Any Muddy Bottom

by Geoff Body

  By the middle of the century the steam boats serving Bristol were not only towing vessels along the Avon, but were also the foundation of a whole network of packet boat operation. The city enjoyed regular packet boat services to Chepstow, Cardiff, Newport, Neath, Swansea, Carmarthen, Tenby, Ilfracombe, Milford Haven, Hayle and Padstow, and further afield to Liverpool, Dublin, Cork and Waterford. It also had its own local ‘commuter’ service between the Cumberland Basin, at the entrance to the floating harbour, and Portishead. On this route the Fairy Queen was operating a daily trip each way, sometimes two if the tide was right, at times varying from 7 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. depending on the depth of water available in the Avon. In one direction Fairy Queen called at Pill and in the other at the Lamplighters landing stage at Shirehampton. A day ticket for the whole journey cost one and sixpence in a best cabin (two shillings return) and one shilling in a second cabin.

  On the high seas steam was initially confined to an auxiliary role owing to the limitations of bunkering. Carrying coal meant sacrificing paying cargo space and arranging overseas supplies for refuelling on the journey meant further costs and complications. Even so, steam power continued to gain ground in new ship construction, but it was not a simple displacement. For one thing a seagoing vessel of any sort could have quite a long life and, in the case of wooden sailing vessels, be relatively easy of repair. Lightly abandoning such assets did not make economic sense. Furthermore, early steam engines were very liable to break down and their use, especially in managing the firebox and boiler, demanded new handling skills which took time to acquire. A steam vessel required an engineer as well as its other hands. And an engine of any size would need a separate hand to handle the coal, fuel the firebox and keep the steam pressure at a sufficient level. All of which added to costs.

  The middle of the nineteenth century saw the steam paddle tug, initially with a wooden hull, but later of iron, firmly entrenched in a useful towing role. Bridgwater got its first steam tug in 1837 and another in 1840. Ten years on and tugs were participating regularly in the pleasure trip market which was expanding rapidly in the Bristol Channel. The Bristol tugs had set the trend by the simple expedient of installing temporary extra decking, seating and awnings. And they went wherever they could find this useful extra revenue, the Bristol tug Alpha operating an excursion from Uphill as early as 1843 and later visits to the little pill there being made by the Air.

  In 1851 the Bridgwater Steam Towing Company’s tug Perseverance emulated the example of these early excursion pioneers with a pleasure trip to Minehead that proved exceedingly popular. Three days later the pleasure seekers who joined another steamer trip, this time by the Cardiff Castle, were not so happy with the outcome. On the journey to Flat Holm, strong winds and heavy seas gave the party a very uncomfortable ride and the thirty-one brave souls who went ashore on the island had cause to regret their adventurous spirit when their steamer was unable to take them off and had to run to Cardiff for shelter. It was back to effect a rescue on the next day, but only after those marooned had spent a very hungry and uncomfortable night.

  The Bridgwater Steam Towing Company in 1897 operated a tug which had been built the previous year in Sunderland, and named Bonita. She worked for the Sully coal interests whose stacking needs came to occupy a significant area alongside the enclosed dock and which had its own railway siding connection. The tug company sold its tug fleet just before the outbreak of the First World War and went into liquidation, but was revived in 1922 and continued to operate for another twelve years.

  Screw propulsion was challenging paddle wheels before the nineteenth century reached its halfway point and steam tonnage finally exceeded that of sail in 1866. This situation was not the case in local waters and even as the new century dawned Somerset harbours would still display many more masts than funnels. Behind that appearance lies the fact that relatively compact and simple marine engines were becoming increasingly available and the natural course was to install one in any worthwhile trow or ketch that could find enough traffic to keep it busy. And, even if a vessel was not to be converted, towage readily was available at the busier places so that, either way, the old dependence on wind, weather and water was greatly reduced. The journey time improvements achieved could help fund the outlay on the new engine and the structural alterations needed for its installation.

