(this article was initially posted on the Albert Strange Association website in 2005.)
On even the nicest old boat, so carefully restored, it is difficult to spot anything that is absolutely of its time, a thing of a vanished past unattainable today that places her at that time precisely; yet SHEILA has one. I have had her original oak ‘water-breaker’ since I have owned her (1978), handed down lovingly from owner to owner, but I fancy it has not been at its historic position behind the mast on deck for very many years.
She is 100 next year 1905 – 2005.
In the little photo of 1911 that accompanies my article A Window Opens there is that little barrel exactly as it is shown in the beautiful Groves drawings. With her centenary coming up it seemed suitable to restore it to re-mount on the deck as before; while doing things like this one muses. It struck me that such things were rapidly superceded, most certainly after the 1st war, when internal tanks became the norm, yet in 1905 they were the obvious solution to water provision, for the complexities of internal tanks on little boats were an engineering thing to come; so here was a piece that identified her as exactly of her time.
Its construction would be a considerable thing today for the skills having largely vanished yet even in its ritzy oval form it was a commonplace then; indeed available from yacht chandlers (FIREFLY has one too) for a few pounds. Examining it as I restored it is apparent that its oval form makes for several different stave widths to achieve the oval while those binding strips which we see on barrels are not plain strips as if they were they would stick up on one edge, they are cut as sections of a cone! It is almost impossible to spot the stave joints so well does it fit; a thoroughly beautiful, but then commonplace, artifact. I have few doubts that immediately it is secured in its original place it will excite comment for who has a brass-bound wooden barrel on deck today?
Despite my passion for her being as close as I can (most certainly in spirit) to what Robert Groves took possession of in 1905 there are still a few things that are different. Though I have the original “Clyde” cooker, it lived forward of the bunks under the foredeck with the bunk-heads against the cabin doors, which was the fashion of the age; when I restored her first I had no interior so a wet locker and the cooker now sit by the cabin doors (modern style) with the bunks shifted forward to match. This is the main detail that Groves would notice if he stepped on board, after I have put the barrel back for her centenary this winter, except the lack of the ‘Oxford’ sculls laid on deck to row her with.
It would take a little longer for him to spot the extra mizzen shroud and the ritzy fully swept deck that Capt Pat Walsh (he in the photograph) instituted in his rebuild after her wreck in the 1914 Dublin storm; I reckon their provenance justifies their survival but a couple of years ago (at Pete Clay’s suggestion) I abandoned the spreaders he fitted as unnecessary on so short and stiff a mast, and she looks much prettier for it. It would take Groves a hard sail to recognise that she is now a little stiffer too for Walsh put a filler between the iron keel and the wood keel to deepen her draft by 5″. He might notice that the jib is set on a slightly stiffer sprit (it holds the whole rig up) and is a touch longer in the foot for it overlaps now when it did not originally; this extra area aft of the mast improves her performance greatly which is a huge benefit in the close waters of the Deben, so allows me to keep sailing her without an engine, though it does detract from that very ‘original’ look in the 1911 photo.
A detail I spotted in that little photograph is that she originally had doubled jibsheets (to be re-instituted this winter) whose detail is interesting; the jib clew had two very long tails with the purchase blocks in their ends such that each block never crosses the mast when tacking, each sheet passing from a point on deck alongside the cabin coaming, up through its clew block and then down aft to the sheet cleat, giving a 2/1 purchase. Today’s sails are plastic and mitre cut, but again the sailing performance is much enhanced; I have always reckoned that these small changes to the sails, actually very modest, allow me to keep her engineless as she was originally to savour the very real gains to be had from sailing without an engine; with much less performance I could not do it in such confined waters.
Being, for her date of 1905, so modern she does not really look like a centenarian now so I am hoping that little barrel on deck will give the game away when we have her centenary birthday next season.
