Chapter 11 Admiralty Instructions
For hundred of years, orders from the impressive Admiralty building in Whitehall have sent sailing craft about all manner of business throughout the world. 1979 was the year in which the little gaff cutter Shoal Waters joined that illustrious company.
It started off early in that year when I received a letter from Cdr. J.S.N. Pryor, Superintendent of Sailing Directions at the Hydrographic Department in Taunton, Somerset, asking if they might use some of my photographs, that have appeared in the yachting press, for the new edition of the Dover Pilot (which includes the Thames Estuary). He carefully explained what the `pilots` were, but I already knew them well for during the Pacific war years as a very junior clerk in the Admiralty, I followed the Pacific war by getting the appropriate charts and pilots each time that the island hopping American Marines made a new landing. I fully appreciated the long tradition of excellence and the endless hours of patient surveying and observation behind them over hundreds of years. This was brought home to me on a wartime evening in a blacked out railway carriage while discussing the area of a recent landing in the Pacific when an elderly chap spoke up from the gloom in the far corner. He knew the area and had taken part in the survey of it before the First World War. He told how they steamed up and down the coast taking soundings while two officers took horizontal sextant angles to fix each position on special marks set up onshore. Later he and two companions were put ashore with three weeks grub and a measured pole to record the height of the water every half hour so that tidal details could be worked out for the area. He named the ship and I confirmed it on the chart next day. The thought of little Shoal Waters following this tradition delighted me. I agreed at once and offered to take pictures of any other features in the area that they required.
The first list of twentyone shots arrived in May and was followed by a settled sunny weekend. After dropping down river to Brightlinsea on Friday evening, Shoal Waters set out under full sail as the sun rose to take the ebb tide down the Wallet to get some shots of Clacton and Walton from seaward and have a look at the ruins of the old Gunfleet Beacon marked on the charts as awash at high tide. In warm sunshine with the last of the overnight offshore breeze, I took numerous shots of the low coastline while Joy jotted down the bearings. As the breeze followed the sun round, we drifted out on the last of the ebb tide to the ruins of the beacon and found an alarming sight. A loop of iron, rather thicker than railway line, curved up out of the water about six feet with a shaft some fifteen feet long at fourtyfive degrees to the water pointing in the direction of Frinton. By high tide it would all be covered and a menace to any craft dodging over the sands. Joy became a little concerned as I sailed in close for a definitive shot but the sea was calm with no swell and little more than steerage-way on the boat. After all, this was official business! Then we took advantage of the ‘little ladies’ twelve-inch draft to creep across the sand to the Old Light Tower before anchoring for lunch. The breeze grew steadily from the southeast (the onshore breeze in this area) and tiny wavelets began to lead the advancing tide onto the gleaming islands of golden sand around me. Away to the north a host of spinnakers loomed over the horizon, hesitated for a while as the East Anglian Offshore fleet racing from Burnham to West Mersea, crossed between the North East Gunfleet and the Medusa buoys and then began to advance up the Wallet with the young flood tide. What better escort for Shoal Waters on her way home! In fact the shoreline shots turned out disappointing but we learned a few lessons for the next outing.
The four days of the Spring Bank Holiday brought a rich variety of weather. As a civil servant (having left farming) I was entitled to a day off for the birthday of Her Majesty the Queen so was able to get away on Friday. After work on Thursday I walked my gear out to the boat through the mud and settled down to get a little sleep before the early morning visit of the tide. A fine westerly breeze and spring ebb took Shoal Waters swiftly out onto the broad estuary. By first light I was off the NW Shingles beacon to get some shots of the new inverted topmark (many of the beacons had been altered over the winter to bring them into line with the new I.L.Y.A. buoyage system), and then set off due south for the Pan Sand with white surf on the Shingles Patch to leeward reminding me that the topsail ought really to come down. I kept it up as the course from the Pan Sand Beacon to the Margate Hook Beacon was down wind over the flood tide and I would need all the help I could get. The Kent shore quickly came into view and I set the bowsprit on the cliffs towards Margate. Thanks to the superb visibility, the cooling towers at Richborough stood out boldly above the cliffs along the Kent shore and I was able to photograph the Margate Hook Beacon in Transit.
Now the topsail came down, I snatched a cup of tea and a sandwich and then began to beat back along the Kent coast with the last of the flood tide. Be the time I reached Herne Bay, the next target for my camera, a fair old lop had built up and I pulled down two reefs. Protecting the camera from spray became a priority problem. The old pier, now in three pieces after the 1979 winter gales, looked a sorry sight. At the top of the tide I worked inshore in the lee of Whitstable Street, (a mile long finger of drying shingle), and settled down for lunch and an afternoon nap for I had no intention of beating over the ebb tide. It was a bit lively at anchor for a start but the wind was obviously backing and by early evening went southwest to give me a reach along the north shore of the Isle of Sheppey. They wanted some shots of the entrance to Whitstable but I just couldn’t use the camera for fear of getting it soaked with spray from the short seas until I reached the lee of the extensive mudflats off Sheppey by which time I was to far away to get anything useful. There was plenty of shelter further west as I took some pictures of the coastguard station on the high cliffs to windward. By the time I reached Sheerness the sun was well round into the west and lit up the forts and power station with a warm evening light, perfect for photography.