  A major and more general change was that brought about by the advent of small, reliable marine engines which ran on paraffin. Between the turn of the century and the outbreak of the First World War many vessels had one installed and became vastly easier to handle as a result. Installing a marine engine in a wooden hull was not an overcomplicated matter and relatively few sailing vessels were built with metal hulls in place of the traditional wood, especially as few smaller builders were able to convert their premises, tools and techniques.

  The internal marine combustion engine certainly prolonged the life and work of the sailing coasters and where possible these engines were updated to give more power and more reliability as time passed. The Bridgwater ketch Irene, as one example, had her first engine fitted in 1919, a 40hp Invincible. In 1921 it was replaced by a 70hp Bolinder and in 1939 by a Ellwe Suenska engine. By 1979 she was using a Gardner diesel and was up-rated again in the 1980s with a 135hp engine. The ubiquitous Kelvin marine engine was first produced in Glasgow in 1908 and subsequent models have been used extensively since that time. Kelvin is still producing marine engines.

  When the end of hostilities did not bring the hoped-for world of plenty, more vessels were motorised in the 1920s in a bid to hold on to traditional traffics in the face of a new threat from the motor lorry and from a surplus of redundant shipping. But the sailing vessels still around were all getting older and easily ousted by more modern coasting vessels in the competition for what waterborne traffic remained. By 1920 two-thirds of the vessels visiting the Parrett were steamships or motor vessels. Steam, too, however improved and refined, was also on the way out, but when the surviving movements to Portishead, Highbridge, Bridgwater and the various town coal boat destinations finally petered out, a new era was still to occur.

  Surviving to keep alive the seafaring traditions of the Somerset coast, the cargoes up the River Parrett to Dunball represented a modern revival. In 1995, for example, there were sixty-six of them, representing around 28,000 tons. In the following year there were seventy-four, and in 2000 a total of sixty-seven of which twenty-nine were coastal and the others foreign. In the latter year the total cargo tonnage handled by the Port of Bridgwater, which to all intents and purposes meant at Dunball, was 76,790 tons and this was 43 per cent up on the year before. Of this figure for the coastal business, some 29,620 tons was sand and stone, the remainder animal feed, granite, salt, timber anthracite and peat.

  At the lowest point of the tide a steam collier sits on the mud alongside the upper reach of Highbridge Wharf. To the left is a line of railway wagons and the route of the single line to Burnham and ahead the site of the sea lock of the ill-fated Glastonbury Canal.

  Dunball Wharf at the turn of the century was operated by A.G. Watts who provided wharfage, cranage, storage and distribution facilities there. ARC (Southern) Ltd was running the adjacent sand terminal at that time. Information about arrivals was passed by them to the harbour master based at Burnham who would contact the incoming vessel by VHF radio when it arrived at the Gore Buoy, usually about two-and-a-half hours before high tide – normally a spring to provide adequate water depth in the river. Monitored on a radar screen, the ship’s master would then bring his vessel to the agreed point for picking up the harbour master or one of his assistants who would then act as pilot along the river. Another of the responsibilities of the harbour master was that of monitoring the river channel which was forever changing.

  The length limit for vessels heading for Dunball was normally considered to be 77m, but an 88m vessel could be handled if necessary and provided it was one of the new breed of sea/river vessels with a shallow draught and, usually, a te
lescopic wheelhouse. Typical of the incoming vessels of that period was the Marc Trader, a 1,301-ton general cargo carrier, 75m long and built in 1983 at Papenburg. Equipped with six-cylinder, 600bhp Deutz 4SA oil engines, she has a thrust propeller forward as well as the conventional stern housing.

  The Marc Trader, a modern vessel with hydraulic superstructure which can be lowered to pass beneath bridges, approaches Dunball Wharf in the time-honoured manner of turning into the tide.

  A Lapthorn coal vessel, Hoo Plover, awaits unloading to the quay stack at Dunball Wharf. Stored Bristol Channel sand, brought in to the inlet at the end of the quay, can also be seen.

