Search for Image ID ""

 Smacks in the ice. Looking up the South Channel Creek from St. Osyth Stone in a hard winter about 1929. The smacks lie to their anchors amidst the swirling snow and ice floes which, driven by the tides, can do much damage to wooden hulls. At times the smaks put to sea in such conditions to avoid the scouring action of the ice, seeking clearer water, if at some discomfort for their crews. Others ...
Cat1 Smacks and Bawleys Cat2 Places-->Brightlingsea Cat3 Weather

Smacks in the ice. Looking up the South Channel Creek from St. Osyth Stone in a hard winter about 1929. The smacks lie to their anchors amidst the swirling snow and ice floes which, driven by the tides, can do much damage to wooden hulls. At times the smaks put to sea in such conditions to avoid the scouring action of the ice, seeking clearer water, if at some discomfort for their crews. Others might be temporarily put in rills or mud berths so they escaped damage but many stayed afloat and tried to work amidst these arctic conditions.

The large hull at the right is that of an old smack laid on the mud "to die" as the old timers put it. The hatch to her cabin, aft and the tiller and taffrail are clearly seen but she was soon reduced to a mouldering skeleton in the way a wooden ship has of quickly disintegrating when cast aside.
She would have weathered many a gale in the North Sea and English Channel in her career. [JL caption for Douglas Went photograph]
Date: c1929      


Photo: John Leather Collection - Douglas Went
Image ID BF69_015_015
Category 1 Smacks and Bawleys
Category 2 Places-->Brightlingsea
Category 3 Weather


    Top

This image is part of the Mersea Museum Collection.