A Floating Home

by Cyril Ionides; J. B. Atkins

Mate: Are you perfectly sure we shan’t have to pay rates?

At this point the Skipper could always cite in evidence the case of the ‘floating’ boathouse near by, which had been rated because it would not float. That proved to demonstration that anything capable of floating would not have been rated. Our friend Sam Prawle, an ex barge skipper, who lived in an old smack moored on the saltings, held himself an authority on rating in virtue of having taken part in this case. He had helped to build the floating boathouse, and therefore felt that his credit was involved in her ability to float.

Some years ago our saltings—the strip of marsh intersected by rills, which is covered by water only at spring tides—were not considered to have any rateable value. Later a good many yachts were laid up on them, and as the berths were paid for the saltings were rated. Then followed two or three small wooden boathouses on piles, in which gear was kept, and on these a ferret-eyed busybody cast his eye. He reported them as being of rateable value. It was argued that the boats in which gear was stored, as distinguished from the yachts, might as well be rated too; but this would not hold water, for the simple reason that boats could be floated off and anchored in the river or taken away altogether, whereas the boathouses, though often surrounded by water, were buildings on the land.

To avoid paying rates, therefore, and at the same time to have a comfortable place in which to camp out and store things, the yacht-owner who employed Sam Prawle decided to build a floating boathouse. Sam and he, having fixed several casks in a frame, built a house on this platform.

Now it came to pass that the local ferret informed the overseers that this ‘building on the saltings’ did not float, and was therefore rateable. From that time onwards until the matter was decided our waterside world argued about little else but whether it was a house-boathouse or a boat-houseboat. The owner was invited to meet the overseers at the next spring tide to satisfy them on the point.

Sam worked hard all the morning of the trial, covering the casks with a thick mixture of hot pitch and tar. A small crowd gathered on the sea-wall to watch events. It was a good tide, and I, who was present as chairman of the overseers, was glad, because it gave the owner a fair run for his money. My sympathy was all with him, although as an official I had not been able to give him the benefit of the doubt. As the tide rose near its highest point Sam and the owner, wading up to their thighs in sea-boots, did their utmost to lift the boathouse or move her sideways, but without success.

At the top of the tide, both of them, red in the face and sweating hard, managed to raise one end a couple of inches, and called on Heaven and the overseers to witness that the boathouse floated. As chairman of the overseers, I took the responsibility of saying that if they could shift her a foot sideways she should be deemed to have floated. They went at it like men, but the tide had fallen an inch before their first effort under these terms was ended, and two or three minutes later Sam was heard to say to the owner, ‘That ain’t a mite o’ use a shovin’ naow, sir. She’s soo’d a bit.’

And so the boat-houseboat turned out to be a house-boathouse after all, and was assessed at £1 a year. Sam used to pay the rate every half-year on behalf of his employer, not without giving the collector his views on the subject.

When the Mate had been convinced that we should really escape rates the thought of giving up her garden remained the last outwork of her very proper defences. But this position also fell in good time. My foot-rule, my rough scale plans and piled-up figures of cubic capacity and surficial area carried all before them. I trembled for my arithmetic once or twice, however, when I proved that we should have very nearly as much room as in the cottage.

A barge, then, it was to be. Not a superannuated, narrow, low-sided canal barge; nor a swim-headed dumb barge or lighter, such as one can see any day of the week bumping and drifting her way up and down through London—the jellyfish of river traffic; nor yet, above all, an upper Thames houseboat of any sort, but a real sailing Thames topsail barge which could work from port to port under her own canvas, and meet her trading sisters in the open on their business.