Category: News

Of Wooden Ships And Iron Men

As part of the work that Tony Hodge does as a volunteer on the Digitisation Project in Barry Library to upload historical photographs and the like to the “Peoples Collection Wales” website, he came across the following account complete with photographs and the pen and ink sketch of the Bristol Channel pilot cutters. They were in an envelope addressed to the Barry Borough Librarian with a 3p Christmas stamp which has been identified as being issued in 1971. It is introduced as:

“This is part of Jack Davey’s life story as told to me aboard the “Result”, a square tops’l schooner, in 1926”. It had been sent by R D Evans, Hillhead, Falmerston Road, Mount Pleasant, Newhaven, Sussex. (NB the history of the HMS Result, which was built in 1893 and continued in service until 1967, is fully documented on the National Historic Ships UK website and is worthy of its own article.)

“Barry Roads for Orders”. What memories such a cry invokes. The first time I heard it was on the Barque “Friends” one hundred and five days out of Valparaiso, it was the first year Barry Signal Station was opened. Previously we had made either Queenstown or Falmouth for orders, and then picked up our pilot. On this trip we were bound to Barry for orders. With the sleet driving down from nor’east, Simon Bartlett’s cutter the “Dawn” with the letters BY on the mains’l was a most welcome sight, as she lay hove to off the Fastnet.

The picture made by the sailing cutters at sea was truly wonderful, particularly after a long voyage, when they seemed to make home that much nearer. The arrival of the pilot on board with fresh news, after being out of touch with the outside world for so long a period, had to be experienced to be believed.

The history of the Bristol Channel Pilots and their cutters is lost in the dust of antiquity together with many of the early records of ships and shipping which had been written, but we know that a pilot named Ray took Cabot’s “Matthew” down the Bristol Channel in the sixteenth century, and that the Ray family, father to son, father to son, have been pilots ever since.

What wonderful sailing craft these cutters were, and what a wonderful breed of men sailed them.

Until 1914, when amalgamation took place, the system was competitive, each pilot owning and sailing his own cutter and going westward “seeking”. That often meant sailing as far as the Fastnet Rock off the west coast of Ireland, or up St George’s Channel and the Irish Sea to Liverpool, or around Land’s End and into the Straights of Dover, looking for ships that required a pilot to take them to Barry or even Bristol.

Two years after I left the “Olivebank” I took a job with Simon Bartlett on the “Dawn” as a deck hand. The following is an account of a typical trip “seeking”.

The cutter was generally sailed out by the pilot, pilot boatman and an apprentice, the boatman and the apprentice doing the work and the pilot would take the tiller if he felt like doing a little sailing. After the pilot had been put aboard the incoming ship the cutter was sailed home by the apprentice and boatman.

As the Bristol Channel has the second highest rise and fall of tide in the world – the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia has the highest – and few havens of shelter once Barry or Ilfracombe were left behind, this was seldom a fine weather trip.

It was a case of “ride it out” and although the cutters were built of wood you had to be an iron man to sail them year after year summer and winter. How true the saying: “From Padstow Bay to Lundy Light is a watery grave both day and night”.

Now back to the trip, which I think will interest you, it has been copied from the log book.

4am. Breeze freshening.

5am. Log 120 miles. Breeze strong still freshening

7.45am Block Split. Peak halyard chaffed and stranded. Hove to and had gaff on deck. Cut out and renewed block and spliced afresh the purchase. Had a bit of fun in the lumpy sea, especially when we hauled up again. The sea is oppressively lonely.

10am. Have gone about on the starboard tack going west by north with 75 miles to Cape Clear. Wind freshening , sky heavy and overcast. Took another roll in the mains’l.

10.30am Hauled fores’l slightly to wind’ard so as not to shake her up too much with this hard driving.

12 noon. Reaching shead (north by east) slowing. Breeze strong. Down to storm jib. Double reefed fores’l and seven rolls in the main.

12.45pm Sighted a Clan Line and made up under her lee.

2.25pm Pilot put aboard and then made for home. When Old Head of Kinsale (ie in County Cork, Ireland) was on the beam, homeward bound bearing east ¾ south.

When I arrived home after this trip I read in the “Western Mail” that the gale had caused severe damage around the coast stripping roofs of buildings, uprooting trees and causing ships to seek shelter.

After five years with the pilots I went back to the deep sea again