“Sail on! nor fear to breast the sea,
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee!”
The owner of the _Will Arding_, whom we met the next day, was a kindly
simple man who told us all we needed to know about the vessel. We had
prepared ourselves to cope with a coper of the worst kind; but we were
soon disarmed, and that not to our detriment. He told us that the
barge had just finished her contract, and as, in his opinion, the days
of small barges were over, except in good times, he was going to sell
her, as she was barely paying her way. He showed us the record of her
trips, the cargoes she had carried, the places she had traded to, and
the repairs done to her from time to time.
He was so agreeable that the Mate hesitated to ask about her
character, but her sense of duty prevailed. One collision, in which
she was not to blame, and two fingers off the hand of one of her
mates, appeared to be the only blots on an otherwise stainless career.
Joe Applegate had already told us of the collision, though not of the
fingers, and I hoped that the Mate would be satisfied. And she was,
when she had learned that the fingers had been lost in the least
ominous manner in which fingers conceivably could be lost.
Two days later we received a message that the _Will Arding_ had
unloaded, and was lying at Greenwich ready for us to examine her.
A more gloomy February day for our visit could hardly have been; the
wind was light and easterly, and a cold drizzle fell through the fog.
The damp, however, did not touch our spirits. Even our bodies were
warmed by excitement. The owner met us in his yard, and we tried to
assume an indifference which probably did not deceive him.
The tide had ebbed some way, leaving the gravelly foreshore covered
with black slime, and there, half afloat, half resting on the ground,
and gently rocking to the wash of a passing tug, lay the _Will
Arding_, with a slight cant outwards. Her annual overhaul was due in a
month, the owner told us, thus explaining the condition of her paint
and tar. She had been sailed to Greenwich by odd hands who had not
even troubled to wash her down. Certainly she was looking her worst,
but the eye of faith already saw the splendours of her resurrection.
As we went on board, the owner told us he had given instructions for
one of the plugs to be lifted and water let in. The water was mixed
with creosote to sweeten the bilge. It was as well that he told us
this, for what we saw when we descended into the hold might have
daunted Cæsar. Some of the hatches were left on, and under these we
took cover from the rain in the long dirty hold. She was still rocking
slightly, and on the lee side black bilge water was slopping
disconsolately backwards and forwards across the floor. A strong smell
of creosote and smells of cement and other cargoes scarcely to be
determined competed for recognition in our nostrils. The _Will Arding_
seemed to have come down in the world; and this was the fact, for
lately she had been sailed by men who can always be hired in the open
market, but who do not look after their barges as the better class of
skippers do. The best skippers had all taken up with the more modern
class of large barges. The barges we had known in the country had
always been scrupulously clean and tidy below. It was perhaps
fortunate that our experience in the gin-drinker’s cabin had revealed
to us another world, and thus in some sense deadened the shock of what
we saw now.
We passed to the cabin aft, and one glance told us that the grimy
mariners of the public-houses had truly been the friends of the late
skipper George. To say that the cabin was dirty and stuffy is to say
nothing. Even the paint was greasy, and a stale smell, indescribable
but unforgettable, hung in the air. George and his mate had left their
bedding, presumably as not worth taking away. No doubt they were
right.
Some old clothes, a half-empty tin of condensed milk, stale mustard in
an egg-cup, some kind of grease in a frying-pan, two mugs with the
dregs of beer in them, lay about; and on the floor there were broken
boots and old socks.
Returning to the hold, we took all the measurements necessary for our
present purpose. We found that though the _Will Arding_ had not as
much headroom under her decks as we should have liked, she had enough
for our piano, which was the tallest piece of furniture we intended to
have on board. Moreover, we knew that barges of that size seldom have
more headroom.
Still undepressed, if sobered by the prospect of the work to be done
before we could possibly live on board, we went on shore to discuss
the price with the owner. It was a most unpolemical discussion, and
ended in my undertaking to buy the _Will Arding_ for £140 subject to
the surveyor’s report. We agreed upon a surveyor, and the owner gave
orders for the vessel to be put on the blocks at the next tide.
From this time forward the owner was unreservedly our friend, and we
dreaded lest our prize should be snatched from us at the last moment
by the untoward judgment of the surveyor. The owner fortified our
courage by assuring us he had done all the annual overhauls and
repairs for many years, and therefore it was hardly possible that the
survey would reveal anything that could not easily be put right.
Whatever the surveyor suggested he would do, whether we bought the
barge or not.
We could only await the surveyor’s report as patiently as might be,
and having bade the owner good-bye, we took one more look at the _Will
Arding_ with I hardly know what thoughts in our minds. She had canted
over still further, and looked more dingy than ever in the growing
dusk as she sat in a foreground of slime. Behind her on the wonderful
old river, now hurrying its fastest seawards in muddy eddies, two of
her sisters, their sails just drawing, glided noiselessly past and
were received into the enveloping gloom, where the drizzle shut in the
horizon and sky and water met indistinguishably.
