A Passage to Norwich

A Passage to Norwich By Mark Wakelin That Norwich is a fine city is well-known. That it was until quite recently a notable port is less widely remembered. The approach of a significant birthday provided an occasion which it seemed appropriate to mark, and what better way to do so than to remember Norwich’s link with the sea by visiting the port with a distinguished vessel, and holding a party on board? The sailing barge Cambria was the last British merchant vessel to trade under sail alone under her well known owner/master Bob Roberts. She was, in her trading days, a regular visitor to the Port of Norwich, bringing about 180 tons of mustard seed to Colman’s and feedstuffs to Reads’ Mills. The last time she visited Norwich was in 1971, as part of a promotional tour when Bob Roberts was forced to cease trading and presented the barge to the Maritime Trust, just as her original builders, F.T. Everard & Co. had presented her to her long- term skipper about five years before. Under Maritime Trust ownership she was moored in St. Katherine’s Dock for public display but went progressively downhill until being moved to Sittingbourne, Kent. Successive efforts to preserve her failed for want of funds until, entirely derelict and flooding on every tide, the National Lottery came to her rescue. A grant of over one million pounds saw the start of a complete rebuild so that she is now fully restored and in full sailing commission, still with no engine. Truly she is a National Treasure! Cambria’s owners, the Cambria Trust use her for charitable work based mainly at Faversham and Gillingham, Kent. Each year she has been taken on charter by the Sea-Change Sailing Trust, a charity based in Maldon, Essex, which provides seamanship training and character development using traditional vessels, especially for disadvantaged and socially excluded young people. In 2013 Sea-Change took Cambria on a very successful voyage to Wells-next-the-Sea, North Norfolk, and another former barge port. For 2014 Sea-Change’s skipper Richard Titchener and Chair of Trustees Hilary Halajko were agreeable to making the Port of Norwich the destination for their summer voyage. The last commercial ship to visit Norwich was in 1989, since when of course the A47 Southern Bypass has been built, in 1992, with the very much fixed and immovable Postwick Viaduct crossing the River Yare a short distance downriver of the City. With a fixed clearance of about 33 ft. (checked with a heavy hammer dangled on a long tape measure) it was clear that not only would Cambria’s lofty topmast, sprit and mainmast have to be lowered, but also her big ‘mulie’ mizzen, and her very long and heavy bowsprit would have to be brought inboard. Apart from the fixed bypass flyover, there are seven opening bridges across the rivers Yare and Wensum between Gt. Yarmouth and the turning basin near Norwich Station where Cambria must ‘swing’. While Haven Bridge, Breydon Bridge and Reedham Swing Bridge are regularly opened for river traffic, the same is not true of Trowse Rail Bridge, Carrow Road Bridge or the two new pedestrian bridges in Norwich’s riverside development. Pressure of rail movements over the fairly modern but only single track Trowse Bridge, coupled with a chronically unreliable operating system has meant that it can be opened only with seven days’ notice at 0200 – 0400 each day, with a gang of railway staff in attendance, and this has in turn meant that it is several years since the adjacent and venerable Carrow Road lifting bridge has been opened. By degrees Norwich’s historic link with the sea has withered, and its heritage as an inland port is dipping below the horizon of public consciousness. Clearly the skills of Network Rail’s and the County Council’s bridge engineers would be called upon to ensure that their recalcitrant structures would yield passage for the barge at the appropriate nocturnal moment. Inevitably this operation must have associated costs, but we felt it was something that needed to be done. A Passage to Norwich by Mark Wakelin Page 1 Cambria never having been fitted with an engine, she would always have relied on towage to bring her the 28 miles upriver from Great Yarmouth, and a tug would be needed again this year. A plaintive letter to Trudi Wakelin the Broads Authority’s Director of Operations yielded the promise of the Authority’s tug Cannonbrook to tow the barge from Gt. Yarmouth to Norwich provided this entailed no overtime or weekend working. The intention was that Cambria’s crew for the voyage would comprise largely young people with the benefit of sponsorship to