the lady, ‘this is very fine gin and a very fine barge.’

‘Yus, the gin’s all right, and so’s the barge,’ said the skipper, adopting the brilliant formula. ‘I can’t say fairer’n that, can I?’

The situation was becoming hopeless and my anger was rising, so I said curtly, dropping diplomacy, ‘What I want to know is, does she leak, is she sound, what has she been carrying, where has she been trading to?’

“Can’t say, mister. This’s our first trip in ’er,” said the skipper.

“Fine gin and fine barge,” repeated the woman.

We fled.

The second barge we visited was a good-looking craft, built for some special work, but she lacked the depth in her hold which we required for our furniture.

The third barge, theWill Arding, lay off deep-loaded in the fairway waiting for the tide to berth. The skipper was not on board, but a longshoreman in search of a drink gave me a list of public-houses where he might be found.

At the first three public-houses knots of grimy mariners had either just seen George or were expecting him every minute, and if I would wait one of them would find him. At the fourth public-house the same offer was made, and in despair I accepted it.

It required more moral courage than I possessed to wait with thirsty sailors, their mugs ostentatiously empty, without ordering drinks all round; yet, as I expected, the huntsman returned in a few minutes puffing and blowing—which physical distress was instantaneously cured by sixpence—to say that George was nowhere to be found.

With a gambler’s throw, I tried one public-house not on my list, and George was not there; but asusual there were those who knew where to find him if the gentleman would wait.

I never met George, and, judging by his friends, I did not want to; though, to be just, he might have been blamelessly at home all this time with his family. And there, as a matter of fact, he very likely was, for I learned later, what everyone else knew and I might have suspected, that he had been paid off, as this was theWill Arding’slast trip before being sold.

We wandered back to the waterside and stood gazing at the slimy foreshore, the barges and lighters driving up on the muddy tide, the tugs fussing up and down, their bow-waves making the only specks of white in the gloomy scene, the bleak sooty warehouses, and the wharfs with their cranes like long black arms waving against the sky. We were declining rapidly into depression, when I saw emerging from the shadow of the bridge a stackie in charge of a tug.

How clean and dainty she looked, like a fresh country maid marketing in a slum! Her fragrant stack of hay brought to us a whiff of the country whence she had come, and a vision of great stretches of marshland dotted with cattle, and hayricks sheltered behind sea-walls waiting for red-sailed barges to take them away.

The tug slackened speed; the stack-barge was being dropped. She seemed familiar, and as she camenearer I saw her name, theAnnie. Joe Applegate, the skipper, a trusted friend of ours, was at the wheel. How pleased I was now that I had spent those fruitless half-hours looking for George!

“Ain’t that a fair masterpiece a seein’ yaou here, sir!” shouted Joe in good Essex that raised our spirits like a bar of cheerful music. “And haow’s them little ould booeys?”

He had come with 70 tons of hay for the London County Council horses. We were doubly glad to look on his honest face when he came on shore and told us that he knew theWill Ardingwell and had traded to this wharf for years.

“Yes, yes, sir; knaowed her these twenty years. She belongs to a friend of my guvnor’s, and were built by ’is father at Sittingbourne, and ’as allus been well kep’ up by ’is son. She’d be gettin’ on for forty, I reckon, and a course she ain’t same as a new barge, but she’ll last your lifetime if you’re on’y goin’ to live in she and goo a pugglin’ abaout on her same as summer-time and that. She’ll ’ave a cargo of cement aboard naow—90 to 95 tons she mostly carry, and I ain’t never heard of ’er spoiling a bag yet. She’s got a good constitution, she ’as, but none the more for that yaou can watch she unloaded to-morrer if yaou’ve a mind to, and ef she suits yaour purpose ave ’er surveyed arterwards.”

The Mate asked about her character.

“She ain’t never bin in trouble but once, that Iknaows on, and then she were run into by a ketch and got three timbers bruk on ’er port bow. No, no, sir; there ain’t nawthen agin that little ould thing.”

Hauling a Barge to her Berth

We seemed to be on the right tack at last. Having learned what more we could, we prepared to come to grips with the owner.

“Sail on! nor fear to breast the sea,Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee!”

“Sail on! nor fear to breast the sea,

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee!”

The owner of theWill Arding, whom we met the next day, was a kindly simple man who told us all we needed to know about the vessel. We had prepared ourselves to cope with a coper of the worst kind; but we were soon disarmed, and that not to our detriment. He told us that the barge had just finished her contract, and as, in his opinion, the days of small barges were over, except in good times, he was going to sell her, as she was barely paying her way. He showed us the record of her trips, the cargoes she had carried, the places she had traded to, and the repairs done to her from time to time.

