Blog closure

New room, new view

Just a quick note to say that I moved house this year, and am now based in mid-west Wales on the coast.  I have had a lot of fun writing this blog over the years, and met some really super people whilst doing so, both in person and by email.  My sincere thanks to all of you.

I will not be updating this site any more, as I have a new blog about my new home area but I will leave the site up so that the information contained can still be accessed.  In recent years many questions have been about ancestry, and I suggest that those of you looking for information about family members start with the nice people at the Southwark Local History Library and Archive, who should be able to advise you.

All the best
Andie
 

Thames Discovery Programme - Rotherhithe Ethical foreshore exploration (10th March 2018)

https://www.mola.org.uk/thames-discovery-programme-rotherhithe-ethical-foreshore-exploration 
At previous Rotherhithe investigations by the Thames Discovery programme a large number of nautical timbers were recorded; these are likely to represent the remains of ship breaking on the foreshore during the 18th century. Other structures of interest include access features associated with the Mayflower PH, bargebeds and widespread artefact scatters of Delftware kiln waste and animal bone representing localised waterfront activity. The twice daily tide will have revealed a wide range of different artefacts for the participants to discover on this foreshore exploration. Although, in order to protect the historic nature of the foreshore we request that you take only photographs and memories with you.

10.03.2018
Brunel Museum, Railway Ave, Rotherhithe, London, SE16 4LF

Book Now

Time: 11:00 GMT
Price: £10 per adult and £6 per child.
Booking is essential and limited to 30 people. Children must be accompanied by an adult (minimum age for children is 5 years). Maximum of 2 children per adult.

Presentation: The Last Days of Rotherhithe Shipbuilding: The Clipper Ships

The clipper Coonatto in Port Adelaide.  Built by Bilbe and Perry
at Nelson Dock, Rotherhithe, in 1863
Source: Trove PRG 1373-2-6

Many thanks to the Rotherhithe and Bermondsey History Society (http://www.rbhistory.org.uk/) for a very warm welcome on one of the coldest days I can remember.  It was great to meet old friends, chat to some lovely people that I have only talked to on email before, and of course great say hello to a lot of new people.  I can only apologize for the late start - nothing to do with the weather, but because I was at the wrong venue!  My sincere thanks to Robert who was also at Time and Talents rather than Surrey Quays shopping centre, for doing such a good job of navigating us from one place to the other in double quick time.

If anyone who missed the talk last night would like to see the PowerPoint, or if anyone at the presentation would like a second shot at it, it is available for download for the next few weeks at:  http://teaclippers.wordpress.com.  I have saved it both as a PDF and as a PowerPoint presentation (for the latter you will need PowerPoint installed, or you can download the PowerPoint Viewer - the link for that is on the above page).

Shad Thames Trail and other booklets available to download

A new booklet entitled "The Shad Thames Trail" has been published, issued by the Shad Thames Area Management Partnership.  It’s an informative tour of the Shad Thames area, including a map and descriptions of the main attractions marked on the map. It was written by Janet Morris from information supplied by the late and much-missed Stephen Humphrey.  I don’t know where a hard copy can be collected, but it is available as a PDF download from http://www.loveshadthames.org/.  It’s the first link on the Resources tab.  If you want to enquire about the possibility of acquiring hard copies, the email address is culture@loveshadthames.org

There are other trails in the series too (Bermondsey Street, London Bridge West, and London Bridge East), available from a different website at http://www.bermondseyvillage.org.uk/trail-guides.html.
They all look like an excellent way to spend a couple of hours one dry day.

A great night at the Docklands History Group

Enormous thanks to the Docklands History Group (www.docklandshistorygroup.org.uk) for inviting me to speak tonight at the Museum of London Docklands. My subject was the last days of clipper ships and the end of shipbuilding on the Thames.

What a wonderful set of people! I was very nervous about being an amateur on the subject amongst people with serious expertise in this field, but they were so nice and welcoming and I had a really good time. As I have a real fear of public speaking, which has been hard to conquer, the fact that I enjoyed myself is really saying something. Super, super people. 

