O
ne morning in the spring of 1938, a broad-
shouldered, lantern-jawed young man in a
cloth cap stood on the lockside of the Royal
Albert Dock watching the sailing barge
Reminder getting under way. Sails blossomed one after
the other – topsail, foresail, staysail, mainsail, mizzen –
all set by just two men.
Alfred William Roberts, better known as Bob
Roberts, then aged 29, was astounded.
He had recently come ashore after trying to make a
living out of a topsail schooner, the 108-ton BI, which
required more than two hands to sail successfully and yet
which loaded no more than a coasting barge.
So into barges Bob went, first as mate then skipper. It
was in the autumn of 1938, as master of Northdown,
that the legend was about to be born.
November was an unforgiving month for those trying
to make a living under sail and that month Northdown
was windbound in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk along with
many other sailing barges, all waiting for a slant in the
fresh southwesterly, before sailing up to London and
another freight.
Northdown was a noted flyer in the barge races and
Bob was young, strong and fit and his mate, Harry
Bottreill, a keen and obedient yachtsman.
When the wind westered, Bob called for the tug and
towed down through Yarmouth Harbour as the other
skippers watched. Bob reckoned that if he could weather
Orfordness before the wind backed, Northdown had a
fighting chance of making the safe haven of Harwich.
He also caught the low water off Yarmouth Haven
which meant he had the full power of a fresh flood
giving the barge a serious lift along the coast.Northdown’s departure threw the other skippers into
a quandary and as Harry Bottreill told me years later: “If
we got to London and they didn’t, immediately the
owners would be on to them and say: ‘What’s the matter
with you? What are you lying there for? Why don’t you
get on with it? If Northdown can do it then you can.’
They felt that if they didn’t go and we got through then
they would be in for it.”
It wasn’t a great decision, the wind backed before
Northdown rounded Orfordness, they lost the fair tide
and had a titanic battle to get into Harwich, but they did
get through.
It wasn’t a great decision, but it was Bob’s decision:
you cannot sail a fleet based on collective judgement.
Nor can you use the same method to stay in port.
Unfortunately, true to Harry’s analysis, many of the
skippers left in Yarmouth changed their minds later in
the day and by the time they’d towed down two miles
through Yarmouth Harbour – by now against the full
flow of the flood – a lot of the fair tide Bob had
enjoyed was spent.
The time they’d wasted proved disastrous and as a
southerly gale hit the barges, lifeboats from Yarmouth,
Lowestoft, Southwold and Aldeburgh were launched to
assist or rescue the crews from seven of them, four of
which drove across the North Sea and were beached in
the Low Countries. Una, Cetus, Decima, Astrild,
Royalty, and Raybel all lost sails, ground tackle or both
and Grecian was a total loss. They did not get through.
The crew of the uninsured Northdown, meanwhile
were given a fiver each from the barge’s owner Charles
Burley in gratitude for not having joined the casualties.
Bob’s narrow escape caused resentment among someLAST SAILORMAN
Facing page: Archie White illustration of the great gale, Bob and Harry at the wheel. Above l-r: Northdown in 1988; Bob Roberts