  Sedgemoor District Council had become the ‘Competent Harbour Authority’ in 1988 when it took over the Port of Bridgwater from Trinity House and became responsible for providing pilotage services for all boats over 30m long. This requirement derives from the constant changes in the navigable channel and the current and tidal extremes with the pilotage services carried out by the harbour master/pilot and three relief pilots. The District Council’s responsibilities include not only pilotage and safety but also maintaining navigational aids and keeping the lower Parrett clear of obstructions, waste and spillage.

  In more recent years the traffic pattern at Dunball has changed somewhat with marine sand and gravel dredged in the Bristol Channel rising to account for some two-thirds of the arriving tonnage and salt much of the remainder. The sand wharf passed into the hands of Hanson Aggregates Ltd while the main wharf was acquired by River Bulk Shipping. Discounting the occasional use of the roll-on roll-off berth at Combwich for heavy items for British Electric at Hinkley, Dunball came to be the last traditional Somerset cargo port to survive into the twenty-first century.

  10. DECLINE AND PRESERVATION

  The pattern of the last years of cargo sailing vessels is one of gradual decline precipitated by economic change, increasing rail and road competition and the impact of major wars. This pattern in the Bristol Channel mirrored similar changes in coastal shipping elsewhere and was only slowed, rather than reversed by the increasing use of steam and oil engines for propulsion. Certainly these had a major impact as is clear from records which show some of the incredibly lengthy journey times inflicted on sailing vessels by bad weather. In good conditions, it might be possible to get from Bridgwater to Rotterdam in ten days, but one journey to Padstow took as many as fifty!

  Nearly all the remaining schooners and ketches had been converted to the use of an engine by the mid to late 1930s. By this time economies of scale were prompting a move away from small manufacturing units to large scale production demanding bulk movement and more sophisticated distribution, for which road transport proved greatly more flexible and effective. Bulk cargoes like coal continued to be on offer for water carriage, but as steamships and a new generation of motor vessels increased in size to curb costs and freight rates, the older wooden vessels had found themselves less and less welcome at busy ports using modern loading and unloading equipment. Other factors impinged on the situation, albeit less directly, and these included rising educational standards and the availability of easier jobs ashore.

  The requisitioning of a large number of the commercial sailing fleet in both world wars led to losses and deterioration. Of some thirty Bridgwater coasters in 1913, no less than two-thirds were subsequently lost, sunk, wrecked or reported missing. In the second great conflict many of the vessels used as barrage balloon anchorage in naval harbours, for example, were beyond commercial repair when hostilities ended. Reparation was not enough to build new vessels even if that would have been commercially viable. Another sad cost of the two major conflicts was not just the vessels themselves, but a terrible price in human lives and thus of experienced seamen.

  The demise of wooden vessels was marked further in the South West when building ended with the launching of the ketch Irene at Bridgwater in 1907 followed by the schooner Garlandstone at Calstock on the Tamar. The latter was on the building stocks for several years before its launch in 1909, the shipyard by this time doing mainly repair work, and construction on the new boat being undertaken during slack periods to keep the workforce employed.

  The continuing development of road transport permitted by the appearance of more efficient road vehicles and, at the same time, the competition from small steel motor coasters gathered pace in the 1920s and 1930s so that cargoes for wooden sailing vessels became even more difficult to find. Many of the remaining trows suffered the indignity of becoming dumb lighters in the larger docks, e.g. Gloucester and Bristol, some of them lasting there into the 1960s. Many other sailing vessels, including the schooners and ketches, were hulked in the estuaries and rivers of the South West. Very few rivers do not have the bones of some past sailing vessel. The estuary of the Taw and Torridge has the remains of many fine sailors, but the banks of the Severn at Purton is a veritable ‘elephants’ graveyard’ where the remains of nearly all the types of wooden vessels that plied the Bristol Channel have been deliberately hulked to stabilise the area between the River Severn and the banks of the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal.

