Old books and old ships
Oct. 3rd, 2025 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnI read some old books about boats (and ships) and decided to ramble about them here.
New Chum by John Masefield, the Box of Delights, Poet Laureate chap. This was written in the 1940's, but it's about Masefield's experiences as a young teenager training to be a sailor on the training ship Conway in the 1890's, moored at Liverpool. And when I say moored, that's mid-stream - all those boys just living tight-packed on a ship, sleeping in hammocks, unable to set foot on land unless a rowing boat or a steam launch took them.
It's an absolutely fascinating glimpse into a world that was already vanishing: the world dominated by sailing ships, from warships, to clippers, to trading barges and fishing boats.
I lived near Liverpool for a while, years ago, and the description of all the unusual boats barges and fishing vessels that made up the 'Runcorn fleet' took my imagination: I don't remember seeing boats on the Mersey at all, apart from the odd ferry. I remember it as a rather muddy, grim and empty river, not even particularly rich in birdlife. I just looked it up, and there is a marina in Liverpool with some boats in it, which mostly look rather static, the kind of thing some people keep to drink cocktails on in the summer. Nothing in Runcorn. A handful of little boats up a creek in Widnes.
Nothing to suggest the incredible vision of the River of Liverpool as Masefield describes it, filled with life, and bustling with ships and boats of every kind and size constantly coming and going, supporting whole industries and unique livelihoods, all with their own skills.
Something I hadn't quite been aware of was the idea that young trainee sailors who spent all their time on board ship would be so passionately interested in ships : there are a couple of lovely descriptions of times when they were given a day of leave from training and ship-maintenance to go into town... and they spent a lot of the time either looking at pictures of ships in the art museum, or going around the ships in the harbour, asking questions about their gear and if possible, climbing the masts.
Actually, that's another slight oddity: I'm used to the idea that children were more free to move about if you go further back in the past, so it was a jolt to hear 'the safety-bicycle was just beginning then, so boys did not have the range they do today' (ie, in 1944).
It was of course a completely male world: I don't think any women were even mentioned, except maybe the odd unnamed mother. I was rather charmed to learn that a standard thing to do with a favored male friend was to walk arm in arm around the ship, an activity known as 'mooching'. And they all call one another 'chum' (hence the title).
But the most horrifying thing about the world described is the absolute brutal bullying. Nobody escaped it, it was expected, directed most fiercely at the youngest and weakest, but still a threat even to the oldest and most qualified and respected boys - and frankly terrifying. Amazing there weren't more deaths.
Though, pretty much all the young trainee sailors that Masefield met at that time are mournfully recorded as eventually 'lost at sea'.
Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers is a book I'd read years ago, but more or less forgotten, so when I found a copy in a charity shop, I thought I'd give it another go.
It's a novel from 1903, and at the time the author was a civil servant, and much concerned that nobody had noticed the threat of invasion of Britain from Germany across the North Sea. So he wrote this novel, which is a sort of spy mystery, I suppose, to tell people about it, which apparently.. did work, and changed British defense strategy. What a weird world.
I rather liked Carruthers, the narrator, also a British civil servant (I think rather more upper-class than the author.) He is a bit of a knob, initially - much concerned with shooting-parties and pristine white trousers - but on a whim he accepts an invitation to join Our Hero, Davies, on his yacht in the Baltic.
The yacht turns out to be a rather damp and well-used ex-lifeboat (this is important! Because it is super-tough and therefore can withstand mighty waves and constant runnings-aground. Which is something that happens a lot, both accidentally and on purpose.
(This book made me so grateful for the Garmin GPS depth-finder: the very thought of sailing through a vast network of sand-bars and mud with nothing but a lead to check the depth of the bottom gives me such anxiety).
Soon we learn Davies's only in the Baltic because the Villain tried to assassinate him by stranding him on a Friesian sandbank in a gale, and that he has lost his heart to the Villain's daughter, a person we only meet towards the end of the book, but none the less enters sailing her own small dinghy singlehanded.
There's a great deal of sailing around, a certain amount of leaping on and off boats onto sandbanks (which made me cringe: at one point someone took off his boots to jump onto a sandbank! And then trod on some cockles. Ouch. Why would you do that. How would the boat not be completely covered in black mud when you get back onto it.
