with
special thanks to.... John Wraight, Tony Stroud, Bill Dancer, John Harman
and Brian Smith
Harbour Operations &
Areas
There were distinct patterns to barge operations within Whitstable
harbour as John Wraight explains in this message emailed form his home
in Australia.....
| G'day Dave,
I have scanned a rough drawing so that I can explain myself
better.....
Area
1... was called the West Head. It only became the
west quay/pier when it was extended and used by the Westlands
company.
The
Buoys (marked with red circles)
were large
permanent features and they were used in the old days to winch
barges out of the harbour before motor. From there, they set
sails and took to sea.
Area
2 was a shingle area
where barges would moor, scrub & tar before the tide
returned. There was not a lot of time to do this!
Area 3
was a berth not used for unloading. You could say a
dedicated berth for barges doing small or long repairs not
requiring a slip (ie painting, sail fitting) or a barge
waiting for the tide so that they could leave port.
Area
4 was the dedicated silo area for unloading
wheat/flour etc.
Area
5 was the whelk/cockle area. All the sheds were here...
backing from the lighthouse almost to Long Beach.
John
Wraight
Australia |
Getting the Picture...
We can illustrate John Wraight's description with a series of
lovely photos sent to us by Tony Stroud from his home in
Australia. This first shot was taken from Dead Man's Corner at
the south eastern edge of the harbour basin in the late
1950s/early 1960s....
Photo © Tony Stroud
By that time, the barge trade
was in serious decline. A solitary grain barge can be seen beneath
the towering silo on the West Head. The photo below shows the seaward side of the West Head
before construction of the current day West Quay....
Photo © Tony Stroud
At low tide, a shingle area was uncovered and this was used
as the
"repair area" (Area 2) described by John Wraight.
Such repairs were often referred to as being done "on the
hard" and we will return to that phrase a little later on
this page.
Tony's third shot shows the main channel of the harbour before the appearance of the "new" West Quay....
Photo © Tony Stroud
We can take a closer look at the minor repair/departure area
on the eastern rim of the West Head (Area 3)....
Photo © Tony Stroud
The name of the barge is unclear but we believe that it may
have been one of the town's most notable vessels - the Kathleen.
It is also unclear whether she is being repaired or merely
awaiting the tide.
By this late stage in harbour history, the wood decking
(shown on John Wraight's plan) had disappeared. Thus, on the
extreme right edge of the photo only the wood piles can be seen.
John Wraight's plan shows the location of two fixed
cranes used to unload barges. Thanks to extracts from two of
Tony's photos, we can see what these devices looked like in the
late 1950s/early 1960s. The first shot shows the crane on the
inner west quay.....
Photo © Tony Stroud
The second shows an identical piece of equipment
to the right of the silo gantry on the north quay.
Photo © Tony Stroud
These may seem fairly crude devices by modern standards.
However, they were a considerable step forward from a much older
method of unloading deployed at the harbour until the 1920s.
Take a look at the fascinating article entitled "The
Jumps" by Brian Smith on our Harbour of Bygone Days
section.
Repairs...
As commercial vessels, barges were hardworked and
repairs needed to be undertaken swiftly. As John Wraight has
explained, minor repairs (or those involving sails and rigging)
could be undertaken in the harbour itself. In some cases, the
vessels would use the berth on the eastern side of the West Head
prior to setting sail. A variety of skilled craftsman (such as
sailmakers) operated from the small premises that fringed the
waterfront of Sea Wall.
Major repairs and refits involved the boatyards of
Whitstable and their slipways. These were scattered along the
beaches of the Horsebridge and Island Wall. Thus, together with
the fishing industry, the barge trade generated and was supported
by a wide range of landbased commercial activity.
In between the minor and major repairs, there were
maintenance tasks that didn't warrant a slipway or boatyard but
did require the barge to be temporarily removed from the water.
Such tasks included routine maintenance such as tarring and
caulking.
