10:00pm Thursday 12th November 2009
By Tom King
THE spirit of George Winn, master mariner, has finally broken free from the dusty attic where it was confined for half a century, and speaks loud and clear to us about the lost world he inhabited.
George Winn, born in 1869 in London, died in 1951 at his home in Westcliff.
He was a Thames sailing barge skipper. Like most of that remarkable breed, he was a great talker and storyteller. What set him apart was that the talk and the storytelling didn’t die with him.
Perhaps Captain George sensed the days of the Thames sailing barges, and the men who drove them through the winds, was numbered.
One day in 1949, he sat at the dining room table at 15 Ramuz Drive, and put it all down on paper for the benefit of future generations.
The results have just been published for the first time.
He wrote fast and fluently. There are hardly any corrections. The rhythms of the sentences are quite evidently those of George’s speech.
Very soon a reader begins to hear that voice, billowing with good humour as it emerges from the old salt’s leathery larynx.
Plenty has been written about the sailing barges, but the authors have tended to be amateur enthusiasts, not professional bargemen.
And previous books have been written from a modern perspective which recognises these beautiful vessels, once the heart and soul of the lower Thames and the Essex coast, are in their twilight.
George, though, was a working bargeman and he writes as an insider.
His life on the coastal seaways spanned a period when sailing barges were taken for granted and regarded as coarse utilitarian freight-carriers, attracting little more attention than a Tesco delivery truck nowadays.
He is able to guide us through the everyday circumstances of the bargeman’s life in a way no outsider could ever achieve.
No barge historian, however authoritative, could know some Victorian barge-skippers gave themselves airs and graces, wore silk top-hats, but still chewed and spat-out tobacco.
Only a working bargeman could reproduce the dialogue of cabin boys, arguing as to who had the best mop, or give an intricate description of the work of the “underwatermen”, who did the dangerous job of retrieving lost leeboards and other bits of barge from the Thames.
George Winn was born to barge. His father William was a bargemaster, his elder brother Bill became a barge skipper.
Even the boys’ mother, Maria, came aboard and took her turn as mate. George never even paused to question his destiny.
As a small boy he sailed Chelsea Reach in a home-made boat, with sails made from old sugar-sacks. He became a full-time crew member, third mate no less, at the age of nine.
He worked the barges for 58 years until, as he put it, “the time had come to hang up my sea boots – enough of that old adversary the English channel had soaked through my body.”
It was, he confesses, the hardest part of his life. Subsequently he crewed for the American millionaire G Lambert aboard his racing yacht Yankee.
His fortunes as a bargemaster had their peaks and troughs.
There were long periods without work. Once he was forced to labour in virtual slavery, towing barges on the Regent’s Canal rather than sailing them.
The strain of the job eventually sent his bargemaster father into the lunatic asylum, where he died, but Captain George prospered.
He was promoted to ever larger boats, to the point where he was able to buy his own barge, the Diana.
By 1898 he was prosperous enough to take time off to pursue his other passion, long-distance cycling.
His tough constitution and “muscles like coconuts” paid off on the road as well as the water.
He rode from his home in Kent to Lands End and back in the course of a week, covering up to 150 miles a day.
He also bought his own house in Westcliff, which he describes as “a fashionable resort where, as it turned out, we were to live out our days”.
But George Winn never wore rose-tinted spectacles.
The bargeman’s life was tough and nerve-wracking, and George’s father was by no means the only barge skipper to be driven mad from the strain. Bargemasters counted themselves lucky if they managed two hours sleep in the 24.
Employers were relentless and merciless in their demands.
George’s account of the long, cruel bargemen’s strike of 1890 pulls no punches.
In the end, though, it wasn’t men or hard labour, but the sea, that brought him low.
In a storm off the Dorset coast in 1922, the Diana’s mainsail collapsed, She was carried on to the rocks at Swanage. George, his wife, son and the barge’s mate were rescued by by ropes, but the Diana broke up in the surf, taking George’s life savings with her.
From being a proud owner-master, Captain George had to revert to being a skipper for hire.
But a stout philosophy as well as good seamanship kept him afloat.
“It’s up again and on with the show, ready for the next act of life’s gamble,” he declares.
All the time he was also buoyed by sheer gladness at being a bargeman.
George adored the life he had been born into.
“Medicine is only a sideline compared to a Thames bargeman’s life for a cure,” he tells us.
For him, barge sailing was work, but it was also life, the only life. George lapped it all up.
Throughout his 82 years, whatever the ebb and flow of fortune, he considered himself a fortunate man.
His grrandson David Juniper, recalls: “One of the things he used to say when he was an old man was ‘I’m a millionaire without any money’.”
Readers cannot fail to agree.
Sailing Barge Master is a book partly about sailing barges but its prime subject is contentment.
Savouring the sheer joy of his job, Captain George’s prose reminiscences sometimes approach poetry.
“Thirty thousand bricks and all night out.
“A lovely moonlit night, sailing along towards King’s Ferry Bridge, then to Sheerness and now out to sea, and to plough up the dear old Thames once again.”
Countless moments like this made Captain George a millionaire all right.
Born into the life of sailing barges, George Winn won the lottery the moment he emerged from the womb.
How the manuscript was found CAPTAIN George Winn’s memoirs, narrated in his own way, add up to one of those priceless manuscripts we all dream of finding in our attic. The handwritten volume of reminiscences may or may not prove financially valuable, but as a historical document and voice from the past, its value is inestimable.
The manuscript lay unread and almost forgotten for close to 60 years before George’s grandson, David Juniper, who lives in Southchurch, sat down to study it. From there it found its way to publisher Richard Walsh, of Chaffcutter Books, who also happens to be director of the Society for Sailing Barge Research.
He remembers his reaction when he first laid eyes on the manuscript.
“It was a mixture of excitement, and a sinking heart,” he says.
“I recognised right away this was an important work.
“We had to publish it, but I also realised how much editorial work was going to be involved if we were to give George Winn the book he deserved.”
Richard set to work transforming George’s manuscript into Sailing Barge Master. The book is an instant classic of East Coast waters.
l Sailing Barge Master is published by Chaffcutter Books @ £12.95 ISBN 978-0-9560596-0-4.
Copies are available from the Book Inn, 49 Broadway West, Leigh, tel 01702 716614.
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