The tributes start pouring in...

Click picture below to watch Jane's video...

Ramsgate Gathering

There is much of interest in Ramsgate and many memories of the Dunkirk little ships of 1940. 

Tamzine at the Imperial War Museum

My brother-in-law Ant Bennett has a link to the smallest little ship to make the journey and return intact. Tamzine is a 14 ft 9in dinghy that was built for Ant's father, Ralph. Ralph was away on active service but Tamzine was kept at Birchington, near Margate and was unceremoniously commandeered for the evacuation. 

She was used to ferry troops from the beaches to the larger ships offshore and then, rather than being abandoned, remarkably she was bought back to England. 

She had no form of identification but was by chance recognised by a friend of Ralph's, and Tamzine and Ralph were reunited in due course when he got back from service abroad. The dinghy had suffered a bit of wear and tear and had acquired stains in the bilges thought to be due to blood. Tamzine continued to give good service throughout Ant's childhood and then, following Ralph's death in 1980, the family donated this smallest of the little ships to the Imperial War Museum. The blood stains can no longer been seen though as the IWM had her bottom planks replaced.

We were today visited by our friends Sue and Russell who live in Ramsgate and are enthusiastic local historians. Sue last came aboard Bonita when she was here for the OGA 25th anniversary celebrations in 1988.

Russell, Sue, Emma and John

Viscount De L'Isle

The formal part of today's proceedings included a welcome from Viscount De L'Isle, the Lord Lieutenant of Kent, and by Laura Sandys the local MP. We were all impressed by how clearly they recognised the importance of the OGA in preserving our maritime heritage, and by Rob Holden's powers of influence.

In the evening we enjoyed the hospitality of the Royal Temple Yacht club in their fine clubhouse overlooking the harbour.

Ramsgate

We left the Swale in light winds and partly motored, partly sailed down the Kent coast and round the North Foreland to Ramsgate. Ramsgate harbour is always a favourite, full of interest and history. The town has a separate life of its own.

Ramsgate RNLI station

Ramsgate inner harbour is the site of an excellent lifeboat station designed by our sponsors Beckett Rankine. They tell us that the RNLI are an interesting client to work for as they require their facilities to be designed with a 120 year design life. To provide such durability in a maritime environment is not easily done and most commercial port clients are unwilling to pay the premium for it. The inshore lifeboat is stored inside the building and the design brief for the building required the large door to be able to be opened in any weather since there is no upper wind speed limit for an RNLI launch. The building has a substantial steel frame designed to withstand the uplift forces which would result from opening the large door during a south westerly hurricane!

We had a fair amount of manoeuvring in marina berths but eventually Bonita came to rest without damage in the heritage section of the inner harbour. There are several other gaffers here and the whole weekend has been ably organised by Rob and Jan Holden. Their lovely little cutter Emanuel, which once sailed the Atlantic, is here too.

Dunkirk Little Ship Sundowner

The second picture shows Bonita astern of the motor yacht Sundowner,which has an interesting history. Originally built in 1912 as an admiralty launch, she was converted to a yacht for Charles Lightoller. He was the second mate on the Titanic and the most senior officer to survive her sinking; he subsequently gave evidence at the official enquiries. Between the wars he cruised extensively in European waters in Sundowner, and in 1940 took her to Dunkirk, filled her with 130 soldiers from the beaches and bought them all back to Ramsgate. She survived multiple attacks from the air during the journey as well as the hazard of wash from fast moving Destroyers. It is very appropriate that she is preserved and on display here  in Ramsgate.

The Swale

Emma and Shivering Sands

We were right to stay in Brightlingsea yesterday. Today we woke to a warm sunny day with a force 3 SE wind.

We left the harbour at high tide - 8.20am- and had a sparkling sail across the estuary. We went quite close to two of the second world war anti-aircraft forts as the pictures show. 