The easiest way to achieve this was to undertake
the repairs at low tide. However, the heavily silted harbour basin
could not be used for this. Barges were therefore moved to the
seaward side of the West Head where the ebbing sea left a
substantial area of shingle in its wake (the Area 2 mentioned by
John Wraight). This type of repair work was often referred to as
being done "on the hard".
Tarring On The
Hard....
The work of tarring and caulking "on the
hard" is captured in a very special picture that adorns the
home of Bill Dancer in Canada and has other connections with
Whitstable history ....
|
"Tarring
on the Hard"
by Laurence Irving
Photo kindly supplied
by Bill Dancer |
 |
Bill explains in the following message...
|
I was given the print by Nellie Brett the
wife of Ned Brett who ran a nursery in Harwich Street when I emigrated to
Canada.
It hangs in my living room in a place
where the sun does not throw direct light on it.
The title is "Tarring on the
Hard" and it is identified as the Whitstable Hard.
The artist, Laurence Henry Foster Irving, lived in the
Bostal Hill Windmill at one time and I believe he was the
grandson of Sir Henry Irving. His name appears on the print
along with the date 29.4.27 and the latin "del et imp" (roughly
"it
is complete let it be printed") which, I believe, is written in
pencil presumably by the artist.
Associated with "Tarring on the
Hard" was the process of "caulking". The seams between the planks were
made watertight by driving in spun oakum with a caulking
iron and mallet and then covering the seams with
tar.
I spent many hours as a Cadet in Clan Line caulking the
teak decks that surrounded the accommodation.
Bill Dancer
Victoria
British Columbia
Canada |
Getting Stuck...
"On the Soft"!
I mentioned above that the heavily silted harbour
basin could not be used for repairs to the hull. The mud also
caused other problems as John Harman recalls...
| Most of the working barges that came into Whitstable
were fully loaded. The waterline of a loaded barge was
barely 6" from the deck amidships.
In the harbour they would wait a day or two to be
unloaded, without their Master onboard. As you
know, the harbour bottom is a very oozy mud, in
which settling boats would make huge pockets. A fully
loaded barge would really settle in this when the tide
was out. With a barge's flat bottom, the suction was
really great - sometimes more than the barge could lift
itself out of, with the incoming tide. This was
only noticed once the deck was awash, then panic struck!
This is where another use for that long spar 'the
sprit' came into use. The sprit can also be used
as a crane. In this case, the tender (as a weight) would
be hoisted into the air and swung from side to side
(beam to beam) releasing the barge from the suction.
This too is why there is a high coaming around the cargo
hatches.
John Harman
Sidney
British Columbia
Canada |
For an explanation of the term
"sprit", take a look at our Simple
Guide to Barge Design page.
Harbour
Manoeuvres - Warping
In full sail and in open water, the Thames Barge
was an effective and pugnaciously elegant craft. However, within
the confines of the harbour, it needed a little help. John Wraight
has touched on this with his reference to the static buoys that
lined the western approaches. John Harman adds to this with an
explanation of two important pieces of equipment on board a barge
- the hand winch and the tender or barge boat.....
|
Back in the days when there could have been as many
as 10 or more barges in the harbour at one time, each sailing barge had its
tender... 'a barge boat'. It was not just a lifeboat up on it's
davits...... it would also have spent time in the water as a working tool.
These heavily built dinghies were used to assist in
manoeuvering the barge around the corner of the inner harbour. The mate would have to scull with one oar over the stern - leaving the
free hand to handle a rope. In this case, it was a thin steel
cable (called a warp) that came from a hand winch on the barge. He took
it to the far side of the harbour. The winch could then pull the
barge around into a position to head out. This was known as
'warping'.
With all these barge tenders in the harbour, no boy
needed a boat to learn to scull. It was a regular playground for
future barge mates and young fishermen.
As I have mentioned, the boats were heavy..... and
so too was an oar which was long, straight and made of ash . In fact,
the craft were too heavy to row single-handed with a pair of oars. However,
even a very large boat can be sculled along once it gets moving.
John Harman
Sidney
British Columbia
Canada
|
Of course, such practices began to disappear when
barges were provided with auxiliary engines or became fully motorised.
Return
to Thames Barge Menu page: 
|
