Going backstroke Should we swim in the harbour?
RECENTLY I have read a number of articles about people wanting the right to swim in the floating harbour. Cumberland Basin seems to be the focus of these people.
I always understood that swimming in the docks was dangerous; you could get run over by a boat, or injured or killed by a propellor and if I recall rightly, there was a scare in the 1990s that you could catch a nasty disease from rats.
Nowadays, with fewer big ships moving around in the docks, would it be OK to swim in them? When I walk past I often see people on paddleboards, which looks to be almost as dangerous as swimming.
Has swimming in the docks ever been permitted?
M. Brawn by email
Editor’s reply: The short answer is no, it’s never been officially sanctioned - which in the days when it was a working port wouldn’t have been surprising.
But we know that plenty of people swam in the docks anyway. There are a number of mentions of men and boys swimming in the floating harbour by mid-19th century, when the water would also have been full of all sorts of horrible things, including human waste. Just one of many reasons why so many Bristolians died young back then...
It’s worth remembering that until the late Victorian era, most people couldn’t swim. It was only around the 1890s that teaching kids to swim became a national concern. Swimming lessons were eagerly promoted in Bristol, partly because there is so much water in the city.
Look through old newspapers and you can find plenty of mentions of people drowning, or being rescued from the docks and other local waterways - though from what we can tell, the Feeder was always a more popular swimming haunt than the docks ever were. Older readers can certainly tell you that in hot weather, people swimming in the quieter parts of the docks, such as Bathurst Basin and the Underfall, was a common sight. The Port authorities regularly issued warnings about the danger, particularly during a severe heatwave in the summer of 1932.
BT carried a letter a few years ago from a quite elderly reader who, as a young boy himself, was told by a very elderly Hotwells resident that in Victorian times boys would also dive into the Underfall in the hope of finding buried treasure. This was apparently because of a local legend that gold and silver items looted from the Mansion House in the 1831 Queen Square riots had been thrown into the docks by rioters fearful of being caught, and these would have been washed towards the Underfall. It’s a story we would love to know more about!
The nasty disease you mention is Weil’s Disease, carried in the urine of rats, and which can be a killer. It has been detected in the docks periodically; the last big scare we know of was in 2005.
In more recent times, people have died as a result of diving in, often because of a combination of hot weather and alcohol. Whether or not it eventually becomes permissible to swim in the Cumberland Basin - or some other part remains to be seen. The water may or may not be clean, but the smart money would bet that the Council would be very keen to avoid any sort of legal liability for anyone killed or injured if “wild swimming” in the docks is ever allowed to go ahead.
Boeing, Boeing, gone
RE: the photo of a Qantas Boeing 707 at Bristol Airport (BT Picture Past feature, July 6): Boeing made several variants of the 707 to many different airline requirements.
The original design length for the 707 was 128 feet, but was stretched by 10 feet before main production began. Qantas felt this would not be suitable for their operations, as it would now have a shorter range than planned. By reducing its length back to 128 feet, the 707 would be able to operate transPacific routes more economically, so Boeing therefore built a variant specifically for Qantas - the 707138.
The engines fitted to the Qantas 707-138 also had increased thrust to allow take off from short runways in hot climates (something the contemporary British-built Vickers VC10 was designed for in the first place). Seven Boeing 707138 aircraft were supplied to Qantas, all in 1959, with a further six of the improved 707-138B variant being supplied over the next few years (the earlier six were updated during the same period).
Qantas did sometimes operate their 707-138s to Heathrow - so maybe this one was diverted to Lulsgate for some reason, as presumably the runway length was within the aircraft’s capabilities.
One 707-138 has survived - VHEBA (now registered as VH-XBA) is preserved and on display at the Qantas Founders Outback Museum in Queensland, Australia.
Peter Casling
by email
Editor’s reply: Thanks for this Mr Casling. I also had an email from a friend who says he can remember seeing an item on the local TV news – he reckons sometime in the 1960s – about a 707 making an unexpected landing at Lulsgate.
Love of Caravans
MARION’S Memories (BT, June 22) reminded me of our family caravan holidays. The first one being around the end of the Second World War when my cousins and I, with our parents, packed up and went to Brean for a holiday.
The ‘caravan’ was an old charabanc converted inside with bunk beds and I suppose a kind of kitchen. I can’t really recall the exact conversion as I was quite young, being born in 1941, but I do remember the bunk beds. It must have been quite roomy as my cousins numbered five, as well as their Mum and Dad and with my parents and myself, we all slept in the same bus.
In the later 40s and early 50s we graduated to more modern caravans at Guppy’s farm at Bowleaze Cove in Weymouth.
Who could forget fetching water from the stand pipe and the awful disgusting toilet block, a wellscrubbed bench with a hole in it? No shower blocks in those days.
It did mean that we could go on holiday though, and as children we didn’t mind the “bare necessities.”
The picture is of my cousin David Eley (who passed away last year) and myself digging in the sand at Brean, note the shiny bucket and spade. Happy days!
Mrs Marilyn Stabb (nee Pavord)
Whitehall