Anyway, it turns out that Kaiser Wilhelm is plotting to send a fleet of small boats across the North Sea from Friesland, but this is found out in time for the British Navy to set up a North Sea force (which they didn't have, and Childers clearly considered a lunatic failure).
Actually, given how long ago this book was written, it's surprising how much 'the British are incompetent and bureaucratic and failing to make the best use of their assets and also in a state of economic peril' there is among the random Imperialism. Also the envious respect for German efficiency and engineering.
I enjoyed the bits about the working sailing-barges of Friesland, which reminded me of the Runcorn Fleet of about ten years earlier, as described by John Masefield, and also of the tales of my Essex cousins, who were old enough to remember working sailing barges coming out of Maldon and sailing down to London with their cargoes. They would take on casual labour to help with sailing and loading, and that was how the cousins (female) got a trip to London on them. There are still a few sailing barges with great red sails left at Maldon, but they are tourist trip boats now.
Now I skip about 20 years, because Dream Island by RM Lockley, and Island Child, by Ann Lockley, his daughter are post WWI books, set in the 1920's and 1930's. The second is a fascinating study in Things Dad Didn't Put In His Books.
Lockley was... hmm, what was he, really? A dreamer, first of all, a man who decided early on that what he really wanted from life was to live on a very small island, and at least for a while, made it happen. He rented the island of Skokholm, which is about 1 mile long and half a mile wide, and located just off the west coast of Pembrokeshire, which is why I came across this book, since it has local interest.
(We've been out to Skokholm in the boat many times. It's notable nowadays for its myriad puffins as well as other seabirds and seals: you can't land there now without a license as it's a bird sanctuary, but it makes for an interesting place to hang out just offshore and have lunch.)
From Dream Island, you get the impression of Lockley and his wife Doris as intensely practical. The kind of people who could take a very neglected old farmhouse, patch it up and bring it back into use using bits of wood from shipwrecks, and live there year round, with a child too, sailing intrepidly over often wild seas while carrying out cutting-edge research into seabirds and their lives. Lockley also wrote a book about rabbits that inspired Watership Down, as well as quite a lot of other books about islands and birds which were very popular in their day.
The clear, unflattering eyes of their daughter, however, saw a rather different picture, as told in Island Child: a father who was charming, much inclined to picking up 'very odd people' (other dreamers, I suppose) and full of weird theories and frank neglect (the tale of how he would sometimes pick up seabirds and put them in his coat pockets, where they would be found dead days later is one of many jarring anecdotes that really put the spotlight on how different 'ornithologist' was in the 20's and how much they were making it up as they went along.)
And It was interesting to learn that they really could not stick it out on Skokholm, particularly in the winter, and soon moved back inland, where Lockley had a disgraceful affair with a much younger Land Girl, then declared his marriage over, even though Doris wanted to give it another go. Doris went off to London, to become an interior decorator: a strange path for a woman who had lived on an island with no running water or even plumbing. Not that the plumbing for their mainland houses was much better.
I do enjoy reading about plumbing. One of the houses they lived in had a stream with a bucket arrangement for washing up. And I shan't forget the vivid description of the houses of the village of Dale, where there was one sewer for the village that discharged directly onto the beach where the children played and caught shrimps for their tea.
Still sounds better than the horrible arrangements for washing on board the Training Ship Conway in the 1890s.
One thing all these books had in common was that they are print format, so I can read them 3 inches from my nose. I am definitely struggling a bit to read stuff at laptop screen distance at the moment, so I have been to the optician and ordered, with some fear and dread, some varifocal glasses. I hope I like them, they cost enough!
New Chum by John Masefield, the Box of Delights, Poet Laureate chap. This was written in the 1940's, but it's about Masefield's experiences as a young teenager training to be a sailor on the training ship Conway in the 1890's, moored at Liverpool. And when I say moored, that's mid-stream - all those boys just living tight-packed on a ship, sleeping in hammocks, unable to set foot on land unless a rowing boat or a steam launch took them.
