Ready for sea
Small can be beautiful in British sail training
Late in the 1980s, I was at a festival in the Baltic, doing some research for a thriller I wrote called Blood Knot, which featured the tail end of the Cold War and plenty of Tall Ships action. One of the features of the festival was a gigantic ship called Mir, or possibly Kruzenshtern, manned by young Russian matelots. What was noticeable about these youths was not only the skill and intrepidity with which they swarmed in the upper reaches of the tall ship’s rig, but the fact that in spite of the bracing zephyrs of the Gulf of Helsinki their complexions were not so much ruddy and weatherbeaten as bluish white. This, it was explained to me, was because Russian tall ships were used by the authorities to provide their nuclear submariners with a breath of fresh air, thus proving themselves useful as well as beautiful.
The naval connection in UK sail training has long been extinct, and fresh air is in short supply. Eddie, who built some walls at home, told me during a teabreak that he had been in the Navy. I said ah, seen the world. He said well, no, because Navy ships do not have windows, and besides, he did not much like going outdoors. This might be a symptom of the fact that in Britain the State has long since left owning tall ships to charities, the only remaining trace of its involvement being the Sea Cadets, who run the very tidy Royalist, part-funded by the Navy.
The charity model does not always work, to put it mildly. It will have escaped nobody’s attention that the Jubilee Sailing Trust, which did excellent work taking able and less able people to sea in the Lord Nelson and the Tenacious, has ceased operations. This is a great tragedy and a national disgrace. Still, the charity cost £1.8million a year to run, which is by no means chicken feed; and what with the difficulties produced by a spot of Covid and a dash of economic hardship, and a national youth infected by screen addiction and not given a chance to let fresh breezes blow that pernicious virus into the sea, there was eventually nowhere to go but into receivership.
If the Russians can run sail training ships, and so can the Brazilians–and the Swiss, for goodness’s sake, Switzerland being a country that is by no means surrounded by water–why can’t an island nation like Britain?
Well, it is nasty and expensive and people may get wet, and up there at the yardarm opportunities for interference by human resources wonks and diversity officers are limited. Beside which, some sail training has boiled down to 12 eager youths buzzing around oceans in large plastic boats doing the washing-up and waiting for their turn to steer, and finding the waits long and the thrill temporary. So here we sit, a maritime nation with some of the most dismal sail training prospects anywhere...
Glorious barges
Wait a minute. Down in the marshes, something is stirring. Well, not in the actual marshes precisely; but on Hythe Quay at Maldon. Alongside this classically correct quay lies a glorious crowd of Thames barges, once the heavy lorries of the East Coast and nowadays doing their bit for maritime Britain. Blue Mermaid, a beautiful five-year-old replica of a barge of that name blown up by a mine in World War II, is one of these. She is owned by the Sea-Change Sailing Trust, seachangesailingtrust.org.uk (disclosure: I am a proud patron of the charity) and her job is to take on board crews of (mainly) young people, assisted where necessary by bursaries, to learn the ancient skills of working cargo under sail. She can carry a hundred tons of stuff, and she has no engine. She may not do any ocean voyages; but short-tacking a hundred feet of barge loaded with pallets of nut-brown ale up an East Coast river as the tide turns foul presents challenges of its own. Sea-Change changes lives by showing diverse crews the benefits of teamwork, putting them in touch with both the wild world and each other, and introducing them to skills and techniques of seamanship that can be extended to anywhere from Poole Harbour to the Patagonian Channels. If you have cargo for anywhere between Kent and Yarmouth, give them a ring. They’ll be pleased to carry it for you, and their freight rates are highly competitive, having remained unchanged since 1931. Useful, and also beautiful. And less radioactive than those Russians.
‘ Down in the marshes, something is stirring’