Then we returned to London.
* * * * *
At last--as it seemed, though it was only three days later--the
surveyor’s report arrived. All was well with the _Will Arding_, and
she was, in the surveyor’s private opinion, worth all the money we
were giving for her. The only defects worth speaking of were a sprung
topmast and three damaged ribs forward, but these had been
strengthened by ‘floating’ ribs alongside.
We hurried to Greenwich and paid a deposit on the price.
This time the _Will Arding_ was on the blocks, and a gang of men had
burned off the old tar and were busy tarring and blackleading her
hull; her gear had been lowered, and our friend the owner was having a
new topmast fitted to make all good. He had also turned his men on to
replace a length of damaged rail. That was not the only thing which he
did for us outside our agreement. Soon, indeed, he became almost as
much interested in our scheme as we were ourselves, and we consulted
him at almost every turn.
While the repairs were going on we completed the purchase; and we were
profoundly conscious of the importance of the formalities which
constituted us the recognized owners of ‘sixty-four sixty-fourths’ of
the sailing barge _Will Arding_, with a registered number of our own.
Well, we were shipowners at any rate, and possessed the outer walls of
our new home. And now the Mate and I found ourselves faced with a
thousand unforeseen difficulties and problems, which crowded on us so
thick that we scarcely knew where to begin to tackle them. This state
of affairs compelled the drafting of rules of procedure, the chairman
(myself) refusing motions on any point not mentioned in the agenda.
Members of the Committee (the Mate) were allowed to make notes during
the authorized debates on subjects to be referred to in the time set
apart for general discussion. In this way our sanity was saved.
The first and most important thing was to disinfect the ship. And
here the luck was with us, for next door to the yard where the _Will
Arding_ lay were some gas-works, the manager of which was a friend of
the _Will Arding’s_ late owner. Our requirements were disclosed to the
manager, who not only told us what disinfectant to use, but most
kindly offered to have it mixed in the right proportions in one of his
boilers at a nominal cost. From the boiler it could be discharged
direct under pressure into the _Will Arding_. After consultation we
decided to have holes drilled through the lining of the hold at
regular intervals. When this had been done the _Will Arding_ was
berthed as near as possible to the boiler.
Eighty gallons of neat disinfectant were mixed with 800 gallons of
boiling water, a hose was laid on board, and the fluid was squirted
into each of the holes. By the time the last gallon was on board the
disinfectant was just above the floor, but the bubbles of foam reached
to the decks. This process caused intense curiosity in the yard, and
there were many croakers who told us that we should never get her
sweet.
The barge returned to the yard, where the various repairs went on for
several days. In the meantime, being in the best market of the world,
we bought the timber, panelling, bath, kitchen range, a hundredweight
of nails, paint, varnish, hot-water apparatus, and the hundred and one
other things we required to turn the barge into a tenantable house.
Now we enjoyed the advantage of all our work in the winter, for we had
drawn up precise lists of the things to be bought.
We look back on those purchases with delight. It gives one a sense of
real contact with the business of life to ask for the price of
something f.o.b. London, on board one’s own ship, and to order the
goods to be sent to such and such a wharf to the sailing barge _Will
Arding_. The summit of dignity was reached when I was able to tell a
dealer, who was late in delivering his goods, that my ship with her
general cargo on board was waiting to sail, and that if his goods were
not on board that afternoon they would have to be sent by rail at his
expense.
At last the repairs were finished, the general cargo was complete, and
the hatches were on. As nothing would induce me to sleep in the cabin
until it had been wholly cleaned, I decided not to sail the _Will
Arding_ to the Essex coast myself, but to have her delivered at the
shipwright’s at Bridgend--a place a few miles below Fleetwick on our
river.
We saw the _Will Arding_ get under way. She had improved vastly in
appearance. The tide was on the turn, and the wind westerly; great
clouds sailed across the sky. It was a brave wind with a touch of
spring in it, and it made the _Will Arding’s_ topsail slat furiously
as the mate hoisted it to the music of the patent blocks. The brails
were let go, the mainsail was sheeted home; both men went forward,
and then the clank, clank, clank of the windlass fell on our ears
with the sound we knew so well both by day and night. The chain was
soon ‘up and down,’ and the foresail was hoisted and made fast to the
rigging with a bowline. The _Will Arding_ sheered slowly towards us
with her sails full until the anchor checked her. Then swinging slowly
round she came head to wind, her mainsail and foresail flapping
loudly, and the mainsheet blocks crashing backwards and forwards on
the main horse. When the foresail was aback the anchor was quickly
broken out, and the barge filled on the other tack and gathered way.
We watched her standing over towards the opposite shore, until the
mate got the anchor catted. Then bearing away with her great sprit
right off and a white wave under her fore-foot, our home fled down the
river.
[Illustration: BRADWELL CREEK]