It's an absolutely fascinating glimpse into a world that was already vanishing: the world dominated by sailing ships, from warships, to clippers, to trading barges and fishing boats.
I lived near Liverpool for a while, years ago, and the description of all the unusual boats barges and fishing vessels that made up the 'Runcorn fleet' took my imagination: I don't remember seeing boats on the Mersey at all, apart from the odd ferry. I remember it as a rather muddy, grim and empty river, not even particularly rich in birdlife. I just looked it up, and there is a marina in Liverpool with some boats in it, which mostly look rather static, the kind of thing some people keep to drink cocktails on in the summer. Nothing in Runcorn. A handful of little boats up a creek in Widnes.
Nothing to suggest the incredible vision of the River of Liverpool as Masefield describes it, filled with life, and bustling with ships and boats of every kind and size constantly coming and going, supporting whole industries and unique livelihoods, all with their own skills.
Something I hadn't quite been aware of was the idea that young trainee sailors who spent all their time on board ship would be so passionately interested in ships : there are a couple of lovely descriptions of times when they were given a day of leave from training and ship-maintenance to go into town... and they spent a lot of the time either looking at pictures of ships in the art museum, or going around the ships in the harbour, asking questions about their gear and if possible, climbing the masts.
Actually, that's another slight oddity: I'm used to the idea that children were more free to move about if you go further back in the past, so it was a jolt to hear 'the safety-bicycle was just beginning then, so boys did not have the range they do today' (ie, in 1944).
It was of course a completely male world: I don't think any women were even mentioned, except maybe the odd unnamed mother. I was rather charmed to learn that a standard thing to do with a favored male friend was to walk arm in arm around the ship, an activity known as 'mooching'. And they all call one another 'chum' (hence the title).
But the most horrifying thing about the world described is the absolute brutal bullying. Nobody escaped it, it was expected, directed most fiercely at the youngest and weakest, but still a threat even to the oldest and most qualified and respected boys - and frankly terrifying. Amazing there weren't more deaths.
Though, pretty much all the young trainee sailors that Masefield met at that time are mournfully recorded as eventually 'lost at sea'.
Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers is a book I'd read years ago, but more or less forgotten, so when I found a copy in a charity shop, I thought I'd give it another go.
It's a novel from 1903, and at the time the author was a civil servant, and much concerned that nobody had noticed the threat of invasion of Britain from Germany across the North Sea. So he wrote this novel, which is a sort of spy mystery, I suppose, to tell people about it, which apparently.. did work, and changed British defense strategy. What a weird world.
I rather liked Carruthers, the narrator, also a British civil servant (I think rather more upper-class than the author.) He is a bit of a knob, initially - much concerned with shooting-parties and pristine white trousers - but on a whim he accepts an invitation to join Our Hero, Davies, on his yacht in the Baltic.
The yacht turns out to be a rather damp and well-used ex-lifeboat (this is important! Because it is super-tough and therefore can withstand mighty waves and constant runnings-aground. Which is something that happens a lot, both accidentally and on purpose.
(This book made me so grateful for the Garmin GPS depth-finder: the very thought of sailing through a vast network of sand-bars and mud with nothing but a lead to check the depth of the bottom gives me such anxiety).
Soon we learn Davies's only in the Baltic because the Villain tried to assassinate him by stranding him on a Friesian sandbank in a gale, and that he has lost his heart to the Villain's daughter, a person we only meet towards the end of the book, but none the less enters sailing her own small dinghy singlehanded.
There's a great deal of sailing around, a certain amount of leaping on and off boats onto sandbanks (which made me cringe: at one point someone took off his boots to jump onto a sandbank! And then trod on some cockles. Ouch. Why would you do that. How would the boat not be completely covered in black mud when you get back onto it.
Anyway, it turns out that Kaiser Wilhelm is plotting to send a fleet of small boats across the North Sea from Friesland, but this is found out in time for the British Navy to set up a North Sea force (which they didn't have, and Childers clearly considered a lunatic failure).
Actually, given how long ago this book was written, it's surprising how much 'the British are incompetent and bureaucratic and failing to make the best use of their assets and also in a state of economic peril' there is among the random Imperialism. Also the envious respect for German efficiency and engineering.