  The Purton remains have recently been recorded and in most cases identified. Each has its own remarkable story. The trow Severn Collier, for example, spent her life serving the Cadbury chocolate factory at Frampton-on-Severn. Her regular cargo was about 100 tons of coal from Princess Royal Colliery in the Forest of Dean and the intention had been to load this at Lydney, cross to Sharpness and then move up the canal to Frampton. Taking eight hours to make the crossing proved her underpowered so the cross-river movement was made by rail across the Severn Bridge to Sharpness. There the counter-balanced coal chute was used to tip the wagons and allow their load to fill the trow, which then completed the journey up to Frampton. The wrecking of the Severn Bridge by out-of-control tankers on the river brought this fifty-year saga to an end.

  Over the centuries of sail, re-usable material would have been salvaged from vessels which had reached the end of their life. Dedicated shipbreaking to this end took place at several locations, including Clevedon and Uphill, but sailing ships wrecked on rocks or beaches tended just to be left for the tides to erode them. There are examples near Portishead Pier and on Berrow Beach. At Dunball the ketch Fame ran into the riverbank opposite the wharf in 1915 and was abandoned because she could not be shifted. Another ketch, the Trio, was wrecked near Combwich during a stormy March in 1939 and the SS Tender was brought up to Dunball in 1943, stripped of her boilers and other fittings, and then left to rot there.

  The last resting place of the old trow Harriet after ending her working days as an Ashmead dumb barge in the City Docks at Bristol. The vessel is among several used to stabilise the land strip between the River Severn and the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal. (Roy Gallop)

  The fate of the Trio is a reminder that the passage of the years and the changing face of trade and transport were not the only enemies of both local vessels and any seagoing craft frequenting the Somerset coastal waters. Storm and tempest, collisions and carelessness have all played their part and a few gaunt timbers can still be seen as a stark reminder of this. The wreck on the beach at Berrow is a prime example. Visible at low water after over a century, she was the wooden Norwegian barque Nornen, a victim of severe gales in March 1897. These put a steamer and a schooner on the Dunball Sands, sent three colliers outbound from the River Parrett back there to shelter and stranded the ketches Magnet and Good Templar. The Nornen was not so fortunate. After seeking shelter in Lundy Roads in an attempt to ride out the storm she was remorselessly driven back until grounded on the tail of Gore Sands. The Burnham rowing lifeboat took off the crew after they had attempted to moor the vessel, but successive tides and high winds drove her further up the wide beach. Subsequent attempts to lighten and refloat the barque proved unsuccessful and she was subsequently sold for such of her timbers as could be salvaged. Various souvenirs passed into local hands and the remainder weathered over the years to remain a reminder that sailing will always have its hazard
s.

  In addition to changes in the pattern of trade and competition, age and accident also reduced the numbers of trading vessels in the Bristol Channel, most now forgotten, but some still in their last resting place, like these rotting timbers near the pier at Portishead.

  Three well-known hulks were deemed a nuisance at Uphill, on the beach across the Axe from Brean Down. They had been abandoned on the saltings and had become infested with rats. The Borough Council had to take on responsibility for disposing of them and they were eventually auctioned in 1939. The R.D. Passmore made £4 2s 6d, and the Daisy went for £5 0s 0d. The Nora did not find a purchaser and a year later was deliberately set on fire to release her scrap iron.

  The 1897 wreck of the barque Nornen on Berrow Sands. The vessel was driven ashore in a severe gale, but all her crew survived. (Roy Gallop)

  And so the twentieth century progressed. Very few vessels had returned to the trade after the Second World War, all but a very few were auxiliaries rather than conventional sailing craft by this time and by the 1960s it was all over. Some of the schooners and ketches in better condition were sold to foreign owners where a living could be made in an easier environment.

  Happily, three wooden sailing schooners and ketches have been preserved in the South West and are part of the maritime heritage scene. The Garlandstone is now restored and moored at Morwellham Quay, a heritage site on the Tamar River. The Irene can frequently be seen in Bristol Docks, but sails regularly to other ports and European maritime festivals. The Kathleen and May, the last three-masted schooner to trade in British waters, has been the subject of more than one restoration project and was based at East the Water, Bideford, on the Torridge River. Only one trow has survived, the Spry. Built in Chepstow in 1894 she was a Lower/Middle Severn trader working in the Bristol Channel and up to Worcester until 1950. She is now in the care of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum where she has been restored.