CHAPTER XIII.
yarmouth to somerleyton.
“This is something like fun!” gasped Wynne, as he eased off the jib sheet to a squall, and the salt foam dashed in his face; “but there won’t be much skin left on my hands by the time we get to the top of Breydon. These enormous jibs are horrible things to have to work. If the yachts had finer bows, they would not want nearly so much head-sail, and would go as fast, if not faster.”
This was heresy to our man, who had seen no other rig for river boats all his life, and he and Wynne had a heated argument on the matter, without either being much the wiser.
On reaching the top of Breydon, we turned to the left, up the Waveney, for half a mile, as far as Burgh Castle, passing over the dreaded Burgh flats, where a wherry and a yacht were both hard aground, waiting for the tide to float them off. The deep water channel is not near the line of posts as one would imagine, but close along the west shore. We touched two or three times, but did not stick, and at last moored alongside a wherry, and landed to inspect the ruins on the top of the hill. No one passing along these waters should miss the ruins of Burgh Castle, a Roman station of great interest.
There is a very extensive stretch of massive wall, with towers at intervals, and at the corners; and we spent a considerable time in making sketches of the ruins, and admiring the extensive view.
We could, if we chose, continue on up the Waveney, but the next five miles of river are narrow, uninteresting, and with a heavy run of tide, while at the end is a fixed bridge—St. Olave’s, where the mast would have to be lowered. So we turned back into the Yare, and sailed up to the mouth of the new cut at Reedham. This is a ship canal, about three miles long, connecting the Yare with the Waveney. The tide flows and ebbs from the Reedham end of it. It is perfectly straight, and if the wind should be straight up or down it, there is nothing for it but to tow. Now, however, we had a beam wind, and tore along merrily enough. But trouble was in store for us. The canal is wide enough, but it is not kept “didled” out (“didling,” or “dydling,” being a Norfolk term for dredging, with scoops at the end of poles, and lifting the mud on to the banks), and the sides are very shallow. In the distance, we saw a large billy-boy, or topsail smack, from the Thames, and as we approached, it became only too plain from the rake of her mast, that she was aground in the very middle of the channel. We got the mainsail down directly, and ran along under the jib, and then, as we expected, ran aground alongside of her. A wherry coming behind lowered her sail, and stopped in time. The smack was laden with rice for Messrs. Colmans’ Works, and her skipper, instead of going round by Yarmouth, had tried the short cut by Lowestoft. After much shoving and towing we got past, and left the smack patiently waiting the rise of the tide, or the arrival of a tug.
[Since the foregoing was written, the Cut has been much improved in depth by dredging, and piling the banks.]