" a mundane sludge boat Part 2 - a voyage..."

[davidwheeler]

The M/V SW2/Countess Wear  made over 5000 voyages, all similar but none exactly the same. Each was unique. What follows is a brief description of one of them. It relates to the last commercial traffic on a waterway which has carried commercial vessels for over four hundred years and the chances are that it will never see such traffic again. So I believe it relevant. That it merits being recorded.

 

" Two o'clock in the morning. 27th June 1988. Countess Wear Sewage Works Wharf, beside the Exeter Ship Canal. 

 

The Motor Vessel Countess Wear, main engines running, deck lights on and nobody about. I climb onto the ship and up to the bridge and Captain Ron Gardner looms out of the darkness. He has been sitting in a chair waiting for me. Waiting, as he said, to see if I would turn up.

 

2.15 a.m. and Capt Gardner decides to go. He and the mate cast off. The stern swings out around the bow. We go astern and the bows clear the wharf. The Suez Canal searchlights are switched on. Shafts of light point up to the M5 viaduct ahead of us. Down the canal in the darkness, under the M5, with the lights of lorries looming over the railings high above us.

 

Topsham swing bridge appears up ahead, swung open by the Council canal man, and we glide through. I recognise him from twenty years before, from the 1960s. Then, Dutch, Danish and German coasters of 200 GRT or less  regularly travelled the canal to Exeter, with timber or oyster shell, occasionally glass sand, and petrol carried in the Esso Jersey. But now, only the Countess Wear is left working on the Exeter Canal.

 

We glide down the long straight stretch to Turf Lock, with the sounds of night birds in the reeds on either side. The top gates are open and we glide in, the silence broken only by the thrust of the engine going astern. We lock down in a few minutes. It is still quite dark as we push out of the lock into the estuary. The tide is on the flood, the ship heeling over as it ploughs its way across the mud bottom of the narrow channel. We are carrying only 190 tons of sludge today in the main tanks. The aft tanks hold about 140 tons but these are empty. Because of the neap tide. On a spring tide, with enough water in the river, the ship can carry the full capacity of about 336 tons.

 

The search lights are off now and in the darkness we criss-cross the estuary, following the red and green lights of the navigation buoys, past black shapes in the dark grey morning, of lines and lines of moored yachts and boats. Off Exmouth Docks, dawn looms. A mountain of scrap at the harbour entrance and a floodlit coaster in the docks. The radio crackles and the Coastguard asks the captain if he can see the Danica Green due at Exmouth this tide. Throughout the outward journey, from time to time, the Coastguard calls up that ship. We spot something on the radar. But it is much larger.

 

Off the Fairway Buoy we head straight out to sea, for six miles. When we reach that distance, from any point on shore checked on the radar, the Captain says he is ready to discharge the cargo. I go down to the engine room and watch, deafened by the roar of the main engine, the clutch being slipped on the main pump. Then the mate, the assistant engineer and I climb back up to the main deck and stare over the stern. Two trails of black liquid stream away as we move slowly ahead in an otherwise featureless sea. No basking sharks, just a couple of gannets. I am told it takes about 20 minutes to discharge our cargo. It would have been 35 to 40 minutes for a full load. It is obvious when the the tanks are nearly empty because patches of clean sea water appear in the black trails. Sure enough, when the sludge thins out, the Captain goes full ahead, turning hard to starboard and we head, flat out, for home, the bows noticeably high out of the water. Sea ballast is taken on into the two midship ballast tanks and when they are overflowing - sea water flooding over the decks - the ballast is complete with 90 tons, the forepeak tanks filled as well.

 

We pass up the channel in the early morning, against the ebbing tide. Past the parklands of Powderham Castle, across the river to Lympstone and back to Turf Lock, the river sucked away from the mud banks and the propellor churning up a black ooze astern. Ten minutes to spare, the Captain tells me. Otherwise we would have to stay in the river until the next tide. That, he said, had never happened to him because it would be so inconvenient. The ship slides into the lock without touching the lock sides. A master helmsman, the captain. The gates are closed by turning a hand-operated windlass on the opposite side of each gate, and the lockman saves his strength. There is much of this day to come. The lock fills quickly and it is near 8 a.m. when we leave the lock entrance, through the narrow stop gates with reflectors on each side to guide the ship in the dark. Up the canal to the Topsham bridge, with a few early fishermen, and marsh and estuary birds calling on each side. Through the swing bridge which is set, as are all the others, at an angle to the cut, without a touch. Then up under the M5 to the wharf and beyond to the wide at Limekilns where the captain puts the helm hard over to starboard, then astern and we are neatly round before moving back to the wharf where we come sweetly alongside. Lines are made fast.

 

A long flexible plastic pipe one foot in diameter is bolted, with three bolts, to a flange on a fixed pipe on the ship's deck, midway between the two sets of tanks. The centre of the pipe is supported by a strop from a light goose-necked davit on the ship's side. The other end of the pipe is bolted to an outlet on the wharfside. A valve is opened. The mate goes to a shed alongside, and starts an engine. The pipe starts to jerk and bob about, as the City's sewage sludge courses into the two fore tanks...The start of another day."

 

And we get back in time for breakfast. 

 

I have added a few photos.  Of Turf Lock from the air, from a postcard issued by Nicholas Toyne LBIPP. It predates 1995. Then a postcard of the estuary dated 1971. At the extreme mid right side you may  just able to make out a ship. That is the SW2. Then a couple of photos of the estuary and off  Exmouth Docks - with a load of scrap at the entrance. Then the Countess wear, heading off out to sea. I didn't fancy doing that on that occasion so I got a lift from the Exmouth pilot boat. From which that photo was taken. Both the ship and the locally built pilot boat are gone.

 

One final thing before I finish. It may seem to some that making the same voyage 5000 times led to somewhat limited horizons. But this is what Capt Gardner had to say of the ending of dumping sludge at sea " It will be a sad day for me, because she (the ship) has been like a second home. You get the best of both worlds - the maritime side and your home life. Summer time on this canal and wonderful estuary is beautiful. There is always something going on. But all good things come to an end."

 

 

[Tam & Di]

A wonderfully evocative description of the trip. I'm sightly surprised that they don't pump out the 90 tons of seawater ballast when they get back as that would give them an extra 90 tons capacity for the sludge - maybe they were not allowed to pump that amount of salt water into the relatively fresh water above the lock.