LAST SAILING BARGE

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28606, 7 June 1958, Page 10

LAST SAILING BARGE

Career Of “Old Sea Dog” It is not at all easy to get hold of Bob Roberts, skipper of the Cambria, last of the Thames sailing barges to do coastwise trading; because Roberts has rejected suggestions to have an engine installed in his craft for the very good reason that, without one, it is very hard for anyone,- including the owners, to know where he us at a given time. But writer and radio reporter. Rene Cutforth, has a talent for running "characters” to earth, and when he heard recently that the Cambria had berthed at Tilbury Dock, he asked the Port of London Police to send out then launch and fetch Bob ashore so that he could record an interview for the 8.8. C. programme “English Magazine.” After thawing out over a vast tankard of beer, Roberts talked about life on the Cambria which plies up and down England’s south-east and east coast as far north as the Hiimber, and sometimes takes a cargo to Holland. "We are really a coastal tramp under sail; we have no power at all,” he said. "We do things the old-fashioned way as Nelson used to. . . . There used to be 8000 targes altogether of this rig, and cut of that 8000 there are now seven left; out of those seven we are the only one that goes away on the coast.” The Cambria carries 170 tons of cargo, is 91 feet long, will .set 5500 feet of canvas and is sailed by two men. ‘‘When I say all hands on deck,** Roberts explained, "up comes the mate.” Roberts has spent 30 years in this type of sailing and before that spent five or six years on schooners on England’s west coast, carrying china clay and coah “I used to get £1 a month and my food. But it was a good life,” he reminisced. During the depression many ships and barges were laid up; but Roberts still kept afloat. Having put by a little money, he bought an old trawler and, with a crew of one friend, sailed her to South America. After sailing through the Panama Canal and being shipwrecked on a desert island they returned to Rio de Janeiro, only to find that there was no work for her nearer than the West Indies, 3000 miles away “But that made more deep sea experience,” said Roberts, “running the trades.”

On his voyages carrying goods from the big ships up the rivers and tidal creeks of the coast Bob Roberts picks up an intangible cargo—the old songs that linger on in small isolated communities where people live contentedly with no desire to seek the wider world.

When the barge is due they look forward to gathering for a sing-song in the pub. “So down comes the fiddler,” said Roberts, •‘and I go ashore with the melodeon.”