A DINGHY ON THE LONDON RIVER by Elisabeth Fairholme and Pamela Powell. Peter Davies, London 1937.

The literature of dinghy cruising is not so abundant that we can afford to neglect useful contributions. As far as I can tell, ‘A Dinghy on the London River’ has escaped notice where you would expect it, e.g. in the D.C.A. library list or in the bibliography in Eric Coleman’s recent book. It is interesting in that it relates to the early 1930’s, a period that produced very few works on dinghy cruising, possibly because of the deep economic depression. The authors were two deb-type young ladies of well-to-do families whose time for sailing had to be snatched between social functions and week-end parties. In spite of this background they contrived to find a 14 foot Lymington scow with sliding gunter spars onto which they bent an International 14 mainsail; all this with the help of a male friend who appears from time to time as a father-figure. They kept the boat at See’s yard above Hammersmith bridge and learned to sail it with gusto, on dodgy occasions with one hand on the tiller and the other hastily turning the pages of Knight’s ‘Small Boat Sailing’ to find what to do. They then embarked on lengthier voyages down-river through dockland, by day and night, and ultimately as far as Burnham via the Maplins and Havengore. Sometimes they slept ashore and sometimes in the boat open to the sky, in their duffel coats, because for some reason they never thought to fix a boat tent.

The style is a touch ‘effeminate’ as was then thought proper for young ladies, but through it comes strongly an unaffected delight in dinghy cruising and a sound appreciation of the character of dockland and the lower reaches as seen from the river. The girls may have lived cushy ashore, but once afloat they were as tough as any dinghy cruisers come, though this did not stop them from posing as helpless females when it suited their purpose. I can strongly recommend this book as a good read if you come across it in a second-hand bookshop or get it through your local library service.

A THOUSAND MILES’ CRUISE IN THE ‘SILVER CLOUD’: from Dundee to France and back in a small boat. By William Forwell. Blackie & Son, 1879.

This forgotten little book deserves to be one of the classic works of the dinghy cruiser’s library. A Scotch (sic) minister of Dundee with a taste for sailing designed a fisherman’s open, lug-sailed yawl 19’ by 7’ 9”, and with his fourteen year old son sailed it along the east coast to Calais and back. In this formidable undertaking of three months duration the crew were fortified by the text, ‘When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee.’ This was displayed in their cuddy beneath a flat foredeck that gave only kneeling headroom.

Forwell carried a dog-collar and a suit of the cloth which he donned at several east coast havens to preach at local churches in return for hospitality ashore. Although he was a profoundly sincere man of God, he never appears pious and writes with a robust good humour. He was clearly a most capable skipper and navigator, combining great courage and physical endurance with an equal amount of caution and he never took unnecessary risks. He had three buoyancy tanks built into the boat, one filled with 42 solder-sealed biscuit tins. Nonetheless, the boat sank in Calais while the crew were on a visit to Paris, having left the boat in charge. The dock was unexpectedly emptied leaving ‘Silver Cloud’ at a steep angle, and it filled as the dock flooded. Undaunted, they dried out their gear on the dockside and set off home. However, to avoid any repetition of this incident Forwell decked over the boat completely en route.

There are many eminently quotable passages in Forwell’s account. For example, ‘The moment you have got on board another adult skilled, or supposed to be skilled, in sailing you have possibly shipped your master. It matters not what position he nominally holds, he is a man, and his life is as sweet to him as yours is to you; he will therefore have his dictum as to when and where and how you should sail. To avoid all this, to sail for the very love of sailing . . . you must be able to depend on your own judgement, manage your own vessel, and she must therefore be comparatively small.’

‘MESSING ABOUT’: THE PHRASE THAT HAUNTS A THOUSAND SLIPS

Rummaging in a second-hand bookshop the other day, I came across an early copy of ‘An Inland Voyage’ by Robert Louis Stevenson. The volume had hand-cut leaves of quality paper and was in good condition. A glance revealed that it was about a cruise in sailing canoes, so I paid the few pennies asked and bore it off. After tea I picked up the book with mild interest, but did not put it down until about three hours later as I finished the last page.

What had held me was not just the skill of the writing of this very first book by the author-to-be of ‘Treasure Island’, ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’, etc., but also the clear sense the book conveyed of a chain of influences in the literature of boating.

Starting in the 1850’s, J. MacGregor had pioneered canoeing by paddle and under sail in the series of Rob Roys of his own design which were the direct prototypes of the modern, kayak-type canoe. He made prodigious journeys in these craft on major waters, fresh and salt, and wrote up his adventures with equal vigour.

I touched on his voyages in the Middle East including the Nile and the Suez region of the Red sea, various Syrian streams and swamps, as well as the Jordan, in the D.C.A. Bulletin No. 70.

Plainly under the influence of MacGregor, though he does not mention it, RLS and his friend Walter Simpson set out in late summer 1876, in the canoes Arethusa and Cigarette, for what was intended to be a loop through Belgium and France, from tidal water to tidal waters starting at Antwerp, rising via Brussels and Charleroi to Maubeuge, then descending by Sambre, Oise and Seine, perhaps to Rouen or Le Havre. In the event, they finished at Pontoise.

The real interest in successful voyage books lies not in nautical technicalia so much as in the richness of the reflections of the author on what he finds enroute and, at bottom, on Life itself. In this, RLS was very capable and commented on his experiences with a maturity and confidence that might seem surprising today in a young man of the 26 years he had at the time.

The writing has a pungency and directness found also in some later, nautical writers down to Erskine Childers but which seem to start with this book of RLS. For example, while they were heading on a wet day towards Brussels:- ‘We landed in a blink of fine weather, but we had not been two minutes ashore before the wind freshened into half a gale and the rain began to patter on our shoulders.’

At the end of this rough day, seeking shelter for the night at the outskirts of Brussels, and after some rebuffs, they came to the boathouse of the rowing club ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE where they found warm hospitality. The keen attitude of the club members greatly impresses RLS, ‘We are all employed in commerce during the day; but in the evening, voyez-vous, nous sommes serieux.’

RLS dwells on their approach in a long paragraph; the club members ‘knew that the interest they took in their business was a trifling affair compared to their spontaneous, long-suffering affection for nautical sports.’

Then comes the germinal sentence; ‘For will any one dare to tell me that business is more entertaining than fooling among boats?’ He goes on in this vein for another page.

Germinal? Yes. Kenneth Grahame was nine years the junior of his fellow-Scot RLS and was very much under his influence when he took seriously to the pen. He owed a great deal to the encouragement and guidance of W.E. Henley, the editor of the ‘National Observer’, who published his first writings and had also been close friend, editor and co-author with RLS.

In his biography of Grahame, Peter Green notes that this author was but one of a whole generation who could turn out a ‘Stevensonette’, such a piece centred, in fact, on certain stock themes — food and drink, tobacco, sleep, travel, walking and nature-mysticism, all of which could serve as escape-routes from an intolerable, everyday reality.

Grahame was very much an escapist — Secretary of the Bank of England by profession and writer by choice. Once his work started to appear under his own name, he found greater freedom to express himself — having regard to his official post — by using non-real, metaphoric settings. Whereas RLS refers ironically to ‘fooling among boats’ in his direct polemic, now forgotten, we have the identical thought, softened to fit an idyll, and expressed in 1908 by Water Rat in a phrase fair to last as long as English is spoken; ‘Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.’