If you are interested in the history of the maritime London, you might be interested in this group, which meets on the first Wednesday of every month, with each lecture lasting approximately an hour. You might also want to check out group member Peter Stone's new book "The History of the Port of London: A Vast Emporium of All Nations."

Port of London Study Group moves to Canada Water Library

Stewart’s Dry Dock on the right and Glen Terrace on the left;
the bowsprit of the barque Milverton overhangs the dock wall
at Manchester Road, 1918.
Copyright:
Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives

Great news that now that the Port of London Study Group has decided to change venues for their weekly meetings they are going to be based at Canada Water library. 

The group was established to share the experience of exploring the history, heritage and archaeology of the port of London in a self-directed, special interest group which meets every Monday at 11am-1pm, except in the summer when guided walks and visits are arranged. 

Topics covered include the growth and pattern of London’s trade and associated industries, the building and operation of the docks and wharves, the vessels using the port, dockland communities and industrial relations, and the movement of people into and out of the port. Within this framework, members are free to explore topics of their individual choice. 

During the spring and winter they focus on presentations and during the early summer they take advantage of the better weather to organize the guided walks and day trips.  This mixture of approaches allows them to engage in research and share diverse interests and knowledge in a friendly and supportive environment.  Write-ups of presentations, guided walks and visits are on the News page.

If you are interested in joining the group, you can see some of their research interests in the titles of the presentations, walks and visits on the Programmes page.  For example, upcoming, on the Monday 10th July, group member Sue Littledale is leading a walk that begins in Rotherhithe: "Surrey Docks, Grand Surrey Canal and the Deptford Victualling Yard."  

If you are interested in joining them, see their website at: https://portoflondonstudy.wordpress.com  

&

John McGowan's Rotherhithe prints to go on display

Artist and printmaker John McGowan has been sending me photographs of his prints for years, and they are truly evocative, showing a new way of looking at old photographs of Rotherhithe or old features preserved in modern Rotherhithe.  He has been planning an exhibition of his work for some time and has now finalized a venue and a date, shown below.  There is also a video showing him at work, which is very well worth watching at: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVGNoiy5rWg&t=2s

Launch of the lighter "Apprentice Lighterman" built at South Dock by Bill Robinson

Built at South Dock and launched today in high winds and pouring rain, the 15 ton Apprentice Lighterman was launched at noon today surrounded by a damp but very cheerful and splendidly heartfelt crowd of supporters.

As well as the lovely builder, Bill Robinson (of the Thames Barge Driving Trust), the barge's welder Matt and countless helpers, supporters and well-wishers was the Master of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen, John Salter.  

For those unfamiliar with lighters, they are unpowered flat-bottomed barges propelled by human effort.  They are anything but streamlined and are designed to carry cargo, so consist mainly of a large, hollow cargo hold.  Lighters were essential to the infrastructure of the Surrey Commercial Docks, "lightening" ships of their cargo and taking it to quaysides and other ships.  They had a long-standing history of doing this in the Thames but when the docks came, and were seen as a threat to lighterman livelihoods, new arrangements had to be made to grant them free access to the docks and carry on their tasks.  As you can see in the photograph above, where they swarm around a ship in Greenland Dock in 1958, just beyond today's underpass between Greenland Dock and Surrey Quays shopping centre.  They were in invaluable part of dock life, requiring great skill and experience to manipulate with vast oars called "sweeps."  Inevitably they were put out of business by technology, including mobile cranes, and later by containerization.

At 12 noon we all stood back as the crane lifted her gently from her blocks, swung her slowly round and lowered her in to South Dock, just short of the water.  At this point the Chaplain gave a blessing, the Mistress of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen gave her a Champagne send-off and then she was lowered slowly into the water, officially launched to riotous applause and shouts of congratulation.

The original plan was to row her up and down Greenland Dock, but the Harbour Master deemed the weather too bad and this was therefore vetoed.  However, she will be taking part in the July 15th Thames Barge Driving Race, manned by a crew consisting of three - two to row and one to man the rudder, all using sweeps.  The race has been run every year since 1975.


