Traditional Boats of Great Britain’s Coast (Part 1 of 2)

Sampling the excellent book, “Inshore Craft of Britain in the Days of Sail & Oar”

Edgar J. March was a tireless marine historian who published half a dozen books on traditional working boats of Great Britain. Some of the titles were relatively narrow, like “Spritsail Barges of the Thames,” but surely his masterwork was the two-volume “Inshore Craft of Britain in the Days of Sail and Oar,” published in 1970, near the end of his long career.

Today we’d like to share a few images and details from Volume One of “Inshore Craft of Britain,” covering the northern and eastern areas of the British Isles—the Shetland and Orkney Islands and the east coast of Scotland, along with the whole east coast of England, including the Thames Estuary.

Tomorrow we’ll complete the celebration of March’s major work with Volume Two of his book, focusing on the Kent coast and whole southern coast of England, along with the Scottish west coast.

Both volumes of “Inshore Craft of Britain” are out of print but readily available from used bookstores and the usual online sources. While used-book prices vary wildly, from reasonable to insanely expensive, I recently found a copy of Volume Two for $25 including tax and free shipping…but I’ve seen some copies of Volume One for more than $400, which is crazy-high. (Used bookstore prices seem friendlier than what I’ve seen directly from Amazon.)

So, let’s take a look at some of the amazing traditional boats of Britain, starting in the far-north Shetland Islands, whose designs were strongly influenced by Viking seafarers from even farther to the north.

The Shetlands, Orkney Islands, Eastern Scotland and Northern British Coast

The Shetland Islands were home to a lot of Sixerns and other designs inspired by traditional boats of Norway including this Shetland Fourern, with its high-peaked lugsail, built in 1895. (We are immediately reminded of modern designs by the late, great Iain Oughtred.)

This drawing illustrates some details of Shetland Sixern spars and rigging…some elements dating back hundreds of years.

This is “Gratitude,” a Whitby Coble with bold sheerline and single thole pins, beached stern-first at the end of a fishing trip. Whitby, a coastal town in northern England, is split by the River Esk and overlooks the North Sea. Today, Whitby hosts the Captain Cook Memorial Museum, in a house where Cook once lived.

From the east coast of Scotland comes the Westray Yole, a late-1800’s fishing boat from Westray Island in the Orkney Islands group. With archaeological sites dating back 3500 years, and remains of several Norse settlements, the island is known for spectacular sea cliffs like the one below.

Westray Island’s dramatic sea cliffs…maybe not the kind of lee shore you’d want to approach in a small fishing boat. (Photo is not from the book we’re sampling .)

This was Scarborough Harbor in the late 1800’s, a coastal town in northern England that hosted many Cobles (in the foreground and background, with a much bigger herring plosher in the center of the image. Cobles are often launched off of beaches, and feature a unique transom shape (see any Welsford there?) and a springy sheerline. Rugged open boats, they were found in many coastal fishing villages before the advent of motorized fishing boats.

This drawing illustrates details of rigging and gear used on early Northumberland Cobles.

Suffolk Coast, and South to the Thames Estuary

‘Hilda”, a 58-footer, was built as a cutter in 1886 at the coastal town of Brightlingsea. Later converted to a ketch rig, she continued fishing and in 1927 was fitted with an auxiliary 33-hp motor.

The Lowestoft yawl “Georgina” is ashore, flying ten winning race flags. As yachting and racing took hold in the late 1800’s, many fast designs like “Georgina” developed, with fine entries, long and graceful runs aft, and lots of sail area.

The East Coast: Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk

In the Humber area, fast 18’ x 6’ 6” “gold dusters” raced out to intercept incoming steamers and sailing ships, boarding them to take their lines to mooring buoys. Masts were usually of equal length, just short enough to be stowed snugly inside the craft.

A scene from the 1904 Rowhedge Regatta

The Essex Coast

Sail plan of a bawley, often about 39’ on deck, used when trawling for shrimp or carrying smaller skiffs that would venture out from the anchored bawley to drop hoop nets designed to capture crabs or lobsters. The bawleys would sail out with the ebb and often return with the flood tide.

After trawling for shrimp, bawley #LO 284, off Leigh, is boiling shrimp aboard in the copper. (You can see smoke wafting up from the funnel, amidships

The Thames Estuary

Sail plan of “Mayflower”, one of the smaller and faster bawleys (about 32’). This one was built by Douglas Stone of Erith, and total cost in the 1880’s was 140 pounds, all in. Many earlier clinker-built bawleys were in the 22’ range, with a beam of 8,’ all designed to trawl for shrimp.

Tomorrow, Part Two — The Kent, Sussex, Dorset and Cornwall Coasts, and West Coast of Scotland.

Thanks, as always, for reading - Marty