Tag Archives: harbour

Carol Corbett: Harbour, houseboats 1950s

Aerial of harbour showing houseboats 1950s

Aerial of harbour showing houseboats 1950s

A childhood friend, Kay Green, lived on a houseboat moored off Bridge Road. I loved to go there to play  –  it was so wonderfully different. We’d play around the rocks, painting faces on them and using the seaweed for their hair, and being hairdressers.

There was another houseboat moored the other side of the bridge. An old man lived there,maybe Colonel Mitchell, and Kay and I used to take meals to him from Mrs. Green. His boat had boots hanging from the ceiling. Extraordinary!

Les Turner: Harbour, antifouling, 1950s, 1960s

Harbour at low tide

Harbour at low tide

Wally Feaver had this,-  about, what?-  fifty foot type motor cruiser and he’d say to us lads,  “Can you come and give us a hand, nipper?  We want to do the underside of the boat  – anti fouling.’  We laid on the mud, absolutely covered in stuff.  Cor, what a job!  Because there were these huge great bilge keels on it, and you had to slide up in between them.  Les Turner b1944

Pauline and Jack Harwood: Harbour, houseboat,1950s

Houseboats moored on the river side of the old bridge.

Houseboats moored on the river side of the old bridge

 

When we got married we couldn’t afford to buy a house. We were lucky because a sleeping sickness specialist chap in Kenya or somewhere – Robin Cox and his wife –  he went back, and he said we could have their houseboat.
It was nice, plenty of room. We had a nice little stove, and one night Jack built up the stove so it got so hot we thought it would catch fire.
We wondered why there were so many mugs around and pots. When it rained we realised; rain came in everywhere.
When the tide was wrong and the wind came from the south, she used to come up on her end but we never came adrift from the mooring/gangway.  We were on ‘Bluenose’, but it started off as ‘Spinwham’ – same boat.
Stan Smith lived on it for a bit and then Colonel Mitchell. And then Penny and her husband and it ended up at the top of the river. Pauline Harwood nee Hatch b 1935

John Caulcutt: Harbour, Delphie and Robin Lakeman

Delphie ran the garage and subsequently took over the pumps on the quay; that place was pretty well open twenty four hours a day.  People would come to Yarmouth to buy fuel because of Delphie. Her whole wall was a mass of postcards from people like the Hiscock family [who endowed the present-day lifeboat] who would send from every port that they were in because they were enamoured with Delphi like we all were, because she was such a magnetic character. Humble origins, humble in her lifestyle and everything she did, but a really good down to earth solid, gutsy, go-getting person.

She was such an encourager of everything. You had some weird project and she’d absolutely get right behind it. She used to wait up for us when we came across from Lymington on a Friday night.  We all had our own mugs. Robin would have been out fishing in that old naval pinnace – he had crab pots, lobster pots, and prawn pots just round from Fort Albert going into Colwell Bay. There were always tons of prawns in the fridge, so we’d have a pile of prawns when we got back.

Fishing boat 'Kit' moored by fuel station 1970s

Fishing boat ‘Kit’ moored by the Lakemans fuel station 1970s Photo: A. Cokes

And Robin, you could hardly get two words out of him, but a finer mechanic I don’t think any of us will ever see.  Sea going and apprentice to start with; all his life he’d been with engines, just incredible. We used to go out fishing with him and he was a canny fisherman, particularly for shellfish.  He knew just where and when they’d be feeding and when those pots would be full.  An amazing guy.  So great to have the opportunity when you’re kids to grow up with this enormous local knowledge that the Lakemans were able to pass on.

She was the most amazingly generous person, not only with her time but with her energy and her money and that manifested itself in the end, in the Abbeyfield.
The Delphie Lakeman Trust has given away over two hundred thousand pounds to a hundred and forty different causes all in her name, principally Yarmouth and West Wight based, to things that she would have approved of because she did like to push the envelope out.

John Caulcutt ( who established and manages The Delphie Lakeman Memorial Trust, which has grown from an allotment in Yarmouth which Delphie left to him.)

 

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Barbara Dence: swimming 1920s, 1930s

 From a letter to Yarmouth School
Looking back with pleasure over the years, it seems that school in summer revolved round the time of high tide.  Our daily swimming lesson took up the latter part of the morning or afternoon.  It was not often that we missed.  Occasionally we went to the beach by the Pier, but most often it was down the turning up the High Street.  We all undressed on the beach –  very stony it was too – and we mastered the art of an exceedingly rapid change.  There was a small raft beside a breakwater which good swimmers used.
We were encouraged to learn to swim. Mr Stanway would give 6d to anyone who learnt and to the one who taught the swimmer.  Many people went on to do the mile and to learn life saving.  For this we went to the harbour and were thrown out of a boat fully dressed.

Excerpt from School Log

Excerpt from School Log

We had to undress in the water – get ashore –  and also “rescue” a drowning person – swim underwater and dive off the boat  without capsizing it.

The highlight of the swimming season was the Cowes Regatta, and a great honour to be picked for the team, for which we received a medal.  Also if you were good there was the chance of winning some pocket money at the various regattas.
Barbara Dence b 1920 

Barbara Dence's 1929 swimming certificate

Barbara Dence’s 1929 swimming certificate

Colin Smith: Early Days

I started off in Quay Street in a house in one of those little passages that go across. Then we went to live in the harbour aboard a boat called ‘ The Tina’, a sixty footer, and whether that caused my mother to be poorly I don’t know.  She went into Havenstreet for a while with ‘consumption’ as it was known in those days, and then up to Scotland, and I, being the youngest of the brood, I went up there with her and attended school up there for a while.  That was a sad business, but there it was. Colin Smith b 1922