Exeter Ship Canal - M/V 'Jenjo'

[davidwheeler]

This is the Esso Jersey. Built in 1961 by Scott of Bowling, specifically to serve Exeter and the Channel Islands. 313grt - the largest in tonnage to visit Exeter Basin. She made 608 visits. Her last was on 28.07.1971 and she was sold by Esso shortly after that, finally, after lay-up, for use as a sludge vessel in the North, renamed 'Kielder'. Broken up at Hull in 1984. The last of the petrol tankers. Others operated by National Benzole and Rowbothams for Regent Petroleum had ceased visiting Exeter in the 1960s. This was a serious financial blow for the City of Exeter. The Council owned the canal and was responsible for keeping it open for shipping and maintaining it. That became increasingly expensive, and this fell upon the ratepayers, of whom I was one. The tankers were by far the biggest source of canal dues revenue and the loss of it caused much debate and consternation. As did the very future of the canal itself. And things only got worse.

I hope this series gives you an idea of the vessels using the canal in its last commercial days. What is the point of a Ship Canal without ships? Elsewhere on this site I have tried to describe a journey down the canal in a ship, and also what it was like on a regular out-and-back run to the dumping area on the m/v Countess Wear. Because although that ship travelled only the newer, lower, part of the canal, it was still a commercial use of it, and provided revenue to the Council. But in 1999, that ended. 

[Dav and Pen]

This is a post taken from a Facebook group

[davidwheeler]

Thanks for that. That was Capt Rowsell's. This is mine. This is the Countess Wear coming alongside the Treatment Works wharf for the very last time.

And here is another. It was a beautiful morning. Here the ship is approaching the first of the road bridges...

And another. This is Double Locks.....

Something has gone wrong again. The first photo is at Double Locks. The next, in Exeter basin waiting for the Civic party after their lunch. The next, on the way back towards Double Locks. Capt Rowsell's photo is next . Then approaching Limekilns, where the canal is wide enough to swing, which is what the Countess Wear did after every trip. Then my first photo. There we are, a trip up and down the canal on a beautiful sunny morning twenty five years ago. You cannot do that now.

[davidwheeler]

While I am thinking about it, you might be interested in the enclosed. The Thames barge 'Greenhithe' was built in Great Yarmouth in 1929. Here she has discharged her cargo of cement at Thomas Gabriel & Sons' cement stores in the river Exe. She looks very smart, so perhaps quite new at the time the photo was taken.The barge has come up the canal, into the river and passed some way up, well beyond the fish quay. Since it isn't at all unusual to find postcards which show sailing vessels in the background of general views of the river, there must have been a well-tried method of getting them there. I can only  assume that they were towed by horse up the river bank and then shoved manually across the river. In the background you can see the Cathedral. This is the best photo of Exeter shipping that I have ever found. It was given to me by the librarian at Exeter City Reference Library over sixty years ago. So I thank him for doing that. I had similar generosity from the local newspapers, perhaps because in those days such things were of little interest. 

Unless advised to stop doing it, I will continue to add one or two interesting photos, as I find them.

[davidwheeler]

Thames barges such as the Greenhithe were not uncommon on the Exeter Ship Canal. Here are two more. The lower, the Will Everard, of the same company F.T.Everard as the Greenhithe, arrived at Exeter from London in 1953 with 220 tons of cement. For some reason the company decided to use the ship as one of its publicity postcards. It reads ' S.B. "Will Everard" leaving Exeter Canal Lock'. The artist has used considerable licence, because the scene bears no relation whatsoever to Turf Lock. But a jolly picture. The upper photo is of the barge 'Cabby'. This sailing barge was the last wooden vessel by the Rochester builder Gill. Laid down in 1925, trade conditions delayed completion until 1928. She carried grain, animal feed, timber and other bulk cargoes from London Docks to port on the South and East Coast until the late 1960s. Then converted for passenger use. Here she is at the Fish Quay on the Exe, a promotional visit. It is the summer of 1977.....

