Around the east coast areas from Suffolk down to N. Kent it isn’t unusual to come across abandoned vessels tucked into the salting or out on some mud flat. While in Scotland recently, around the Western Isles, I came across a group of abandoned fishing vessels ‘laid up’ alongside a shallow stone built wharf.
Laid up Scottish fishing craft on Mull.
It is likely that the boats were laid up under some scheme to reduce the number of boats fishing for reduced fish stock. However, I’m only surmising. One of the craft seemed to have been in a particularly good condition when abandoned. A photograph seen, for sale a vast expense, showed the vessels as they were at an earlier date: much superstructure has been removed – probably steel scrap. Who wants a tired old wooden hull…
Three Scots lasses…
These boat types can be seen being used as house boats and even yachts around the coasts, especially in the Thames estuary areas. The Scottish Isles isn’t really the place for that sort of life, gorgeous it can be on a good day … but whilst we were there enjoying a period of the finest of weathers over nearly two weeks the local population moaned constantly about the weather!
This one hadn’t long been sat here…
A happy clump of thrift! growing where once caulking an bitumen kept out the sea…
Here I am, sitting in my cockpit, bobbing to the ebb tide swell off Harty Ferry, thinking and remembering these things. Why? Well, just upstream of us sits one of these fishing boat types. Apparently a conversion project. This one though rests beneath the murky silt laden waters of the East Swale … the likelihood of it being lifted is small: a ‘quality’ north cardinal has been placed just to the north of the wreck … only the vessels whip aerial shows above the waves…
Earlier this year whilst coming home from Faversham in February a bit of the wheelhouse was visible at low water…
Another little ship I saw was this one …
The Sea Nymth of Dervaig, Isle of Mull.
Tired of keeping the uneasy seas found around the Isle of Mull out of her bilges she has been hauled ashore, quite high up actually, to act as an advertising board for an art gallery … which we stopped at to admire much very expensive works. In comparison, artists around Leigh and other east coast ‘hot spots’ are selling for a pittance!
Poor old thing … but I liked her.
Tomorrow, on our way up Faversham Creek, we will pass many an old ship. A grand mix including a wooden Thames lighter (Bombay), fishing craft, a long abandoned smack that until recent years still had a cabin lamp hanging from a beam, an old ‘fifer’ and more besides…
The motley collection in the first reach of Faversham’s creek…
It seems that there remains a place for old ships to die gracefully, gradually diminishing year by year. For me they provide moments of wonder and awe of the life they once had, the men, and women perhaps, that manned them. The joy they gave or just the plain daily graft…
Ah well!