A Floating Home - free ebook by J. B. (John Black) Atkins

A FLOATING HOME

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PREFACE

The authors owe to their readers an explanation of the manner of their collaboration. The owner of the Thames sailing barge, of which the history as a habitation is written in this book, is Mr. Cyril Ionides. ‘I’ throughout the narrative is Mr. Cyril Ionides; the ‘Mate’ is Mrs. Cyril Ionides; the children are their children. Yet the other author, Mr. J. B. Atkins, was so closely associated with the events recorded—sharing with Mr. Ionides the counsels and discussions that ended in the purchase o

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CHAPTER I

One winter I made up my mind that it was necessary to live in some sort of vessel afloat instead of in a house on the land. This decision was the result, at last pressed on me by circumstances, of vague dreams which had held my imagination for many years. These dreams were not, I believe, peculiar to myself. The child, young or old, whose fancy is captive to water, builds for castles in Spain houseboats wherein he may spend his life floating in his element. His fancy at some time or other has pl

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CHAPTER II

Two or three days after the conversation related in the last chapter the Mate and I fell into a vein of reminiscence and reconstructed a vision we had once shared of the ship that was some day to be our home. It had the proper condition of a vision that the thing longed for was unattainable; the vessel of our dreams had always been as far down on the horizon as the balance at the bank that would pay for her. She was, above all things, to be beautiful, even for a ship, which is saying much—for wh

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CHAPTER III

The primitive explorers who came up the Thames in their rough craft examined the site of what was afterwards to be London, and saw that it was good. London is where it is because of the river. It is strange that Londoners should know so little, below bridges, of the river that made them. The reason, of course, is that the means of seeing it are very poor. How many Londoners could say how to come upon even a peep of the lower river within a distance of five miles of London Bridge? The common impr

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CHAPTER IV

When the barge Osprey berthed at Fleetwick Quay to unload stones for our roads we went on board, and took our old friend Elijah Wadely, the skipper, into our confidence. ’Ef yaou’re a goin’ to buy a little ould barge, sir,’ said Elijah, ‘what yaou wants to know is ’er constitootion. My meanin’ is, ef yaou knaow who built she, yaou’ll know ef she was well built; and ef yaou knaow what trade she’s bin’ in you can learn from that. Naow ef she’s a carryin’ wheat, or any o’ them grains, what must be

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CHAPTER V

‘Ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats and water-rats, land-thieves and water-thieves.’ The next thing that happened was that we received an offer of £375 for our cottage. After an attempt to ‘raise the buyer one’—an attempt that would have been more persistent had our desire to become barge-owners been less ardent—we accepted the offer. We ought to have got more, but as the barge market was flat we salved our consciences on the principle that what you lose on the swings you

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CHAPTER VI

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 c

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CHAPTER VII

The wind hung mostly west and south, and was southerly enough at the end to make the Will Arding’s passage a fast one, and bring her early on the tide to Bridgend. There by noon next day we were looking seaward with our glasses. Shortly after that time two specks appeared beyond the river’s mouth, and long before they reached the point took shape and became two barges. End on they came, heeling like one to the spanking breeze; another half an hour would bring them to us. The Will Arding was one

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CHAPTER VIII

It was a curious thing that the greatest of the advantages of living in a barge disclosed itself unexpectedly. When we made up our minds to buy a barge I was free to live where I pleased, but shortly after we had bought her I received an offer of an appointment which would require me to be in London every day. I could not afford to refuse this appointment, and we reflected what a pretty mess we should have been in if we had taken a house in the town where we had intended to send the boys to scho

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CHAPTER IX

Memories of those laborious days at Fleetwick Quay are not only of carpentering, painting, and plumbing. Sam Prawle provided an intermittent accompaniment of anecdote and observation which it is impossible to separate from the record of work done. During the dinner-hour he would sometimes begin and finish a considerable narrative. On the day when we lowered our tanks into position he illustrated his theme that people may put themselves to a great deal of unnecessary trouble by telling us an epis

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CHAPTER X

When the match-lining was finished we covered most of it with three-ply wood in panels. We panelled the owner’s cabin and the spare cabin with birch. We made the spare cabin to serve also as a drying-room, letting the back of the saloon fireplace into this cabin through the bulkhead. The fireplace, a handsome brass yacht stove, was bought second-hand from a yacht-breaker. Round the walls of the dining-cabin we placed a dado of varnished wood, and enamelled the cabin white everywhere else except

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CHAPTER XI

One day only was left to me, before the return of the Mate, to examine the gear and make sure that everything was ready for sea, as we proposed to cruise for a few days before going to our new quarters. The place we had chosen to live at was Newcliff on the Thames, where there was a school at which the boys’ names had already been entered. All the standing and running rigging and the canvas were in good order; nevertheless the waterside pundits had plenty of sagacious criticisms to offer. Public

