Posted by Jock on August 20, 2005 at 13:43:22 from 217.172.246.144 user Jock.
In Reply to: Re: Swallow anew? posted by John Nichols on August 19, 2005 at 22:31:31:
In BS the Wroxham people are pulling the boats out of the water for the winter into the sheds.
The problem of traditionally built clinker boats drying out excessively during the winter and then suffering from warped or even split planks, cracked timbers, and open seams, is nothing new.
I remember reading one classic book where the author bemoaned the then new fashion for boathouses with concrete floors and the deleterious effect this was having on the boats kept therein. For him there was nothing better than keeping boats in the water during the season and then hauling them out into a dry boathouse with an earth floor for the winter.
Percy Hunter's dry boathouses at Ludham in Norfolk did not have an earth floor, but they did have the next best thing: on top of a foundation of compressed earth a single layer of porous bricks was laid. This floor was 12 - 18 inches above the level of the water in the dyke outside and this floor in all probability contributed to the longevity of the Percy Hunter Fleet.
Recently with rising water levels along the East Coast, all it needed was a higher tide than usual with a strong North East wind, for the staff of the Norfolk Heritage Fleet Trust to find themselves wading in a very wet “dry” boathouse. Consequently six or so years ago they decided to raise the floor by laying a slab of concrete on top of the old brick floor. I don't know whether or not this slab was laid on top of a damp proof membrane and how this new floor has affected the boats. Perhaps some Tarboarders out there are active members of the Friends, the Trust's support association, and have the latest information.
I have observed at first hand the effect of different usage/storage regimes on traditional wooden boats on the Thames at Richmond. In the 1960s the boathouses alongside Richmond Bridge were the home to a large hire fleet of wooden Thames skiffs, built before WW II of copper riveted rebated clinker mahogany planks. To say that the boats were hard used would be an understatement. Yet, apart from repairing the odd bit of collision damage, the only annual maintenance the boats received was a rub down with pumice powder each spring and a quick coat of varnish. The boats were hauled out in September and wintered in damp catacomb-like cellars next to the bridge.
These days Richmond Bridge boathouses have moved considerably upmarket (although they still hire out traditional skiffs for Three Men in a Boat style camping holidays). They specialise in building authentic replicas of the various wooden vessels which at different times have been rowed along the River Thames. They have even built a working replica of a 17th century wooden submarine prpelled by oars, but not for the first time I am in danger of wandering dangerously off topic. Their first venture in building a replica of a craft of which there were no longer any examples in existence was Rose in June a Thames Wherry, the traditional London “water taxi” which operated from the days of Shakespeare right up to the time of Dickens. Rose is kept all the year round in a very dry “dry” boathouse part of the new “classical” development built at Richmond. In the season she used about once a week by members of the Trust that owns and maintains her. Rose regularly suffers from opened seams in her oak planks and needs regular applications of some not very traditional high tech boat sealing compound to keep her watertight.
Time to some up. Traditional wooden boats, built the old fashioned way from real wood and copper rivets should be regularly used. In England they can, or arguably should be left in the water from early April to the beginning of September and then hauled out and stored in a nice old and damp “dry” boathouse. This regime has kept Percy Hunter's fleet sailing for seventy years and if applied to the new “Swallow” should keep her happily sailing as well.