[davidwheeler]

And then there were the visiting yachts selling things. Office and shop equipment, pharmaceutical and medical supplies. Services desirable for every business to have. Always by invitation only but with a complicit ally in the manager's office, easy to obtain. Since I was paid virtually nothing in the early 'sixties, anything I could get for free, particularly food and drink, was welcome. I never got chucked off. Here are just two examples from the late 1960s, early 1970s. The ''Cadabra, built by Daglas, hull iroko and oak, deck iroko, superstructure iroko and marine ply. 86 feet, 125 grt. Office equipment sales. And available next week if you fancy it and can get to Rijeka: 7650 euros the week, + 2000 euros advance provision allowance, 500 euros per pay for the skipper and 1,40 euros per day visitor tax. Per person. Might be worth it because she was a very smart vessel of her day. The other, 'Katherine of Gower', built by the Berthon Boat Company, Lymington in 1955, 110 ft overall, 155 grt. Hull and superstructure of wood. 4 double cabins, 4 full size bathrooms. Captain, engineer and 4 crew. 2 speedboats, stabilisers, 2 x 550hp Paxmans. I cannot remember now what she was selling but no doubt it needed really luxurious accomodation to sell it. Again a very smart ship. Now based at Jeddah and renamed 'Saud'. I found it difficult at the time to understand the need for these ships because the actual  product demonstration space was very limited. There may perhaps have been some corporation tax advantage. But it was fun to have them visit.

Next, and to bring my contribution once and for all to a close, three sailing ships which visited. Such ships will never be seen in Exeter again, until they remove the M5 viaduct. 

[davidwheeler]

I am going to start this final sequence of rather jumbled-up photographs of the Exeter Ship Canal's shipping by two more of my collection of photographs taken in 1913. The unknown photographer was recording what I sought to do fifty years or so later. The difference being that what he or she saw would continue for a good many years to come. Whereas I knew that what I was photographing was coming to an end. The two photographs are part of a small box of glass negatives due to be thrown out which were saved by Mr Fred Messenger of Exeter, who, knowing of my interest, let me see them and have positives taken of them. 

The first, a handsome tops'l schooner, is the 'Elsa'. I believe this to be the schooner built in 1891 at Plymouth by the builder Shilston. 128 grt. 103 nrt. Sold to France in 1928, her ultimate fate unknown. Note that she lies alongside the warehouse of Oliver Bros, Fish, Potato and Herring Curing Stores. The door adjacent to the outside stairway is marked 'Newfoundland & Labrador Fish & Oil Co Ltd.' She draws 7' at the bows, and her Lloyds Register loadline is clearly marked. The white hulled launch alongside is a mystery. A beautiful example of a locally built schooner without doubt engaged on the Newfoundland salt cod trade. The second is of the 'Thomas', a t'g'lts'l three masted schooner. She is right at the head of the Basin, with the imposing structure of Exeter's power station in the background. Although there are five 'Thomas' vessels listed in Martin Benn's definitive book 'Closing Down Sail', none match and that means that the 'Thomas' in the photograph was not on the UK register. She has remarkably fine lines. I think she is Scandanavian but I am not an expert. Two magnificent vessels demonstrating the importance of Exeter as an international port.

[davidwheeler]

This is the former tops'l schooner 'Result', the day after she arrived in Exeter Basin in 1967. She still has such remaining sails as she then carried, bent to her booms. Built in 1893 at Carrickfergus, she was the very last of the hundreds of merchant schooners in anything like her original condition, and the last to trade. I think the last cargos were of stone from Shoreham to the Channel Islands, but in my excitement in seeing her in the Basin I didn't take in much of what Peter Welch, her captain, told me. His father, who owned the Result, had just died - the blue band along the hull is a mourning band - and he was starting to convert the hold for passengers. The Result remained alongside the museum building for several years and the vague hope there was that the museum would buy her and restore her to something of her original condition. But neither Peter Welch's planned conversion to cruising, nor the museum's plans came to anything.  On 11th October 1970 she left Exeter Basin for Belfast and the Ulster Folk Museum.  There her bare hull lies on steel blocks, waiting for money to restore her. A lot of money.

The small photo taken in the late 1930s by my father shows the Result with her three masts but no tops'ls. They had gone by then. But one of the finest and fastest and one of the last.

The second  photos show the deck. Lots of interesting detail there, and a fair indication I think of what a working schooner's deck would have looked like.

[Pluto]

A couple of photos of Result at the Ulster F&T Museum in 1979. As a child, I lived next to Garston Docks, and remember Arklow-based sailing ships, such as Result or De Wadden, visiting to load coal for Irish ports. The last photo shows the coal loading tips in 1979, by which time I suspect there were no more Irish sailing vessels in use, though they did continue with motor boats, such as the Olive of Newry, seen here at Partington.

[davidwheeler]

A couple more and then I am done. Here is the brig T.S. Royalist coming into Double Locks in June 1975. I am not on the ship unfortunately, but I am on the lockside. The other side is a crane but I cannot now remember what it was doing there. It was not a fixture. The Royalist was a steel brig, 29.32 m. overall, 83 grt. Built by Groves & Guttridge, East Cowes, designed by Colin Mudie. Launched by Princess Anne on 3rd August 1971. Owned and operated by the Marine Society and Sea Cadets. Decommissioned in Portsmouth in November 2014 and replaced by a newer vessel bearing the same name. The most heavily rigged ship we had seen on the Ship Canal for very many years. The only visit by the Royalist, I think.

