1970s Yare wreck – update

It’s always good to see a mystery solved and an email received over the weekend revealed the identity of the old wreck seen in one of the photographs taken by John Chesney in the 1970s which were uploaded to the Broadland Memories website recently.

The wreck of the Thames barge “Harold Margetts” photographed on the River Yare by John Chesney in the 1970s

When I first saw the photo, I wondered whether it might have been the remains of an old wherry, but the fact that the vessel obviously had a transom meant that this was highly unlikely. Vaughan Ashby, the son of Hearts Cruisers Commander Ron Ashby, remembers the wreck from his childhood and has provided some wonderful information on it. He says: “She was not a wherry but a genuine Thames spritsail barge. These were often seen coming up to Norwich with coastal trade up until the end of the 50’s and I can remember seeing their masts going by behind the railway line, from the gunboat Morning Flight in Thorpe. She is sunk in the old Whitlingham sewage works dyke, on the west bank of the Yare between Postwick Grove and the Woods End. She was named HAROLD MARGETTS and her registered port was ROCHESTER. You can see the remains of these two words on her transom. There was also a large wherry sunk in the dyke up ahead of her, but I don’t know her name. I used to walk over the decks of these wrecks as a boy, when there was a lot more left of them.”

Many thanks to Vaughan for naming the wreck and confirming a location for it. I will, of course, update the caption for the photograph on the main website as soon as I can. There’s good news and bad news regarding my current computer issues! The bad news is that my PC problems are still somewhat of a mystery but it is looking increasingly likely that it is a hardware fault and it may need to have a few upgrades. It is now in the safe hands of my technical buddy who will hopefully be able to sort it all out for me. This may take a while, but the good news is that in the meantime he has kindly loaned me another PC and I’ve managed to get the website up and running on that during the last couple of days – thankfully it all went rather smoothly! It means that I can now begin to work on the backlog of website submissions again and will hopefully start to upload some new additions to the main website next week ….. fingers very firmly crossed!

Update 22/12/2018: I was contacted recently by Neil Jordan who kindly sent me a photograph which belonged to his wife, Pam’s late godfather Harold Sullivan. Harold lived at Lower Upnor, on the edge of the River Medway and the photograph shows the Harold Margetts in 1927 when she was the winner of the first, revived annual barge race on the Medway. There were 22 entrants that year, racing from Lower Hope to the Mouse Lightship, returning to Gravesend – a total distance of 60 miles. The Harold Margetts won the race in a time of 7 hours, 2 minutes and 40 seconds. The photograph was taken by C.R. Gael and it’s lovely to see her in her heyday. My thanks to Neil and Pam for allowing me to share it on here.