John and Knock John

The story of the hurried design and construction of these forts under wartime conditions and their survival for over seventy years without any maintenance at all is quite remarkable and deserves to be better known. The forts are of two types, some like Knock John Tower were constructed in dry docks and then floated into position and sunk. Others like the Shivering Sands Forts were constructed in-situ on piled platforms. Both types were designed by the talented civil engineer Guy Maunsell. Some of the forts had a second life after the war as pirate radio stations and in one case as the independent kingdom of Sealand.

In the evening we sailed into the river Swale and picked up our mooring buoy which we had last let go at the beginning of our circumnavigation on 26 April.

Bonita and her crew have had many adventures in the 97 days since we left. The old lady has in general stood up to the pressures pretty well although at times the crew have shown signs of strain.  However this is not the end of this year's cruise: we have to press on to get the the Old Gaffers bumper festival in Cowes in two weeks time.

Back on our home mooring...

Sailing on the Thames 50 years ago

Bonita on the EYC scrubbing dock

As Bonita sets out on her passage across the Thames Estuary today on the 50th anniversary of the OGA it is a good time to recall how sailing on London's river has changed over the last half century. From 1937 to 1965 Bonita was based at Erith Yacht Club spending the winters in a mud berth dug into the saltings and summers on a swinging mooring. This 1937 photograph shows her up on the scrubbing dock with the EYC club ship Garson I (a converted Thames barge) behind. She has clearly just been painted - no doubt the reason for the photo.

The smart paint wouldn't have lasted very long, after a week or two on her mooring the topsides would have been smeared with oil. Even in the mid 1960s the Thames was a filthy river; as youngsters at the yacht club we were told that if you fell in and took just one mouthful of water you would need a trip to hospital to have your stomach pumped. The warning worked, despite Bonita's lack of guard rails we never did fall in! The only benefit to the pollution was that no antifouling paint was required since no weed or barnacles could grow in the water; the bottom was simply painted with a coat of bitumastic paint to keep it waterproof.

There was much more commercial traffic on the Thames then with a regular procession of ships passing up to the London docks and back. As well as the ships there were thousands of Thames lighters, a large number of which were moored in a barge road off Erith. When a tug or ship passed by the clanging of the moored lighters gave advance warning of the approaching wash and you knew you'd have to hang on a few seconds later. Occasionally one of the lighters would be poorly secured and would break adrift. A number of EYC yachts on their moorings were hit by lighters and a few were sunk by them. It was after a drifting lighter hit Bonita and became caught on her, breaking her bowsprit, springing the planks at the stem and dislodging her rail, that my father decided to move her down river to the safer waters of the Swale.

Allan Beckett

Yachting clothing has undergone dramatic changes. The first photo in this blog, which can be seen here, shows Dad's pre-war sailing outfit. By the time the war had finished he had smartened up a bit and was sailing in his demob suit as seen in the photo on the left; this photo was taken in the early '50s but not a lot had changed by 1960. The cine film below was taken on one of our weekend trips down to Holehaven; you can see that my 'yachting jacket' consisted of a normal raincoat. As I remember the only wet weather oilskins we had aboard were a very stiff and not very waterproof PVC ensemble complete with sou'wester.

In the film Bonita is sailing under her last suit of cotton sails, she got her first  terylene suit in 1964. If stowed away wet the cotton sails would go mouldy - a constant concern. As was blowing the sails out; we spent more than one Saturday evening at anchor hand stitching repairs so that we could sail home on Sunday.

Another notable advance was the invention of melamine crockery, in the days of china there were regular breakages, indeed on the occasion of one particularly vicious squall the crockery cupboard door came open and pretty well every plate aboard was shattered. How Captain Cook managed to keep the fine china dinner service that we saw in Orkney intact (23 June blog entry Fog and wind in the Orkneys) I cannot imagine.



There have been some distinct improvements aboard Bonita over the last 50 years but at the same time much remains unchanged. One constant is that, despite her distinctly cramped 19th century accommodation, she retains the ability to engender great affection in all who sail in her; so much so that many of her crew for the RBC have been insistent that they were not going to miss out on being a part of this, her greatest adventure.

More reminiscences about sailing on the Thames in the pre-terylene era can be found in the History section of the EYC's website here.