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CHAPTER XII

Seated on the after cabin-top near the wheel, Sam Prawle made known to us the arcana of barging. The comparison with yachting was to the disadvantage of yachting, and we felt that he would not have ventured to take this line had we still owned the Playmate . On the other hand, we were gratified at being treated with frankness as members of his profession. ‘I don’t reckon,’ said Sam Prawle, ‘there ain’t nawthen as good as bargin’, same as on the water, my meanin’ is. Ye see, yaou gets home fairly

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CHAPTER XIII

The riding light was already garish in the early sunshine when we turned out the next morning. The fragrance of the breeze coming in faint puffs off the land, the clean taste of the air, the cries of the sea birds, and the tender haze that overhung the land, set all our senses tingling. Yet what a creature is man! As we stood by the main rigging there came wafted aft to us from the forehatch the bubbling sound and the smell of frying bacon, and we could scarcely endure the delay of staying to wa

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CHAPTER XIV

A great merit of a barge as a house is that when she is ‘light,’ or almost ‘light,’ as the Ark Royal is, she can be sailed out of rough water on to a sand and left there, provided care be taken that she does not sit on her anchor. By the time there is only three feet of water the waves are very small, and thus, however strong the wind may be and however hard the sand, a barge will take the ground so gently that one can scarcely say when she touches. The explanation is simple enough, for, besides

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CHAPTER XV

We engaged two men to help us up the creek, which is narrow and was full of small boats difficult for a large craft to avoid. Unluckily, there was no wind, and we had to punt. This made our difficulties greater, as the Ark Royal , unlike her trading sisters, could not cannon her way cheerfully up the creek lest her stanchions should be carried away or her cabin tops be damaged. The two men used the poles forward while I steered. A proud helmsman I was, knowing myself the owner and skipper of the

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CHAPTER XVI

On Saturdays, when I was always at home, there was plenty to be done. The mainsail, which we had not unbent, had to be aired and the blocks had to be overhauled; and there were arrears of carpentering which never seemed to be overtaken. At spring tides we used to sail about the creek in the dinghy. In their holidays the boys made and sailed model boats and invented ingenious and daring swinging games on board with the falls of the halyards. And of course they invited all their friends to see our

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CHAPTER XVII

The coming of warm weather and long days proved to us that public interest in our floating home had not dwindled. We were a good deal disturbed by parties rowing round us the whole time we were afloat; and even when the tide had left us, sightseers in pathetically unsuitable boots would walk across the film of slime from the shore to look at us. In Newcliff we had evidently become a legend. Boatmen in charge of pleasure-boats would generally head for us; and as we sat on deck we often formed par

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CHAPTER XVIII

In August of our first summer afloat, we went for a month’s cruise on the Essex coast. We had various mishaps of the kind which arrive out of the blue and remind the yachtsman that, however long his experience, he is still a learner. One day, beating down the Colne in a fresh wind and a buffeting short sea, I made an error of judgment by sailing between two anchored barges where there was not enough room to handle the Ark Royal . Finding myself in difficulties, I let go the anchor, but we dragge

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CHAPTER XIX

After the Mate’s illness an unreasoning dread of the place where she had lain ill conquered me, and I put away all idea of returning there for the winter. Fortunately, a move was easy enough. If we had been living in a house it would have been otherwise, but a ‘house removal’ for us meant no more than weighing anchor and going to a new spot of our choice. Our choice was conditioned, first, by the necessity of my going to London daily; and, secondly, by the need of providing for our girl’s educat

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APPENDIX DETAILS OF THE COST OF BUYING, ALTERING, AND FITTING OUT THE ARK ROYAL

A few words must be added in explanation of these bare figures. As the cost of labour after the Ark Royal reached Fleetwick, with the cabin-top raised, was only £39 15s., the reader can understand how much was done by the owner’s hands. Help, however, was given by friends—in particular by a retired Civil Servant who displayed extraordinary skill as a carpenter. It was a mistake not to raise the main cabin-top ourselves. We probably could have done the job better, and certainly we could have done

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A GLOSSARY OF ESSEX WORDS AND PHRASES

In this Glossary obvious mispronunciations and corruptions are not included. By including them a glossary might be extended indefinitely, and to no profit. Numerous Essex dialect words are, of course, current in other counties; Essex shares a particularly large number with the rest of East Anglia. The aim here is simply to give the dialect words which the authors of this book have themselves heard in Essex, and which they believe to be most characteristic. No one interested in dialect is ignoran

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