My thanks to Bill for inviting my friend Jeanette, who invited me.  It was a super event, a classic confirmation that the British weather is never allowed to ruin a great occasion.  We all trooped back, under hoods and brollies, to the Moby Dick where Bill had arranged for drinks and a buffet lunch.  There was an excellent speech by John Salter, followed by a short one by Bill, who presented The Company of Watermen and Lightermen with a framed photo history of the building of the barge.  It was an honour to attend.  Lighters are part of the heritage of the London docks and to have a new one launched in 2017 is a marvellous event.

The photos of the event are not the best - trying to hold the brolly during a gale in one hand whilst taking photos one-handed with a thunking great camera in the other was never going to produce the most stunning results - but they are sufficient to give an idea of what it was all about.

Bill Robinson at the Moby Dick following the launch

A wet and windy day!

Apprentice Ligtherman on the blocks

Lift-off

Being shifted towards the dock

The lowering of the barge into the dock was paused for official
launch speeches, the blessing and Champagne

Safely launched

Master of the Company of Watermen
and Lightermen, John Salter, giving
a fine speech following the launch

One of the last lighters laden with timber entering the Surrey Canal from the Greenland Dock in June 1970,
when most of the canal and the Surrey Commercial Docks had closed. 10 June 1970
National Maritime Museum National Maritime Museum
Portcities website: http://bit.ly/2ryjvof

Photographs of the Lavender Pump house from the Enthusiastic Gardener blog

A lovely collection of photographs on the Enthusiastic Gardener blog showing Lavender Pump house and its surroundings at their summer best.  Great to see it all looking so great, but a shame that the woodwork is still being allowed to decay so badly. 
https://enthusiasticgardener.com/2017/05/29/lavender-pond-nature-reserve/

If you're interested in the history of the Lavender Lock, Dock and Pumphouse, the following post, which I wrote some time ago, may be of interest: http://russiadock.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/lavender-dock-lock-and-pumphouse.html.  I've also written about Lavender Wharf and Lavender Dock here: http://russiadock.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/lavender-dock-and-lavender-wharf-1684.html.




 

Stephen Humphrey has passed away

I was terribly sorry to hear about the death of Stephen Humphrey at the age of 64 on 1st December 2016.  A Southwark historian who worked from primary sources, published a number of books and booklets on the subject, was president of the Rotherhithe & Bermondsey Local History Society and was still lecturing regularly about the history of Rotherhithe and Bermondsey, he was awarded with the Freedom of the Borough in 2012 and he will be very much missed.

Short obituaries have been published on the Southwark News, London News Online and London SE1 websites.

South Dock website

I have assembled all the posts about South Dock from this blog and posted them on a website of their own.  South Dock is now London's largest marina but used to be a part of the Surrey Commercial Docks, which closed in 1970.  It can be found at: https://southdockse16.wordpress.com

https://southdockse16.wordpress.com

Stuart Rankin's Rotherhithe shipbuilding books are available online for the first time

After many years, Stuart Rankin has now managed to secure the copyright on the booklets that he wrote many years ago about shipbuilding and shipyards in Rotherhithe, at a time when the fringes of Rotherhithe were laced with shipbuilding and shipbreaking yards.  Even better, he has made them available online for download.

Stuart's work is the result of years of trawling through archives for original documentation in order to track the history of individual people, ships, buildings and properties, and as a result his research boasts a high level of accuracy.  At the same time, the booklets are very digestible, with many maps and illustrations, and together they provide a brilliant background to Rotherhithe's complex past.

Every one of my own shipping and history posts starts with Stuart Rankin's booklets, and without them I would never have got started.  It is great news that they are now available to everyone.  