The smaller photo is of the T.S.Eagle, the Sea Cadets' H.Q. in the late 1940s, early 1950s. This is the former Fairmile D Motor Gun Boat 616, decommissioned by the Royal Navy to the Exeter Sea Cadets in 1947. Originally fitted with four Packard-built RR Merlin engines, she had a top speed of some 30 kts. Believed to have served in the Mediterranean. When delivered to the Cadets, her engines had been removed and probably returned to the United States. But apart from that everything was there, fo'castle with leather mattresses, wardroom, CO's cabin, chartroom and bridge still fitted with wheel and binnacle.She lay alongside the River Exe bank adjacent to the Canal Basin. Unmolested save by dry rot. Unsafe, sometime in the 1950s she was towed down the Canal, down the estuary and beached on Dawlish Warren, stripped of everything usable and burnt. The copper fastenings were salvaged but right up to the late 1960s if you knew where to look you could find a few...

[davidwheeler]

This, as no doubt you know, the Hudson's Bay Company's replica ketch 'Nonsuch'. Built by J.Hinks Shipyard at Appledore, N.Devon, perhaps the only shipyard with the skills and craftsmen capable of it. Designed by Rodney Warrington Smyth, following five months of research through the Company's archives and contemporary accounts of building techniques. No modern power tools. Sails made of best Navy flax canvas woven in Scotland - no synthetic fibres, no brass eyelets, no machine stitches, no wire. Launched on 26 August 1968. A stunning example of hand built quality work. We ISCA museum volunteers were given a reception on board, on the Nonsuch's visit to Exeter on 19th August 1969. Unforgettable. But sailing her was challenging. Her captain Adrian Small found that she would tack ship quite well under reasonable conditions but he had to work out a special drill for the job. 'In bad weather it could be different: but the Nonsuch lies a-hull tractably enough, about six to eight points from the wind. and she will wear round with the lateen and the mizzen tops'l taken in. Her best point of sail is under all sail with a nice breeze a couple of points abaft the beam.'

In the event the Company decided not to have her sail across the Atlantic - she went as deck cargo on the 'City of Bristol', arriving in Canada in April 1970. "Although the little ketch had proven herself to be most seaworthy, the Hudson' Bay Company decided against  a crossing by sail because of the time factor - approximately 2 months would have been involved" (Museum of the Great Lakes). The Nonsuch is at the Manitoba Museum, should you choose to have a look. In the background of the photo you can see the sterns of the ketch-rigged 'Result' and the steam tug 'St Canute.' Both long since departed from Exeter.

 

[davidwheeler]

I will end this little journey back to the 1960s/1970s with the Onedin Line. Twice, as I remember it now, an odd collection of old sailing boats and ships gathered along the Quay at Exeter. Most had come up the Canal, one or two across from the Maritime Museum, and one or two already in the Canal Basin on their own business. Along the Quay, at the same time, old carts arrived, stacks of wooden packing cases, dozens of oak barrels, old cranes, and every sort of bits and pieces to make up the 19th Century scene. For us, it was a free show. Horses and carts plodding up and down, men in costume shoving barrels up and then shoving them back, cases lifted up amid shouts of direction and then put down and another lot lifted up. Sometimes if one was lucky, a glimpse of the lovely Demelza. And sometimes looking not so lovely. Then the word went round 'Cap'n Baines is on set!', and there we would see him on the bridge shouting his commands. And again. And again. All the while ships and boats were being manouevred around, pulled back and forth across the river by ropes on each bank. The bigger ones, such as the 'Charlotte Rhodes', were towed back and forth by a local fishing boat. Hoping to catch a bit of wind to fill the flapping sails.For us it was great free entertainment and in the evening, when all was quiet, one could walk along the Quay, past the ships and the merchandise, and be in the 19th century. It was by far the greatest spectacle of that era.

Again, as I recall it, on the first occasion, three main vessels were involved: the 'Charlotte Rhodes', a three masted schooner, the 'Marques' either a brig or a brigantine, it was difficult to tell, and the 'I.P Thorsoe', a former schooner and by then a ketch.     The second time the filming came, there were more boats, seven or eight I think, but smaller, apart from the 'Charlotte Rhodes', and I cannot now remember their names. One came across from Holland and I followed it up the canal.