He was so agreeable that the Mate hesitated to ask about her character, but her sense of duty prevailed. One collision, in which she was not to blame, and two fingers off the hand of one of her mates, appeared to be the only blots on an otherwise stainless career. Joe Applegate had already told us of the collision, though not of the fingers, and I hoped that the Mate would be satisfied. And she was, whenshe had learned that the fingers had been lost in the least ominous manner in which fingers conceivably could be lost.

Two days later we received a message that theWill Ardinghad unloaded, and was lying at Greenwich ready for us to examine her.

A more gloomy February day for our visit could hardly have been; the wind was light and easterly, and a cold drizzle fell through the fog. The damp, however, did not touch our spirits. Even our bodies were warmed by excitement. The owner met us in his yard, and we tried to assume an indifference which probably did not deceive him.

The tide had ebbed some way, leaving the gravelly foreshore covered with black slime, and there, half afloat, half resting on the ground, and gently rocking to the wash of a passing tug, lay theWill Arding, with a slight cant outwards. Her annual overhaul was due in a month, the owner told us, thus explaining the condition of her paint and tar. She had been sailed to Greenwich by odd hands who had not even troubled to wash her down. Certainly she was looking her worst, but the eye of faith already saw the splendours of her resurrection.

As we went on board, the owner told us he had given instructions for one of the plugs to be lifted and water let in. The water was mixed with creosote to sweeten the bilge. It was as well that he told us this, for what we saw when we descended into thehold might have daunted Cæsar. Some of the hatches were left on, and under these we took cover from the rain in the long dirty hold. She was still rocking slightly, and on the lee side black bilge water was slopping disconsolately backwards and forwards across the floor. A strong smell of creosote and smells of cement and other cargoes scarcely to be determined competed for recognition in our nostrils. TheWill Ardingseemed to have come down in the world; and this was the fact, for lately she had been sailed by men who can always be hired in the open market, but who do not look after their barges as the better class of skippers do. The best skippers had all taken up with the more modern class of large barges. The barges we had known in the country had always been scrupulously clean and tidy below. It was perhaps fortunate that our experience in the gin-drinker’s cabin had revealed to us another world, and thus in some sense deadened the shock of what we saw now.

We passed to the cabin aft, and one glance told us that the grimy mariners of the public-houses had truly been the friends of the late skipper George. To say that the cabin was dirty and stuffy is to say nothing. Even the paint was greasy, and a stale smell, indescribable but unforgettable, hung in the air. George and his mate had left their bedding, presumably as not worth taking away. No doubt they were right.

Some old clothes, a half-empty tin of condensed milk, stale mustard in an egg-cup, some kind of grease in a frying-pan, two mugs with the dregs of beer in them, lay about; and on the floor there were broken boots and old socks.

Returning to the hold, we took all the measurements necessary for our present purpose. We found that though theWill Ardinghad not as much headroom under her decks as we should have liked, she had enough for our piano, which was the tallest piece of furniture we intended to have on board. Moreover, we knew that barges of that size seldom have more headroom.

Still undepressed, if sobered by the prospect of the work to be done before we could possibly live on board, we went on shore to discuss the price with the owner. It was a most unpolemical discussion, and ended in my undertaking to buy theWill Ardingfor £140 subject to the surveyor’s report. We agreed upon a surveyor, and the owner gave orders for the vessel to be put on the blocks at the next tide.

From this time forward the owner was unreservedly our friend, and we dreaded lest our prize should be snatched from us at the last moment by the untoward judgment of the surveyor. The owner fortified our courage by assuring us he had done all the annual overhauls and repairs for many years, and therefore it was hardly possible that the surveywould reveal anything that could not easily be put right. Whatever the surveyor suggested he would do, whether we bought the barge or not.

We could only await the surveyor’s report as patiently as might be, and having bade the owner good-bye, we took one more look at theWill Ardingwith I hardly know what thoughts in our minds. She had canted over still further, and looked more dingy than ever in the growing dusk as she sat in a foreground of slime. Behind her on the wonderful old river, now hurrying its fastest seawards in muddy eddies, two of her sisters, their sails just drawing, glided noiselessly past and were received into the enveloping gloom, where the drizzle shut in the horizon and sky and water met indistinguishably.

Then we returned to London.