Shipbuilding in Rotherhithe – Bull Head Dock to the Pageants – Parts 1 and 2, The Nelson Dockyard, Greenland Dock and Barnard’s Wharf [ebooks]. £5.55 for all four booklets (a bargain).  A payment of 5p per order is made to Help The Heroes.
Here's the link:
http://www.britishtransporttreasures.com/product/shipbuilding-in-rotherhithe-bull-head-dock-to-the-pageants-part-i-to-part-4-ebooks

Rotherhithe – Canary Wharf Bridge short-listed in New London Awards 2016

One of the designs proposed for a much-needed pedestrian and cycle bridge between Rotherhithe and Canary Wharf has been short-listed in the Transport and Infrastructure of the New London Awards 2016.   The Rotherhithe Bridge design is proposed by Sustrans and the reForm/Elliott Wood team and the website dedicated to the structure, complete with animations, can be found at:  http://www.rotherhithebridge.london.
 
Over 130 projects across 15 categories have been shortlisted for the New London Awards 2016, recognising the very best new and proposed architecture, planning and development in the capital.  In conjunction with the London Festival of Architecture, Londoners are invited to select their favourite from the shortlist for the People’s Choice Award. All category winners, Overall Winner and the New Londoner of the Year will be announced on 7 July at the NLA Annual Lunch at the Guildhall, attended by 700 of the capital’s leading decision-makers and professionals across development, design, planning and construction.

To see all the projects short-listed in the Transport and Infrastructure category see: http://www.newlondonarchitecture.org/docs/transport__infrastructure_2016.pdf (opens as a PDF).


How to Vote

Votes can be cast throughout June in one of three alternative ways:

1. Visit the NLA galleries at The Building Centre and fill in one of the voting cards

2. View the full shortlist online of projects in the category (opens as a PDF). Then tweet your choice from your own Twitter account by entering the following into the Componse New Tweet field:  “I vote for  ……….  #NLAwards16 @nlalondon” (where the dots are Rotherhithe Bridge)

3. Email info@newlondonarchitecture.org with “I vote for Rotherhithe Bridge – Transport Infrastructure in the New London Awards”

Russia Dock Woodland on a fabulously sunny day in May

Yesterday was stunning.  I went to mark my crosses on ballot papers at the Docklands Settlement and then crossed the road and was submerged into a world of dappled light and bright green leaves.  It was a particularly beautiful day, and everything in Russia Dock Woodland looked bright and new, everything fresh and sparkling.  There was even a family of Canada geese at Globe Pond, the junior members fluffy and tentative, the parents hissing at passing dogs.  It was lovely to see the main green liberally dotted with people reading, sunbathing and playing with their children.  Everyone seemed to be enjoying the sunshine and the scenery. Super.

Thomas Bilbe's "Coonatto," built at Nelson Dock, Rotherhithe, 1863

Coonatto by Thomas Goldsworth Sutton
National Maritime Museum PY8564

Coonatto was a three-masted  clipper commissioned from the partnership of Thomas Bilbe and William Perry in 1863 by Anderson, Thompson and Co. (later Anderson, Anderson and Co.) for the Orient Line for the transport on their London to Adelaide route of cargo, mainly wool, and passengers.

The relationship between Thomas Bilbe and Anderson, Thomson and Co. began when Bilbe built a ship named Celestial for James Thomson, using a patented system of wooden hull framing.  The ship was a great success and led to the contracts with Anderson, Thompson and Co., the founders of the Orient Line, for the London to Adelaide (Australia) route.  Other ships built by Bilbe for the Orient Line included Orient, Borealis, Yatala, and Argonaut (click on the links to see my previous posts about these ships).  The Orient Line.  A lovely description of the Orient Line ships survives from an 1898 article by John Arthur Barry:

As a good instance of how the sailing lines changed into steam, there existed in the sixties a fine fleet of small clippers trading to Adelaide for wool. The largest of them all was the Orient, of some 1200 tons or so. Then came the Murray, Goolwa, Yatala, Coonatto, Derra, etc., fast, fine-lined, London-built vessels of from 800 to 1000 tons, speedy but wet. Indeed, it was said of them that they took a dive on leaving the Channel, came up at the Cape for breath, and did not reappear until Kangaroo Island was in sight. This was perhaps an exaggeration, but their skippers drove them for all they were worth, and carried their main-top-gallant sails when other vessels had their upper topsails off; also imagined the world was coming to an end, or that Australia had disappeared, if they couldn't find Cape Borda in anything under eighty days. 

