Kitchener Rides Again: Schooner Days MCCXXXVIII (1238)

by C. H. J. Snider

GORY HANDED with fisting No. 0 canvas dressed with seawater, cutch, horsefat, red ochre and cod oil, Schooner Days spent a happy week in 1935 in the 400-ton sailing barge Will Everard. She was new, and the largest of over 600 barges then working the English Channel, North Sea and Thames estuary, under sail and sail alone.

"We give you sails," owners would snap. "If you don't know how to use them try poles and perspiration. We pay no tow bills."

I saw a barge loaded scupper deep with baled hay stacked so high on the hatch that the mainsail could not be spread, work her way to a landing in a stiff breeze under topsail, mizzen and foresail only, through crowded traffic of the Lower Pool of London. The one-man crew at the tiller could not see ahead for the deckload. The skipper stood at the windlass bitts, pipe between his teeth even when shouting orders, one hand on the winch brake. He trusted his reach anchor and his own supreme knowledge of wind, tide, current and his barge. Bargees wear bowler hat and macintoshes for heavy weather, but they richly merit the name "Sailorman" by which they are distinguished on the London River.

Two men sailed barges of cup to 300 tons capacity. Two and a boy the largest ones. Except, of course, on regatta days.

Came the second accursed world war and away went the barges. They fought grimly to keep food and shells and powder moving through the Battle of Britain. Sails were a godsend when petrol and fuel oil was so precious. But the brave barges, glowing like robin redbreasts with their slow-moving tanned canvas, were sitting birds for subs and bombers. Every London air raid mowed some down in the river. Stripped of tophamper, dependent on once-denied tugs or installed motors, survivors vanished into tow barges or house-boats or cruising yachts. Six hundred full-riggers shrank to six.

REJOICED were we then to find on June 15 this summer the Thames estuary pinked with barge sails and the national barge races instituted by Henry Dodd 90 years ago in progress. Dodd's offer of prizes developed the baldheaded "stumpies" of his day, half dependent upon the tide to get them anywhere, into these really noble craft like the Everard sea-barges, or the Goldfinch, which sailed from Plymouth to Demerara in 45 days in 1930.

The Festival of Britain barge Sara, of the Everard fleet had won the barge classic twice, and was favorite again for 1955. But Mr. Maurice Gill, managing director of the London and Rochester Trading Co., challenged Sara's supremacy with an old lady belonging to his firm, christened when Kitchener was capturing Khartoum as Sirdar of Egypt.

All ships being feminine in our lexicon, we must call the veteran "she" in spite of her military and masculine name. Three thousand pounds sterling, over $8,000, was spent on refitting the old warrior. She had been in service for 57 years.

So three of the "bowsprit class" of barges faced the starting gun in the Lower Hope off Gravesend on June 15 last, and battled for fifty miles, down the mouth of the Thames to the North Oaze buoy and back. They were followed by what was called the "restricted staysail class," three somewhat smaller barges without bowsprits. The third comer among the longhorns was Cambria — of age uncertain, but she was going strong when we sailed from London to Norwich in 1935. Dreadnought, Revival and Westmoreland were the three smaller muleys. They were powder barges of a chemical company's fleet.

ALL six went down Sea Reach in impressive procession. Great red topsails and bulging loose-footed mainsails and tiny sprit-spread mizzens puffed out to starboard, and big white spinnakers winged to port. With her spinnaker "boomed out, and her heavy working "foresail" on a pole below it, now on one side, now on the other, Sirdar looked more than ever like Kitchener of the horned moustachios. Barge spinnakers are triangular, not melon-shaped like the enormous parachutes of racing yachts. The boomed out "foresails" looked like the modern savealls.

Sara drew ahead and seemed to have the race well in hand, for at the North Oaze she was a mile ahead, with a lead of 8 minutes on Sirdar and 20 minutes on Cambria.

But no race is won before the finish gun crashes - and sometimes not then. When it came to windward work, tack by tack, Sirdar cut down Sara's lead, until the latter's brand new jib, whiter than her newly-painted sides, began to be obliterated by the red-tanned nosepiece of the veteran.

In barge sailing you must work the tide as well as the wind. The breeze was light, but the tide was favorable most of the time, and there was considerable slackwater. Here Sirdar seemed to have the edge. Lower Hope was ill-named for Sara. Sirdar had passed her there, and finished with a lead of 1 minute 52 seconds, half a dozen times her own length. A decisive victory.

Cambria was away back. She had even been passed by Dreadnaught, leading the second class. All profited by then "fair" tide. Sirdar's time was 7 hours 44 minutes 37 seconds. Revival's at the heel of the hunt, 8 hours .42 a good average all round. The Everard and the Trading Co. will probably battle it out next year, but the only have the field to themselves.