A Floating Home

by Cyril Ionides; J. B. Atkins

WALTON CREEK

When we came abreast of our berth there was not enough water for us to go in, so we lay on a spit of sand and mud for that day. On the next tide, which was higher, we moved in stern first, leaving our anchor well out in the creek ready to haul us off in the spring.

The ebbing tide left us in a shallow dock about three feet deep into which the Ark Royal just fitted, so that with a ladder on to the saltings we could easily get on and off the ship. From the road, seventy or eighty yards away, there was a path across the saltings right up to us, but as it was very muddy we bought forty or fifty bushels of cockleshells and spread them on it. We also made a bridge with planks over a small rill which cut across the path.

To the west of us was a sea-wall, and behind it marshes stretching away into dimness; to the north was the railway line; to the south, first saltings and then the open Thames. At high water we could see all the ships beyond the saltings; at low water they were hidden from us. To the east there were gasworks, which we tried to forget, and the ancient end of the town with houses of many shapes and attitudes. One of the houses leaned over a quay against which smacks lay so close that you could have reeved their peak halyards from the top windows. There was only one house near by us, and in that lived a barge-owner, who welcomed us and lent us a broad teak ship’s ladder. Such was the place in which we settled down for the winter.

As soon as we had driven in posts and laid out spare anchors, with long warps to hold us in position, we began to establish our communications with the shore. We found tradesmen anxious to call every day for orders. The postmaster promised three deliveries of our letters. I took a season ticket to London, as the time had arrived for me to begin my new work. The station was about eight minutes’ walk from the Ark Royal. The boy’s school could be reached in about twenty minutes by tram-car. We instructed the tradesmen’s boys when they came on board to go forward and conduct their business through the forehatch. For visitors we hung the ship’s bell in the mizzen rigging. I engaged a sailor-boy as handyman and crew.

The only thing that interrupted our traffic with the shore was the spring tides, which covered the saltings, for if Jack, the handyman, were not ready with a boat, a tradesman’s boy would have to shout until he was heard. Soon, however, the boys came to understand signals, and when a boat could not be sent at once they would leave the provisions on the grassy bank by the path, and someone from the barge fetched them as soon as possible. There were only about six days each fortnight on which the tides were high enough to make the use of a boat necessary.

Later we dismissed the boy, as a trusted family servant, Louisa, whom we had known for many years, came to live with us. As Louisa could not manage the boat, we set up a box on a post by the road in which tradesmen could leave our provisions.

If we had thought of the box sooner it would have saved us the robbery of a red sausage by a passing dog. The Mate and I were on deck, and saw the robbery committed. The time in which we launched the boat from the davits would have done credit to a lifeboat’s crew. It was rather a long, stern chase after we had landed, and would have gone on much longer but for the dog’s greed in stopping two or three times to begin his meal. As soon as we came near, off he went again, tearing over the grass between the saltings and the road with our flaming sausage in his mouth. It was a race between our endurance and his greed, and his greed won, for at last he lay down with the sausage between his paws and we fell on him from behind and captured our own. The sausage had several dents in it, but it was not punctured. The dog had a good mouth.

As for mishaps to the food, more occurred on board when it was being actually delivered than when it was waiting on shore. Twice the milk-boy stumbled over the foreshore and spilt our milk on deck. A more serious matter was the butcher-boy’s fall. He came up the ladder with his wooden tray on his shoulder one blustering day, was caught by a gust as he reached the top, and was blown backwards into the mud. Our joint lodged in the mud, and the wooden tray travelled a long way like a sledge on the slippery mud before it stopped.

Our coal was brought along the road in a cart, and man-handled from there to the fore end of the ship. We took only four hundredweight at a time, as we did not use much coal—the inside of a barge is very easily heated—and we did not care to have the decks hampered.