LAST SAILORMAN
was eventually sold to the Cambria Trust, nobly founded
by barge enthusiast Tony Ellis, who also struggled
manfully to get her rebuilt as she slowly fell to
pieces in benighted Milton Creek, Kent, next to a
mountainous rubbish tip.
But Tony did not give up, he secured a £990,000
Heritage Lottery Fund grant, and with his band of
volunteers raised a further £410,000 to ensure
she was rebuilt.
Re-launched in 2011 Cambria was a magnificent
sight: a testimony to the excellence of shipwright
Tim Goldsack, sailmaker Steve Hall and an army of
dedicated volunteers.
With her lofty mulie rig, grey topsides and powerful
sheer the unique silhouette of Cambria could be seen
once more in the Thames Estuary and with her re-birth
another aspect of her past was disinterred: the chance to
slate her long-dead skipper Bob Roberts.
A video appeared made by barging enthusiasts in
which a member of the Cambria Trust, William Collard,
described Bob Roberts as: “Quite a character..he didn’t
like people and was known for being cantankerous and
argumentative.” As project manager, Mr Collard had
been a driving force behind Cambria’s restoration and
this was probably a slip of the tongue, but it was a
comment he might not have made had Bob been alive to
hear it.
Next a self-published book appeared by another
Cambria Trustee, Robert Simper, who has written a
breathtaking 37 books on the minutiae of coastal craft.
He penned the following: “Bob had no time for people
who sailed barges for pleasure and equally bitterly hated
the new use of sailing barges....as ‘charter barges’”
While it’s fair to say Bob thought little of dilettante
bargemen, those who as he put it to Ginger, “didn’t have
the decisions in them”, for good sailors, he had time
aplenty. He advised Richard Duke, who fitted out the
Convoy as a yacht and Richard Walsh, who did the same
with Kathleen, became a good friend after seeking his
knowledge. And he would have respected Cambria’s new
skippers, Richard Titchener and Ian Ruffles, both of
whom can handle the big coaster in all conditions.
Richard told me: “If you say what you think the
prophet is seldom popular in his own country, and Bob
Below: Dick was
left Bob Robert’s
sea chest and
freight books.
Inset:
Greenhithe’s
mud-stained
freight bookAbove: Dick
Durham aged 18
at the wheel of
CambriaCambria – mule-rigged spritsail sailing barge
BUILT 1906 at Greenhithe, Kent at a cost of £1,895
OWNERS AND BUILDERS FT Everard & Sons
LOA between perpendiculars 91.1ft
(with a 38ft boltsprit)
DRAUGHT 2ft 6ins (light) 7.3ft (loaded)
BEAM 21.9 ft SAIL AREA 5,000sq ft
GROSS TONNAGE 109 (79 net)
CARGO CAPACITY 170 tons, up to 200 tons with stack
MAINMAST 49ft, topmast 43ft
MIZZEN 45ft (sprit 62 ft)certainly did say what he thought entertainingly and for
the cameras. This achieved a prominence for views
which in themselves were far from outspoken or extreme
but were said as if from a bargeman but with all the
intellect and vocabulary of a topflight journalistic mind.
So there was also something of a class thing about how
he was received. A grammar school boy with a keen
mind making a name for himself in a working class
world perhaps. This world can be pretty unforgiving if it
feels belittled or patronised.
“Whatever the perception of others, some with a
right, and some without, to comment, he bloody did it
and cannot be reduced for that. The detractors were not
there entering Yarmouth in the dark or foundering off
the Whiting Bank so for all they have to say they can go
and take a run and jump.”
I was one of the pall bearers of Bob’s coffin as he was
lowered into the earth at Ryde, Isle of Wight in 1982. At
his wake was a retired Army Brigadier, Jack Govier, the
Director of the National Maritime Museum, Frank Carr
and a clutch of admirals. There were also Sailormen, folk
singers, even a local pub landlord. This was not the
funeral of a man who ‘didn’t like people’.
Not long after Bob died his widow, Sheila, his second
wife, noticed a spritty sailing up the Solent close inshore.
She was the engineless barge-yacht, Mirosa, sailed
down Channel by her owner Peter Dodds who flew his
ensign half mast as a mark of respect.
I will leave the final word to Ginger Latham who
pointed out that there was a black credit line on
Cambria’s annual accounts, “a thin one admittedly, but
that thin black line meant to us that she was not a
museum but still a working barge...the last thin thread
going back centuries.
“Bob was first and always a sailorman and therefore
justifies totally the title of the Last Sailorman.”