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Mooring the Yawls
Some oyster yawls were berthed
at Faversham creek but, in the early days, few if any were moored in
Whitstable harbour. Most fishermen used an offshore mooring.... as
John Harman explains....
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Back in the days
when it was said that there were as many as a hundred smacks
/ yawls moored in the bay, our harbour was pretty much
jammed with large sailing ships and barges which needed a
lot of room to manouver. Ships without motors had to be
winched around! This was one reason that fishermen of all
kinds moored their boats off shore.
Convenience and
economics also played a part. A
sailing smack would also have had to be rowed out of the
harbour by towing it with the tender (a heavy rowing boat).
This would have been more effort than slipping an off shore
mooring and sailing away!
Another factor
was the fishermen's gear and supplies. This was kept at
their stores which were on the beach. That is where their
tenders would be beached or moored, nets hung out to dry and other
maintenance work done. These stores stretched all along the
shore line at one time.
John Harman |
The
Whitstable Oyster Fishery Company boats were usually moored off the
Horsebridge area - to the west of the harbour. Here, they were neatly
wedged between Whitstable beach and the company's oyster beds
a short distance off shore. In this locality,
both the beach and foreshore were (and
still are) owned by the company. I won't go into detail about
this... other than to mention that ownership is a legacy of
historical fishing rights. (NB Private ownership is a little unusual
in the UK where beaches are usually public land. Of course, in
practice, the oyster company beaches remain open to the public but
it is a 'seemingly quaint' legacy that has caused quite a few
mutterings and disputes in modern times). Arrangements
were a little less compact for the Seasalter & Ham Oyster
Company. Whilst their oyster beds lay further west than those of the
WOFC, their main store building was actually located to the east -
alongside the harbour's east quay at Long Beach.
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I think that the
Seasalter & Ham boats were all pretty much moored
together to the east, directly off Long Beach.
In later
times, this included the company's last two vessels - Speed Well
and the Rosa & Ada (pronounced Rose'n Ada). These were moored on two of the company's long standing
moorings in deeper water.
John Harman |
Below, John Harman explains some of the considerations behind the
moorings....
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Not all the yawls in the bay floated
free in deep water. In earlier days, when Whitstable Bay was
full of moored fishing smacks that fished under sail, it could be likened today to
a crowded parking lot. The boats were not anchored but were on a
permanent mooring. When unattended, this had it's marker buoy which claimed the spot....
but don't try it in a car park lot! Unlike an
anchor, a mooring did not carry the anxiety of it 'dragging'. Also, it did not need to
be raised or lowered. It was just picked up and attached, or slipped to let go. Installing a mooring
in deeper water involved two boats. The mooring was like an inverted
mushroom that was screwed down into the sea bed.
First attached to this was a long length of very heavy chain followed by a longer
length of mooring chain. This type of mooring was locally know as a 'frap'. The heavy chain lay on the bottom and served to lessen the
snatching action of the moored boat in rough weather. It also gave a longer
length to the mooring line, lowering the angle. Moored boats need a lot of
room to swing with the changing tide and to be clear of each other. We
always looked towards the yawls to see which way they were pointing to tell if
the tide was coming in or going out, or if it was on the turn. John
Harman |
Mooring or
Beaching the Tenders..
Mooring
the yawl wasn't the only issue. The oyster dredgers also needed to
accommodate those heavy wooden tenders.
| Tenders were not always hauled up on
the beach, but would be anchored close in to shore where
they could be waded out to on the ebbing tide. This would
give some leeway on the time of departure in the morning
depending on where the tender was anchored the
previous day.
The oyster companies had many
tenders. They could leave most of them anchored and use one
to come and go from the beach.
John Harman |
Moorings and Boat
Construction...
Mooring yawls in the bay didn't just present
problems for fishermen. It also caused some head scratching at the
boatyards along Island Wall....
| Not all the
boats in the bay were in deep enough water to float freely all the time and some did
'take the ground' (ie settled on the bottom or left 'dry'). For this reason, the
Whitstable yawls were built very heavily with their frames close together to
take the heavy pounding when this happened.
Being sailing work
boats, they carried a lot of ballast inside - along the keel line and garboards
(the first lower planks). This ballast often took the form of concrete poured between the frames and also quantities of pig iron.
During a gale,
an incoming tide was brutal on a boat that was not fully afloat. Not only
did the ballast want to go through the bottom, but the heavy Douglas Fir mast
was a battering ram hammering downwards.
John Harman |
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