Shrubsall

 

 

If we carry on up the riverside path past where the golf course is now, there are the sites of a number of boat and barge builders.    I’m very nervous of writing about barge builders because I know that the enthusiasts and owners are always ready to jump on an amateur like me.  Past experience shows me that if they see one of my articles they will immediately rewrite it.  But – I can’t ignore an important industry on the Peninsula riverside – so here goes, and fingers crossed. The enthusiasts  concern that we get it right about the Thames spritsail barge says something about their almost mythic status.... practical, economic, cheap, versatile,  they also manage to be hugely romantic.  And also – remember – they are Modern – highly designed it the late 19^th century.  Whoever was it that thought that petrol engines and lorries were a better option for heavy haulage?

Some of my earliest memories are sitting on Gravesend Prom and seeing the barges lined up in the River, waiting to be called for cargoes. But Gravesend was not a barge building port – while Greenwich, considerably upriver, was.

Horace Shrubsall had several barge yards, starting with one at Ipswich in 1894. he probably originally came from Sittingbourne where his father had a yard and it is said ‘the family had a profound influence over the design of the Thames sailing barge’. He built 16 barges in Ipswich, but he gradually began to build up a practice as a surveyor and needed to be nearer to London.  So, he opened a yard in Narrow Street in Limehouse where he built three more, and in 1901 he moved this yard to Tunnel Wharf in Greenwich.    He leased a site from Morden College with a big foreshore area with a lot of space with a barge shed along with barge blocks and a saw pit.  The saw pit was worked by two men, one above and one below, and is thought to be the last saw pit of this type on the River.  In the Great War his site was taken over by Delta Metal and from then on barge building and repairs took place on the foreshore.  Horace’s son Percy eventually took the yard over.

Starting in 1901 Shrubsall built a barge called ‘King’, and then a 50 ton barge called Southwark. In 1902 there were two racing barges - Imperial and Princess, both of them went on to win prizes. At the same time they had to work for their living - Imperial loaded cement and flour. They were followed by race winner Genesta and then Vera, and Sirdar. 

One of the most famous of the Shrubsall barges was Veronica – and I see on the net that you can now buy model kits to make your own mini-Veronica.   She was  ‘considered by many to be the fastest all round barge that was built’.  She won 25 barges races - most of them when she was owned by Greenhithe based, Everard.   Although she won races and was built with an eye on the prize money her hull shape was designed low sided and with a wide beam for the specific purpose of carrying manure down to the Essex farms and returning with hay stacks for London's horses. She eventually became a house barge called Veronica Belle and then went to the Dolphin Yard barge museun in Sittingbourne, where parts of her were preserved – do they still have them and where are they now? She was eventually hulked at Bedlam's Bottom, at Funton (between Sittingbourne and Rainham) and bits of her could still be seen sticking out of the mud a few years ago.

Many barges were lost in the Second World War. Of Shrubsall's  Alderman, built 1905, was lost on war service,  Bankside, rebuilt in 1926 was mined  and Duchess built 1904, was lost at Dunkirk and abandoned.

Valonia too was lost at Dunkirk. She had been used to trade to Portland, calling at Poole, Dartmouth and Yarmouth, the Isle of Wight, and was her owner's best earner. She had had an engine installed before the War and In 1938 her running costs were £74.2s.6d, of which £51.14s.6d was petrol for the engine, with oil and engine repairs taking up most of the rest. Which demonstrates the cheapness of sail. In 1940, she was at  Dunkirk discharging pitch from Aylesford and while she was leaving she hit a tanker, Limousin, and sank, as a total loss. Her skipper said they would have been ok but 'Jerry got there first',  

The distances and work carried out can be illustrated by Veravia, herself a rebuild of 1924 of a barge called Alarm. Pre-1930 she took coal from Goole to Mill Rythe, alternating with cullet to Antwerp and then back with facing bricks from Boom. She went to the Elbe and Brest and her last Channel passage was in 1959 when loaded with 140 tons of spent oxide from Portsmouth Gas Works destined for the glassworks at Rouen.  Before that she traded to the continent with Belgian roofing tiles, up the Rhine with Appolinaris, packed in straw – where she was towed up river by a paddle tug.  She carried the larger blocks of Portland stone for the Cenotaph.   Still going in 1960 she took meal for Ipswich from Tilbury and scrap iron from Deptford to Goole, coal from Kirby to Wapping, meal from Hull to Faversham, Canadian Wheat from Hull to Peterborough. She went to St.Peter’s Port, Guernsey with flour and back with granite road chippings to London.  In 1961 she had a diesel engine fitted.

Some relics of the barges remained around for som time.  Shrubsall built Genesta but she was eventually hulked at Greenwich and her huge main mast was kept at Pipers Yard – where Riverside Gardens’ is now.  The mast was used to keep the river wall together and I guess it went into the skip went the Environment Agency cleaned up the site in 2015. She had been wrecked near Hoo Fort full of beer barrels from the Meux Brewery at Pimlico.

 Verona is the one Shrubsall barge which may still be afloat – In Stockholm. she was built in 1905 and was converted to barge yacht by Norton.  She had previously been owned by Everard’s and kept for racing. However she was flat in profile, broad in the backside and also s a good carrier. During 1950 she completed 23 freights: two of them cement from Swanscombe ; to Maidstone with 138 tons of coal and returning from Aylesford to Dagenham with sand; to Faversham with 131 tons of bone meal; a 140-ton return freight of cement from Cliffe to the King George V Dock; to Chatham with 100 tons of wheat; Whitstable with 100 tons of cattle cake; to Faversham with 121 tons of coal at six shillings per ton. Other freights were completed to Ipswich with barley and wheat, Leigh, Southend and Creeksea with timber, and Colchester with wheat.  Eventually Verona lay for some time at Pear Tree Wharf, Charlton – where the Yacht Club is now - before being sailed across to Stockholm as a yacht.  Is she still there??

In 1942 Shrubsall’s accounts contain a note 'wharf damaged by enemy action.  The following year, when the lease expired, the Tunnel Wharf yard was closed.  With it went another era of heavy haulage on the Thames.  Like I said – who was it thought lorries were better??

 

Details of Shrubsall’s cargos come from articles by Hugh Perks, copied to me 20 or so years ago by Pat O’Driscoll.  Both of whom I should thank.

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