In going through such shallow and narrow channels as Yarmouth Roads the fleet collected themselves for mutual safety. In the absence of good charts and efficient buoyage—it was not till 1830 that the singular distinction of producing the worst charts passed away from England—it was essential to use great caution in such strong tideways. The procedure was, therefore, as follows: The fleet being now together, each ship had a man in the chains heaving his lead. He sung out the soundings loud enough for his neighbours to hear. This happened in every ship; so that those vessels announcing shoal water would be recognised as getting too near the sands; that other bunch of craft declaring consistently deeper water would be in the channel, and the rest could follow their lead. In this manner the best water was always found.
Anyone who has navigated up or down the Swin Channel at the entrance to the Thames Estuary knows that the region is full of shoals, made still more dangerous by the strong tides which set athwart them. In clear weather the excellent modern buoyage makes the passage easy. But in the eighteenth century, and in thick weather, when the fleet from Newcastle came to the Swin, they hoped to have a head wind, and not to be able to lie their course. Why? Well, they smelt their way by continuous soundings, and if they were beating to windward they would find as they prolonged each tack the water began to shoal; it was then time to ’bout ship, and they stood on the other tack till the shallow water warned them once more. But if they had had a fair wind and been able to keep straight on, they ran the risk, they said, of getting piled up on the wrong side of the sand-spits in some swatch-way. Therefore the fleet adopted clever tactics. The lesser draught ships endeavoured to wait till the bigger vessels passed ahead. The former would then follow close behind, knowing that if the largest craft could float, so also could they. But when the bigger ships found the water shoaling, they, too, would let go anchor and let the smaller ships go ahead. Then the tide having flooded still more, and the small fry having been observed to be all right, up came the cables and the procession went on its way. It was just because these vessels had to experience such a great deal of anchor work that they held the record of any ships afloat for breaking out their hooks with their windlass in the shortest time. Whenever an ex-collier’s crew shipped aboard another vessel, it was found that the windlass needed half the men to do the work.
An Eighteenth-Century Man-of-War.
The illustration shows a three-decker in a shipbuilder’s yard ready for launching.
Collier Brigs Beating up the Swin.
Those were the days of real seamanship of all kinds and sorts, so we can afford in these modern times to admire a lost art. “Nice managers of sloop-rigged vessels,” says this fine old skipper, “turning to windward in narrow channels, when they want but little to weather a point, rather than make another tack, have a practice of running up in the wind till the headway ceases, then they fill again upon the same tack; this they call making a half board.” But Hutchinson had no great faith in “weather-glasses,” and even doubts “their being of any great service to seafaring people.” However, he does admit that on one occasion he had warning of an approaching storm in the English Channel from Tampion’s portable barometer. About seventy sailing ships had got under way from the Downs with a moderate south-east breeze. In the morning the quicksilver fell from 29½ inches to 28½. He had all his small sails up, and ordered all hands to set to work and take in the small sails and lower the t’gallant yards. About eight in the evening the storm came on, the ship being now abreast of the Lizard, the wind having shifted to south-south-east. Suddenly it flew round to north-north-west, blew very strongly, and though he had no canvas aloft except the foresail in brails, yet it laid the ship more down on her broadside than ever he had known her. Later on they passed a ship bottom upwards, which had obviously foundered in the same squall.
Hutchinson, who himself preferred squaresails cut deep and narrow rather than shallow and broad, alleging that thus they stood better on a wind, opined that because of this superior shape the colliers and timber-carriers already mentioned sailed so well and required so few hands. And we get just a brief reference to the hardy Liverpool pilots of those days. Perhaps the reader is aware of the heavy sea which gets up among the sands at the mouth of the Mersey, and that in those waters it was and is often a most difficult undertaking to put a pilot on board an incoming ship. In such weather that it was impossible for the pilot-sloop to get alongside the incoming ship the two craft would get as near to each other as they dared, and then the bigger craft would throw a small line aboard the sloop, which the pilot would quickly hitch round his body, leap overboard, and so be pulled on board—more drowned than alive, one would have thought. Sometimes the incoming craft would veer out a rope astern which the sloop would pick up, and the same business followed as before. But even the Liverpool pilots were not so brilliant as those whose duty it was to take ships out from the Tyne across the treacherous bar, when sometimes they were compelled to let the ship lie almost on her beam ends so as to float out into the North Sea without hitting the shoals at the river’s mouth.