I enjoyed the bits about the working sailing-barges of Friesland, which reminded me of the Runcorn Fleet of about ten years earlier, as described by John Masefield, and also of the tales of my Essex cousins, who were old enough to remember working sailing barges coming out of Maldon and sailing down to London with their cargoes. They would take on casual labour to help with sailing and loading, and that was how the cousins (female) got a trip to London on them. There are still a few sailing barges with great red sails left at Maldon, but they are tourist trip boats now.
Now I skip about 20 years, because Dream Island by RM Lockley, and Island Child, by Ann Lockley, his daughter are post WWI books, set in the 1920's and 1930's. The second is a fascinating study in Things Dad Didn't Put In His Books.
Lockley was... hmm, what was he, really? A dreamer, first of all, a man who decided early on that what he really wanted from life was to live on a very small island, and at least for a while, made it happen. He rented the island of Skokholm, which is about 1 mile long and half a mile wide, and located just off the west coast of Pembrokeshire, which is why I came across this book, since it has local interest.
(We've been out to Skokholm in the boat many times. It's notable nowadays for its myriad puffins as well as other seabirds and seals: you can't land there now without a license as it's a bird sanctuary, but it makes for an interesting place to hang out just offshore and have lunch.)
From Dream Island, you get the impression of Lockley and his wife Doris as intensely practical. The kind of people who could take a very neglected old farmhouse, patch it up and bring it back into use using bits of wood from shipwrecks, and live there year round, with a child too, sailing intrepidly over often wild seas while carrying out cutting-edge research into seabirds and their lives. Lockley also wrote a book about rabbits that inspired Watership Down, as well as quite a lot of other books about islands and birds which were very popular in their day.
The clear, unflattering eyes of their daughter, however, saw a rather different picture, as told in Island Child: a father who was charming, much inclined to picking up 'very odd people' (other dreamers, I suppose) and full of weird theories and frank neglect (the tale of how he would sometimes pick up seabirds and put them in his coat pockets, where they would be found dead days later is one of many jarring anecdotes that really put the spotlight on how different 'ornithologist' was in the 20's and how much they were making it up as they went along.)
And It was interesting to learn that they really could not stick it out on Skokholm, particularly in the winter, and soon moved back inland, where Lockley had a disgraceful affair with a much younger Land Girl, then declared his marriage over, even though Doris wanted to give it another go. Doris went off to London, to become an interior decorator: a strange path for a woman who had lived on an island with no running water or even plumbing. Not that the plumbing for their mainland houses was much better.
I do enjoy reading about plumbing. One of the houses they lived in had a stream with a bucket arrangement for washing up. And I shan't forget the vivid description of the houses of the village of Dale, where there was one sewer for the village that discharged directly onto the beach where the children played and caught shrimps for their tea.
Still sounds better than the horrible arrangements for washing on board the Training Ship Conway in the 1890s.
One thing all these books had in common was that they are print format, so I can read them 3 inches from my nose. I am definitely struggling a bit to read stuff at laptop screen distance at the moment, so I have been to the optician and ordered, with some fear and dread, some varifocal glasses. I hope I like them, they cost enough!
no subject
Date: 2025-10-04 12:10 pm (UTC)Sobering in some ways, too.
Your comments about bullying reminded me of a novel of Elizabeth Goudge. It turns out it was "Gentian Hill". I loved her work, but at the same time there were those moments, at least in the adult novels, where I felt almost betrayed (if that makes sense). In that historical novel, a boy in desperation escapes the brutal bullying on ship only to go back and make a success of life in the navy later. Of course, she believed in surmounting things by faith. But also, as you show here, the bullying was not all that historical to her.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-04 12:56 pm (UTC)"Mrs Woolf and the Servants" goes into Hideous Detail about the sanitary arrangements ( for want of a better term) in roughly that era. At least in my part of the world it was taken away weekly and composted by the farmers...
no subject
Date: 2025-10-04 08:49 pm (UTC)The village I lived in during my teenage years, all the houses had septic tanks, apart from the odd one that still had a cesspit. Plumbing Tales were a staple of all village events.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-04 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-08 02:28 pm (UTC)