Shipping Lines - Two small ports which closed due to the march of progress

Sine Bres seen in Montrose in late July this year.

Having achieved my objective in locating the centre of bottling and distribution of Tuborg Lager from Topsham, I concentrated on researching the history of the former Thames sailing barge under restoration lying in an adjacent mud berth. At low tide most of her hull could be seen, writes John Aitken.

Her masts could be seen folded down on the recently installed hatch coamings and her propeller and were rudder partially exposed. Although it was a dry day it was overcast together with the black hull of the Vigilant, which did not allow for clear photography, hence my illustration lacks some contrast and has had to rely on digital enhancement.

As noted in last week’s Shipping Lines, she had been built in 1904 at Ipswich by Messrs Orvis & Fuller and at one time owned by Alfred Horlock, a well-known name in the coastal Thames barge owning business. Fast forward to 1997 and she had been partially converted and tied up at Woodbridge, Suffolk across the River Deben from the ship burial site at Sutton Hoo. This area was now of further interest with a rusting hulk of an iron-hulled schooner which had been originally built at Maryhill on the Forth & Clyde Canal, lying in the inter-tidal zone. Coincidentally she had called at Montrose on three occasions in 1912 as the steam coaster Holman Sutcliffe and owned in Boston, Lincs.

Later in the week there was a free day in order the give the coach driver a break and it was decided to visit another historical town in the immediate area – Totnes, another former busy port but now forsaken by coastal shipping. One of the principal shopping streets started at river level but eventually started climbing steeply towards the town centre.

Totnes Image Bank and Rural Archive proved to be an interesting centre, holding many thousands of digital images and photographic prints of Totnes and the surrounding area. We spent a while in conversation with one of the local experts and he produced several black and white images of the days when coasters traded to the port which had been located a short distance down the River Dart.

Totnes is the lowest bridging point on the River Dart. The tidal waterway was navigable on suitable tidal phases up to Steamboat Quay and old-style paddlers were regular callers up to this point carrying large numbers of passengers. The port was used latterly mainly for the importation of sawn timber from the Baltic until the mid-1990s with one of the now redundant wharves known as Baltic Wharf. Over the years the timber trade moved downstream to this more commodious area.

After the end of World War Two a firm named Reeves developed the timber trade together with a Danish-owned company named Bresline, whose ships came to Montrose and Perth. Coincidentally, the last vessel to call at Montrose with a ‘Bres’ family name was Sine Bres only a couple of weeks ago. I looked forward to seeing her port of registry traditionally as Faaborg (Denmark) having visited there about 10 years ago, but it turned out to be St John’s, Antigua & Barbuda including several changes of ownership in between no doubt..