As the sun finally went down at the end of a perfect day, a dying breeze carried Shoal Waters across the shipping lanes and over Southend’s famous sands to moor for the night off the tail of Canvey Island.
Several shots were required of this area and I planned to get them on the next afternoon high water. What a hope! Saturday brought heavy rain hour after hour with arising wind from the southeast. In this area we don’t often get rain with the wind in the southeast but when we do, there is always plenty of it. When the flood tide drove the last of the seemingly weatherproof bait diggers back off the mudflats and began to slap under the bilges of Shoal Waters with sufficient force to shake the whole boat, I realised that this was no place to be at high water when the ebb set in against the wind. I skinned up, got the anchor and sailed through the Two Tree Island moorings under the traditional Broads rig of jib and tent, deep into Benfleet Creek where the weary little boat dried out gently for the night as the rains eased at last.
Sunday was as different again. Wind from the south and a clear sky full of stars. Shoal Waters left with the ebb and I looked in vain for any sign of the leading lights into Leigh on Sea as she tore along towards the lights of Southend Pier. Progress with the spring ebb was so good that I feared that I might reach the West Barrow Beacon before there was enough daylight for me to take pictures. A fierce red sky gave me a lurid colour slide of the West Barrow buoy and I found just enough light for the beacon with its new east sector topmark at 0500hr. It is a poor replacement for the hourglass topmark we have known all our lives. After a shot of the Little Sunk Beacon near low water, the flood tide set in to take me across the northern edge of the East Barrow sand in smooth water on route back to Heybridge. I judged (correctly) that the Bank Holiday Monday had little to offer to small boat sailors and went home to my dark room. A useful package was on its way to Taunton before the week was out and I was particularly pleased with the shoreline shots.
So great was my enthusiasm for the `task` that I suggested cancelling our planned holiday cruise on the Norfolk Broads but Joy soon squashed that idea. In any case, the run north to get there and the return journey (fair winds each way this year), gave us a good chance to take the required shoreline shots as far as Orfordness. With the club regatta and a couple of weddings in the family (why do people get married during the sailing season?), it was August before we got back to `Official business`. The Sunk and the Longsand Beacons were next targets and are a little further offshore than I normally sail. The first attempt met a strong blow from the northeast that sent me scurrying for the shelter of Colne Point to laze in scorching sunshine and watch other small cruisers that had set off for Harwich that morning come running back one after the other. The second attempt found better conditions, real Shoal Waters weather. After dropping down the river overnight in the lightest of airs, we set out on Saturday morning to reach the Sunk beacon as the offshore breeze died away and wind came in from the Southeast to give her a beam wind down the Black deep between the Little Sunk beacon and the Longsand Beacon on route for the Great Sunk. Actually, all these beacons are the same triangular type. The only one that has a personality of its own is the great Sunk, which heels over towards the land ten miles away northwest. Burnham lay twentyfive miles away towards the sun and we had memorable trip there as the onshore breeze built up, to moor for the night just above the town. With a fine day and a southerly breeze on Sunday, we went up river to Fambridge and then home through the Spitway as the wind backed southeast to give us a hundred mile weekend trip with a fair wind all the way.
There was another weeks holiday to come at the end of August and we sorted out the remaining tasks. A request came along for a shot of the new radio mast on the coastguard lookout west of Shoeburyness so we started off with an overnight trip to the mouth of the Thames. Varying weather enabled us to make four visits to Whitstable to get some acceptable shots and as a sort of bonus, some better ones of the Sheerness entrance to the Medway. The leading lights into old Leigh continued to elude us but when we explored the steep grassy slope ashore on foot we found two defunct old fashioned gas lamp standards among the trees which contrasted sharply with the tall electric street lights of this busy area. They seem to be on the correct bearings for the Leigh Gut. While anchored near TwoTtree Island for lunch the tragic news of the death of Earl Mountbatten came over the radio. The first boat to which I passed on the sad news flew the burgee of the Royal Naval Sailing Association. A visit to the Girdler beacon and a trip round Sheppey completed our business in the south and after a call in on Burnham Week, we went north to get more shots of the Deben and Harwich area. Landguard Point proved very difficult but eventually we used a white ferry boat entering the harbour as a backdrop to make the point, with its old wooden jetty, stand out from the Harwich shoreline.
By the end of the season Shoal Waters had covered some six hundred miles on `official business` and later some forty pictures eventually appeared in the 1981 edition of the Dover Pilot.