Coonatto in Adelaide.  From the Trove website, PRG 1373/2/6
at trove.nla.gov.au

The Orient Line became the Peninsula and Orient Steam Navigation Company, which eventually became re-branded as the very familiar P+O.  By the time that Coonatto was built, Bilbe had moved on to a new and innovative method of hull construction: composites.  He  patented and trialled composite ship construction with the clipper  Red Riding Hood in 1857, and all ships after this one built by Thomas Bilbe were composites.  Composite ships were built with a mixture of wood and iron.  The iron frame and ribs reinforced the hull and meant that the structure could be more open, providing additional room for cargo. 

Coonatto was the first ship that Bilbe built for the Orient Line.  She was a composite clipper, a method of construction that Coonatto was 160ft 2in long with a 29ft beam.  Coonatto's entry in the 1874-75 Lloyds register provides basic information about the ship's build but also mentions an interesting addition to the ship's equipment when, in 1874, she was provided with felt and ‘yellow metal’ cladding.   The Citizan website says that traces of the cladding still remains attached to some of the exposed timber.  It sounds as though this was similar to the copper hull cladding that protected ships against the effects of wood-consuming species and improved the speed of ships through the water.  A similar modification can be seen on the restored tea clipper Cutty Sark in Greenwich, which has had the so-called Muntz alloy fastened to the entire hull. 

Orient Line passages, March 1870

She was known as a fast ship, described by Basil Lubbock as "an out and out clipper with very fine lines."   Lubbock says that she was "very wet," which means that she took a lot of water on board when under sail, but he thought that this might be due "to the hard-driving of her skipper, Begg, a Highlander, who never spared her and made some very smart passages out and home."  Coonatto's fastest times were 66 days to the Semaphore Lightship and a 70-day run, even after losing both her helmsman and the wheel overboard after broaching-to (falling foul of the wind) off St Paul's Island!

Clippers were mainly cargo carriers, although the Orient Line also carried passengers.  The clippers on the Australian run were transporting a mixture of products to London, but primarily wool in exchange for a variety of British products.  Basil Lubbock describes the shipping trade from Adelaide, which was the focus of only two or three firms, as follows:  "During the sixties and seventies, when Sydney and Melbourne were filling their harbours with the finest ships in the British Mercantile Marine, Adelaide, in a smaller way, was carrying on an ever increasing trade of her own, in which some very smart little clippers were making very good money and putting up sailing records which could well bear comparison with those made by the more powerful clippers sailing to Hobson's Bay and Port Jackson."  He goes on a little later:  "Their captains, however, were always keen in rivalry and put a high value on their reputations as desperate sail carriers.  They made little of weather that would have scared men who commanded shops of three times that tonnage of the little Adelaide clippers, and they were not afraid of a little water on deck."

The Trove website has a rather wonderful advert for Orient Line passenger places on clipper ships heading to various destinations in March 1870.  Coonatto was one of the ships heading for Adelaide under the command of Captain J.N. Smart.  Two other ships listed on the advert, Orient and Yatala, were also built by Bilbe for the Orient Line (see my post about her here).   White Eagle, another ship on the list, was also owned for a time by Bilbe and his business partner William Perry, which was actually built in Aberdeen in 1855.

The South Australian Advertiser 8th October 1870. Shipping News (with thanks to the Trove website) provides this rather nice description of Coonatto leaving Australia for London:

COONATTO, for London via Port Augusta.
"The Orient liner Coonatto has once more taken departure from the port by towing over the bars on Thursday evening. It was Captain Smart's intention to have immediately sailed for Port Augusta, where she is to complete her wool landing;  but during the night there was little or no wind; therefore the ship remained at anchor awaiting a favorable change. . . . The Coonatto weighed anchor in the roads on Friday afternoon, and presented a very handsome appearance as she beat away on a sea breeze. Towards nightfall the wind hauled more off the land and enabled her to lay a course clear of Troubridge."

The remains of Coonatto today
Copyright MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology)

In 1876, carrying a cargo of copper, copper ore and wool to England from Australia, she became beached in the English Channel at Crowlink, near Beachy Head, and could not be re-floated.  At the age of 13 she was wrecked.  The wreck is thought to remain at the foot of the white cliffs.   The Citizan website provides a good description of the find: 

Situated in the Seven Sisters and Birling Gap park lies the wreck of what is believed to be the Coonatto, a London registered bark-rigged clipper (a type of three-masted ship) that sources suggest ran aground in 1876. The wreck lies on the very edge of the intertidal zone, below the cliffs at Crowlink. The keel and starboard side of the ship are still clearly visible where they came to rest. The remains include large and small timbers, some still clad in a zinc alloy, whilst the total length of the wreck is roughly 43m bow to stern.  The site is subject to the erosive forces of the waves and tides. Interestingly records describe the salvaged cargo being craned onto Crowlink Cliffs but given the present location of the cliffs and the type of cargo to be craned this suggests considerable erosion since the wrecking. The CITiZAN team hope that more research will establish the extent of the cliff that has disappeared and further understanding of the vessel.  To date we have worked with partners and volunteers in the National Trust and Eastbourne Heritage Services as well as training the first 15 CITiZAN volunteers in England to work on this site. A plan of the site has now been produced with future focus on more detailed drawings of the diagnostic elements of the ship that survive as well as an attempt to generate a 3D model of the site to provide those who cannot make the journey to the site with the chance to learn more about this fascinating wreck.

There is apparently a painting in the Seaford Museum in East Sussex that is thought to show Coonatto foundering at Crowlink, but I have been unable to find an image of it.

John Arthur Barry, writing in 1898, watched the demise of sail in favour of steam:

In the great mail steamers of that same Orient line that now lie alongside Circular Quay you may at any moment see the evolution of canvas to steam in its widest and most complete and final aspect.  Other fleets, as the White Star one, for instance, have not quite yet arrived at the termination of the process, and still own a few sailers out of the fine array of once famous Aberdeen liners—-the Damascus, Patriarch, Thermopylae, and others, such as the Centurion, Abergeldie, Maid of Judah, Windsor Castle, Nineveh, etc., whose names, as well as those of the Duthie's and Thompson's, are indissolubly bound up with the early maritime history of the colony. Now and again, perhaps, in one of the harbor bays, you may see a shapely old craft whose aspect seems in some way friendly and familiar, only that she flies a foreign flag, and has a foreign name upon the stern. Dirty, weather-beaten, forlorn as she is, with rusty rigging and paintless spars, nothing can disguise the old ocean aristocrat who a score of years ago was the pride of her captain, the crack clipper of her fleet and whose comings and goings were matters of moment, both on this side of the world and the other one.

The 6ft (1.83m) figurehead from
Coonatto now in the Jervis Bay
Maritime Museum
(Photo from the Jervis Bay
Maritime Museum website)

As far as I know, Thomas Bilbe did not make the transition to constructing steam ships, which seems odd as he was certainly an accomplished engineer. He certainly didn't do so in Rotherhithe.  It would be interesting to know what he did next, because he was clearly a very colourful character and it would be good to know more about him.  If you have any details about his life, please do get in touch.



Sources for this post:

John Arthur Barry  1898. How the Wool Went Home Long Ago. Australian Town and Country Journal, Sydney, NSW.  Saturday, December 17, 1898
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1301811h.html 

Basil Lubbock 1975. The Colonial Clippers. Brown, Son and Ferguson Ltd.

Charles F. Morris 1980. Origins Orient and Oriana. Teredo Books

Stuart Rankin 1996. Shipbuilding in Rotherhithe - The Nelson Dock.


Websites:

Jervis Bay Maritime Museum
http://jervisbaymaritimemuseum.blogspot.com/2014/03/figurehead-on-show.html
http://jervisbaymaritimemuseum.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/wreck-of-caonatto.html

The Citizan.org website:
http://www.citizan.org.uk/resources/key-zones/south-east/wreck-coonatto-crowlink-birling-gap/


The MOLA Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/MOLArchaeology