subsidise their voyage costs. Very magnanimously the Crouch Harbour Authority agreed to 50% sponsor a number of berths on the passages up to and back from the Broads for youngsters from either the Maldon/Burnham areas, or from Norwich. Many letters were written to potential sources of young crew, and also to commercial organisations which might wish to be associated with the project or host a reception on board in Norwich. The plan was that Cambria would depart from Maldon on Mon. 4th August 1914, but when they took over the barge at Gillingham the previous week Richard, Hilary and regular crew Stretch, Tom and Anna found her uncharacteristically sluggish and unhandy owing to a bumper crop of barnacles. Hasty arrangements were made to put the barge on the blocks at Pin Mill, followed by some hard graft with scrapers and shovels. The previous youth charter had agreed to move their departure point to enable this to happen. When the voyage crew boarded on Sunday 3rd August, anchored off the Clamp House below Pin Mill, she was clean as a whistle and getting underway the following morning she demonstrated the extraordinary handiness for which she was known: a yacht had anchored just downriver and outside our anchor berth, as yachts tend to do. There were light airs down river, and a swift ebb running, nonetheless Cambria broke out her anchor and gained way across wind and tide, hauling out into the channel well clear of the anchored boat, something very few yachts, much less sailing barges, could be expected to do. In those few minutes it was possible to see how the barge had earned her keep without an engine from her launching in 1906 until Bob Roberts was forced to yield in 1970. Like any sailing vessel, a barge must be clean to perform. Among our crew for the passage was Capt. Phil Latham who escaped from office life when 19 years old to join Bob Roberts as mate in the Cambria for five years in the mid-1960s. Phil remained at sea until he retired, as Master for many years in Everard’s motor ships. Cambria’s nimble exit from the anchorage was no surprise to him, for he remembered her always as a handy and able vessel. We sailed gently before a light north-westerly breeze down the Orwell, aiming to run the last of the ebb out of Harwich Harbour. Our breeze failed us however and backed southerly. We were unable to make ground over the young flood so it was down with the anchor on Harwich Shelf, and wait in the sunshine for the afternoon breeze which duly arrived and filled in nicely from just east of south. A couple of boards round Landguard Point and we were away, with the sprit well over the port rail for Orford Ness around high-water. Inside the river we could spy the gear of Mirosa on her holidays. Then a wonderful fair wind and tide past Aldeburgh and across Sole Bay at splendid speed, running through the Newcombe Channel into Lowestoft North Road at dusk. We finally anchored in Yarmouth Roads off Gorleston in the gloaming. Arrangements had been made with Great Yarmouth Pilot Richard Gavin for the Yarmouth pilot vessel to tow the barge into the harbour if needed, but we were well ahead of our anticipated ETA and when the ideal moment for entering Yarmouth arrived, that is on the last of the ebb stream about two hours after Gorleston low water, the wind obliged us by continuing to blow at about force three and just east of south, ideal conditions to take the entrance under sail. So enter we did, and sailed right up to our berth on South Quay, a sight not seen in Yarmouth pier heads for many a year. We arrived just on low water slack, and swung to moor head down , A Passage to Norwich by Mark Wakelin Page 2 then later swung again on the first of the ebb so as to be ready to move on through Haven Bridge when the tug arrived, which was arranged for Friday 9th August. But before that there was work to do: first of all the mizzen mast must be lowered. Cambria is a big coasting barge, with a big barge’s ‘mulie’ mizzen, stepped in an open-fronted mast case just abaft the main horse. While smaller river barges often lowered their much smaller mizzen masts, it was unusual for a mulie mizzen to be lowered in trade. Firstly the mizzen gaff, boom and sail must be unbent and stowed on the main hatch. Then the mizzen mast itself must be lowered forward, supported on its way down by the topsail sheet from the peak of the sprit. The mizzen mast on Cambria is long enough to reach just forward of the mainmast when lowered so the mizzen must be guided to land on a substantial prop rigged just to port of the mainmast.

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