At last—as it seemed, though it was only three days later—the surveyor’s report arrived. All was well with theWill Arding, and she was, in the surveyor’s private opinion, worth all the money we were giving for her. The only defects worth speaking of were a sprung topmast and three damaged ribs forward, but these had been strengthened by ‘floating’ ribs alongside.

We hurried to Greenwich and paid a deposit on the price.

This time theWill Ardingwas on the blocks, and a gang of men had burned off the old tar andwere busy tarring and blackleading her hull; her gear had been lowered, and our friend the owner was having a new topmast fitted to make all good. He had also turned his men on to replace a length of damaged rail. That was not the only thing which he did for us outside our agreement. Soon, indeed, he became almost as much interested in our scheme as we were ourselves, and we consulted him at almost every turn.

While the repairs were going on we completed the purchase; and we were profoundly conscious of the importance of the formalities which constituted us the recognized owners of ‘sixty-four sixty-fourths’ of the sailing bargeWill Arding, with a registered number of our own.

Well, we were shipowners at any rate, and possessed the outer walls of our new home. And now the Mate and I found ourselves faced with a thousand unforeseen difficulties and problems, which crowded on us so thick that we scarcely knew where to begin to tackle them. This state of affairs compelled the drafting of rules of procedure, the chairman (myself) refusing motions on any point not mentioned in the agenda. Members of the Committee (the Mate) were allowed to make notes during the authorized debates on subjects to be referred to in the time set apart for general discussion. In this way our sanity was saved.

The first and most important thing was to disinfectthe ship. And here the luck was with us, for next door to the yard where theWill Ardinglay were some gas-works, the manager of which was a friend of theWill Arding’slate owner. Our requirements were disclosed to the manager, who not only told us what disinfectant to use, but most kindly offered to have it mixed in the right proportions in one of his boilers at a nominal cost. From the boiler it could be discharged direct under pressure into theWill Arding. After consultation we decided to have holes drilled through the lining of the hold at regular intervals. When this had been done theWill Ardingwas berthed as near as possible to the boiler.

Eighty gallons of neat disinfectant were mixed with 800 gallons of boiling water, a hose was laid on board, and the fluid was squirted into each of the holes. By the time the last gallon was on board the disinfectant was just above the floor, but the bubbles of foam reached to the decks. This process caused intense curiosity in the yard, and there were many croakers who told us that we should never get her sweet.

The barge returned to the yard, where the various repairs went on for several days. In the meantime, being in the best market of the world, we bought the timber, panelling, bath, kitchen range, a hundredweight of nails, paint, varnish, hot-water apparatus, and the hundred and one other things we required to turn the barge into a tenantablehouse. Now we enjoyed the advantage of all our work in the winter, for we had drawn up precise lists of the things to be bought.

We look back on those purchases with delight. It gives one a sense of real contact with the business of life to ask for the price of something f.o.b. London, on board one’s own ship, and to order the goods to be sent to such and such a wharf to the sailing bargeWill Arding. The summit of dignity was reached when I was able to tell a dealer, who was late in delivering his goods, that my ship with her general cargo on board was waiting to sail, and that if his goods were not on board that afternoon they would have to be sent by rail at his expense.

At last the repairs were finished, the general cargo was complete, and the hatches were on. As nothing would induce me to sleep in the cabin until it had been wholly cleaned, I decided not to sail theWill Ardingto the Essex coast myself, but to have her delivered at the shipwright’s at Bridgend—a place a few miles below Fleetwick on our river.

We saw theWill Ardingget under way. She had improved vastly in appearance. The tide was on the turn, and the wind westerly; great clouds sailed across the sky. It was a brave wind with a touch of spring in it, and it made theWill Arding’stopsail slat furiously as the mate hoisted it to the music of the patent blocks. The brails were let go, the mainsail was sheeted home; both men went forward, andthen the clank, clank, clank of the windlass fell on our ears with the sound we knew so well both by day and night. The chain was soon ‘up and down,’ and the foresail was hoisted and made fast to the rigging with a bowline. TheWill Ardingsheered slowly towards us with her sails full until the anchor checked her. Then swinging slowly round she came head to wind, her mainsail and foresail flapping loudly, and the mainsheet blocks crashing backwards and forwards on the main horse. When the foresail was aback the anchor was quickly broken out, and the barge filled on the other tack and gathered way.

We watched her standing over towards the opposite shore, until the mate got the anchor catted. Then bearing away with her great sprit right off and a white wave under her fore-foot, our home fled down the river.

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