“The sailorman must plan his tacks ahead; it does not pay him to tempt fortune by cutting close to windward of a buoy or anchored craft with the tide setting on to them. He thinks ahead too, in making and taking in sail, setting the mainsail while she lies head to wind, perhaps before she swings to the tide he intends to use; brailing up during a convenient moment’s calm under the lee of a passing steamer; dropping a flying jib when the wind is over the starboard bow; catching her on the port tack to let go the tops’l sheet. To imagine mistakes are never made is nonsense. Barges are not infrequently ashore or in trouble through elementary miscalculations and if, when barges and bargemen are but a picturesque and glamorous memory, a legend circulates among yachtsmen that their seamanship was infallible, it will be the merest nonsense. But the yachtsmen will do well to equal the bargeman’s’ imperfect standard. Barges converted to yachts are, of course, generally lightly ballasted but, much as I admire some of these I must insist, in case they should be the last example in years to come of the old craft, that not one ever retains the absolute fitness for purpose which characterises the true working craft. Something of the integrity of the ship disappears with every conversion. As to the pile of canvas, only controllable because of the unique qualities of the spritsail rig, it requires a combination of brains and brawn. One is useless without the other, but the former is the more important. I believe the modern yachtsman loses some of the fun of sail because his Bermuda rig is so handy, paradoxical as that may sound. With a reliable auxiliary to fall back on, he never experiences the thrilling and rewarding anxiety of knowing he is only under control if his plans work out as intended.

“A barge, perhaps more than any other craft, is often in this position. It is quite normal to be tearing along, knowing full well that that it would be an emergency job fraught with danger, to attempt to stop or tack around. Running through the Downs or down Swin for Harwich when the breeze pipes up, you have to keep going once you have started, till you are round the Foreland or under the lee of the Stone Heaps.

“That is what the Naval Officers in the M.L’s could not understand in both wars, and they doubtless were often RNVR yachtsmen; they signalled the bargeman to bring up, and when they couldn’t they thought they wouldn’t.”