The 'Charlotte Rhodes' was the star. The favourite. This ship had been built in Denmark in 1904 by the builder F.Hoffman.  She operated as a cargo sailing vessel and then as a motor vessel until the late 1960s,  when she was bought by John Mackreth, who restored her at great expense. I remember her lying in Dartmouth for a while, where she attracted attention because she was a fine looking vessel from another era. She was used by the BBC until 1975, but then, in that year she was struck by a heavy storm and suffered severe damage. She was then sold to a Dutch owner who used her only on inland or sheltered waters. But vandals attacked while she was in Amsterdam and she was destroyed by fire.

The 'Marques', which you can see in the background of one of the photos, had been built in Spain in 1917 as a polacca-rigged brig. She carried fruit from the Canaries to Europe. Damaged during WW11, repaired in 1947, but badly maintained and in poor condition by 1971. She was bought by an Englishman, extensively repaired and rerigged and used in the Onedin Line filming. Re-rigged as a barque, she took part in the 1984 Cutty Sark Tall Ships Race. On the Bermuda to Nova Scotia section, she was hit by a sudden squall and a large wave and knocked down on her starboard side. The main hatch was breached, she flooded and sank in less than one minute with the loss of 19 of her 28 crew, mostly youngsters.

That is me done. 

 

[davidwheeler]

I have forgotten two things:

Firstly to thank  the Western Times Company for allowing me to use their photos of the Nonsuch, the Charlotte Rhodes and the Royalist. Theirs were infinitely better than mine.

Secondly I forgot to add two photos which I thought might be of interest in relation to the Belgian minesweepers.

The top photo shows the River Exe frozen, with what must be the T.S. Eagle. The winter must be between 1947 and 1957. The building in the background became the Maritime Museum. The tanks in the background were National Benzoles' or Regents'. The lower photo is fifty years later. This is the ex Finnish Navy fast attack craft 'Nuoli 11'. 22m x 6.6m x 1.5m. 3 x Zvezda M50F water-cooled V 12 diesels. Top speed 45 kts. 20 crew. Armed with 40mm Bofors . + another 20mm gun. 'As a service vessel these boats gave one a true feeling of being a sailor. Constructed of wood they leaked a bit, and so the atmosphere was rather moist. Living quarters were limited, even for the commanding officer. No privacy at all.' The boat was purchased by Servo Engineering. She passed down the Swedish and Danish coasts, through the Kiel Canal, stayed in Hamburg for a while, then headed overnight to Harwich. Down the Channel to Exmouth and up the Canal to the Water Treatment Works wharf, where the 'Countess Wear' had berthed. She sank at the berth and was raised. Left on the wharfside awaiting repairs to serious damage to her port side, what has happened to her I do not know. She was built as one of a series of 13 by Oy Laivateollisuus Ab (LaTe), a Finnish shipbuilding company set up to serve the Finnish war reparation industry, focusing on wooden ships for the Russians. Masses of them. Schooners, trawlers, dozens of them. I remember seeing several in the Baltic in the early 1960s. The company pioneered gluelam and these assault craft were the last vessels built by LaTe out of wood. 

 An interesting couple of photos, don't you think?

[davidwheeler]

I may have given the impression that all commercial traffic on the Exeter Ship Canal disappeared with the opening of the M5 viaduct.

 

Commercial traffic to the port of Exeter certainly did stop then. But in the 2010s, I think, commercial vessels were seen again on the Canal. These were the product of Coastal Workboats. Their main base is I think in Stornoway, but small ferries and workboats for the fishing industry have been built in Exeter and launched onto the Canal, and from there have gone on to their destinations. Two Malta ferries, Topcat One and Topcat Two, went down the Canal, into the Exe estuary, down to the sea and round the cast to Southampton, to be loaded on board a ship for transport to Malta. 19m x 6.6m, carrying 150 passengers maximum, powered by Watermota-supplied Doosan diesel engines driving Teignbridge fixed pitch props. Fuel efficient, low wash ferries with bow access and bow-on docking. You can cross the Grand Port at Malta in them. I did. The other photo is of a landing craft-type workboat which went up the coast to Scotland.

I hope this is still ongoing business. Perhaps someone local to the area can tell us. I am bit far away.

 

 

[davidwheeler]

I have added this picture because I like it. Maybe others will as well. Fifty years ago these small ships, run by families, brought small quantities of goods into small ports for delivery to small concerns for distribution locally. At that time it must have been reasonably profitable for everyone.

And why not this one as well. Not in Exeter Basin but below the swing bridge, because of partial canal closure.