J. B. Atkins

“ 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. ”

“ Even in our retired creek it is a joy to know that we are on the magic road, which is all roads in the world because it leads everywhere. Of course, we shall never sail out to the back of beyond; but when on summer nights we sit on deck under the pole star, and the phosphorescent water streams past our side like molten metal, we feel that the same sea that bears us laps equatorial islands and continents. ”

“ Many and ridiculous are the Stories formed upon the Foundation of the Snake, over-acted to the Prejudice of Beliefs, which in unletter’d Countries should be short, and have the Design and Import of Laws; such Laws as in their nature are best fitted to awe or persuade Men into the Practice of what is good: but here they are multiplied with silly Circumstances, or stretch beyond Memory, and spoil their Use; for which reason, I am firmly of opinion the Snake-Worship will never endanger our Factories, or propagate far, it has made such Rogues of them. ”

“ 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! ”

“ To which I answer——A Voyage to Sea is a Type of that dark and unknown one we are to make in Death: Wherefore it is not unnatural with a Departure from the Land’s End of England, shooting into an Abyss of Waters, to consider a little on that Life, which lost is a Departure from the World’s End, and to launch into a greater Abyss, Eternity;—The Principle, in what is material of us, I think, highly consonant to Reason, and continues still the Doctrine of the Eastern Sages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I was six Weeks attending the Trials of the Pyrates at this Castle, and treated very civilly.
The Factory have every now and then a large Demand for Salt, made and brought hither from Accra. The Sale appears like a Fair in the Castle, and many of those Negroes whose Ivory or Gold would not purchase half a Bushel, I was told had travelled some hundred Miles; they chusing to go in Bodies when Seed-time is over, as a better Protection from wild Beasts, and their wilder Countrymen, who frequently make Incursions from several parts of the Coast, and sieze them for Slaves, when few and defenceless. ”

“ It is very agreeable at the end of [Pg 186] a winter’s day in London to come back to the barge; to leave an office with its telephone bells, and the hubbub of the streets; to come in little more than an hour to where the lane of thorns ends at the sea-wall. The faint glow ahead comes from the Ark Royal. Those piping cries are the redshanks calling in the dark. As I come nearer the separate columns of light from the windows and skylights beam like searchlights. And above the blaze stands up the mast and rigging, free from all burden and strain, resting the winter through. ”

“ When Men of War have no other Lading than Provisions and Necessaries, the Duty of Sailors is eased, and their Conveniencies better; whereas Cargoes, besides dishonouring the Commission, and unfitting the King’s Ships for Action, stifle and sicken a Ship’s Company in warm Climates, impose hard Services, and spoil the Trade of the Merchant they are designed to encourage, and expect a Gratuity from; because Labour and Freight free, they can afford to undersel. ”

“ If he is a ‘bad sailor’ he could get more pleasure from a barge than from an ordinary yacht of greater draught. The barge can choose her water; she can run into the smooth places that lie between the banks of the complicated Thames estuary. She can thread the Essex and Suffolk tidal rivers; the Crouch, the Roach, the Blackwater, the Colne, the Stour, the Orwell, the Deben, the Aide, are all open to her, and are delightfully wild and unspoiled; she can sit upright upon a sandbank till a blow is over. ”

“ From this odd Ceremony in their Funerals, and what is above noted upon the Word Fetish, it looks as though there were some dark Notions of a future State among them, and an Expectance in it of Retribution.
It is impossible to expect in such a State of Nature as theirs, naked of Education and Science, that they should be able to form any refined Notions of a Deity; which, we experience among our selves, receives the Improvement with our growing Understanding, purely the Effect of Art and Study ”

“ Lastly, The Fear of the Fetish keeps them from injuring one another a little, that is, one another in the same Combination; but has little or no Influence in respect to us; whom they rob, cheat, or murder, as best answers their Conveniencies. They are like the Articles of Pyrates, which keep up a sort of Honesty among themselves, tho’ they despoil every body else. John Conny is very upright and just himself in all Bargains; but then he does not want what the others are thieving; it is below his Game: rigorous also in exacting his Dues, or inflicting Punishments. ”

“ When the water has left the flats the lighting does not change appreciably, because the gleaming mud, glossy and shining like the skin of the porpoises which sport along the channels, has the quality of water. The most characteristic effect is the mirage, which swallows up the meeting-point of sea and sky in a liquid glare, exalts the humblest smack with the freeboard and towering rigging of a barque, and separates the tops of trees from visible connection with the land, so that they appear to be growing out of air and water. ”

“ The houseboats of the Thames are famous centres of a dallying summer existence in which life tunes itself to the pace of the drifting punts and [Pg 4] skiffs, and seems to be expressed by the metallic melody of a gramophone or the tinkling of a mandolin. At night there is enough shelter for paper lanterns to burn steadily; and as the wind is tempered, so is everything else. All is arranged to add the practical touch of ease and comfort to the ideal of living roughly and simply, and the result is a mixture of paradox and paradise. ”

“ On Sundays, when they are free from their labour, they will assemble on the hard—a firm strip of shingle laid upon the mud—and, with hands in pockets, gaze, through most of the hours of daylight, upon the sweeping tide and the minor movements of small boats and yachts with an air at once negligent and profound. The mightiness of the sea, like the mightiness of the mountain, draws mankind. Men have learned the secrets of these things in a way, and have turned them to their profit or amusement ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ His fancy at some time or other has played with the thought of possessing almost every type of craft for his home—a three-decker with a glorious gallery, a Thames houseboat all ready to step into, a disused schooner, a bluff-bowed old brig. He will moor her in some delectable water, and when his restlessness falls upon him he will have her removed to another place. Civilization shall never rule him. [Pg 2] As though to prove it he will live free of rates, and weigh his anchor and move on if the matter should ever happen to come under dispute. ”

“ When the Ark Royal lifts to the rising tide her timbers creak as though she were asking to be free; and her voice is high or low according to the wind. At night she speaks most clearly. In measure to the wind she reminds us of peaceful driftings under still skies, or of torn sails and dragging anchors. When a gale with all the weight of winter behind [Pg 187] it bursts in squalls through the rigging, the tiny waves of our haven rip along our sides and the lamp in the saloon swings gently. ”

“ BEAUMONT QUAY
In May, when the sea-birds are hatching their young, the spring-tides are slack and do not cover the saltings. In a pretty figure of speech the fishermen call these tides the Bird Tides.
The lives of the fishermen are ruled by the tides. For them the working hours of the clock have no significance. On the first of the ebb, be it night or day, their work begins, and it is on the flood that they return to their homes. They have no leisure or liking for the time-devouring practice of sailing over a foul tide. The tide in the affairs of these men is absolute. ”

“ The next fleet to look out for after the bawleys was the fleet of cockle-boats, and they would work the creek or come over the flats according to the tide. Lastly, close on high water, came the loaded barges.
From the time the young flood came up the creek to the time the tide ebbed off the flats there was always something happening. One never woke at night and peered out but one saw the unceasing life of the sea, from the mustering of the humble bawleys in the dark to go shrimping to the passing of the liner, shining from stem to stern, perhaps carrying a Viceroy to the East. ”