Now as regards the annual expenses of upkeep, apart from the interest on the capital sunk. These expenses, of course, do not appear in the table of initial cost. The largest item is insurance. Our policy allows us to cruise sixty-two days in the year, with a rebate for the number of days’ cruising short of the allowance. The policy works out at about £10 a year. So far we have done all the annual fitting-out ourselves, the cost of which, with varnish, paint, and renewals, has averaged about £5.
Our running gear lasts a long time, as our cruises are short. We have not renewed our sails since the barge was rerigged. The sails of a trading barge, if carefully tended, last ten or twelve years. Ours, therefore, should last at least twenty. The upkeep of barges has been reduced to a science. All gear and fittings are standardized, and there is, besides, a free market in second-hand things taken out of condemned barges.
A barge’s sides are tarred and blackleaded. This costs shillings where paint and anti-fouling composition would cost pounds. Although we tar and blacklead the Ark Royal’s sides, we have a false whale which we enamel white. Another economy we practise is to paint the cabin-tops with Stockholm tar, thinned out with paraffin and with a little teak paint to colour it. As the superficial area of the two cabin-tops is four hundred square feet, much paint would be required. The stanchions, the wheel, iron uprights which hold the sidelight screens, metal blocks, and most ironwork, we cover with galvanizing paint, which costs little, is easily renewed, and looks smart.
PLAN OF THE “ARK ROYAL.”
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A GLOSSARY OF ESSEX WORDS AND PHRASES
In this Glossary obvious mispronunciations and corruptions are not included. By including them a glossary might be extended indefinitely, and to no profit. Numerous Essex dialect words are, of course, current in other counties; Essex shares a particularly large number with the rest of East Anglia. The aim here is simply to give the dialect words which the authors of this book have themselves heard in Essex, and which they believe to be most characteristic. No one interested in dialect is ignorant where to turn for the greatest store of information on the subject yet collected—Dr. Joseph Wright’s masterly work, The English Dialect Dictionary. The following list, however, contains several words which do not appear in that Dictionary. The dictionary is referred to as E. D. D.: