SHIPS AND BOATS

The Thames barge MARTIN LUTHER in her final resting place a mud berth at BLACKSHORE on the river Blyth at Southwold, circa 1959.

THE STEAMER YARMOUTH on the River Deben in the early 1970s. Before then she had spent her working life on the Broads. She was scrapped after a time as a float café in London docks.

This is a model of an early lifeboat. The beach yawl BITTERN was used for rescues and salvage work off Southwold in the nineteenth century.

HMS Campbell. This destroyer was being fitted out as WW1 ended. Mothballed in the interwar years, she was based at Harwich during WW2; she was scrapped in 1946.

Me and my father on the S. S. Resolute in Norwich. The funds never materialised for the planned restoration, but the vessel was not broken up. She was towed towards London but got no further than Pin Mill, where she remains in a very dilapidated state as a houseboat. But for how longer till rust gets its way?

The Cantwm loading scrap metal at Wensum Wharf Norwich, c 1978. All such shipping has now vanished from the Wensum.

The steam tug Cypress tied up beside a lighter on Baltic Wharf; circa 1964. Coal and wood were still delivered to Norwich by dumb barge. All the barges were also named after trees.

SEA GULL II outside the Hotel Norwich. This half-sized Thames Barge spent her working life delivering explosives to a munitions factory. She is now undergoing long-term restoration.

Dutch coaster Breezand in the Short-Sea Port of Kings Lynn’s Alexandra Dock, on the Great Ouse. Some ships still use the dock, but they are increasingly getting too large to enter it.

Trawler leaving Great Yarmouth Harbour behind the paddle tug United Service. (Painting by J. C. W. Mason from a photograph).

Boats in Blakeney harbour, pictured in about 1970; all the boats are made of wood. (A far cry from today, when they will all be plastic.)

My step great-grandfather, Thomas Lound, was the skipper of the Yarmouth smack Cambria in the 1870s. (This vessel is not to be confused with the Thames Barge of the same name.) His vessel, similar to one in the picture, sailed to Iceland and the Baltic under his command.

Thames Barge CAMBRIA, King Street, Norwich, in 1971, shortly after she retired from commercial service under her skipper Bob Roberts.

HMS NORFOLK and the Band of the 2nd Battalion, Norfolk Regiment, 1930, five years before ‘Royal’ was added to the Regiment’s title.