A Floating Home Part 1

A Floating Home.

by Cyril Ionides and J. B. Atkins.

PREFACE

The authors owe to their readers an explanation of the manner of their collaboration. The owner of the Thames sailing barge, of which the history as a habitation is written in this book, is Mr. Cyril Ionides.

'I' throughout the narrative is Mr. Cyril Ionides; the 'Mate' is Mrs.

Cyril Ionides; the children are their children. Yet the other author, Mr. J. B. Atkins, was so closely a.s.sociated with the events recorded--sharing with Mr. Ionides the counsels and discussions that ended in the purchase of the barge, prosecuting in his company friendships with barge skippers, and studying with him the Ess.e.x dialect, which nowhere has more character than in the mouths of Ess.e.x seafaring men--that it was not practicable for the book to be written except in collaboration. The authors share, moreover, an intense admiration for the Thames sailing barges, to which, so far as they know, justice has never been done in writing. Mr. Atkins, however, felt that it would be unnecessary, if not impertinent, for him to a.s.sume any personal shape in the narrative when there was little enough s.p.a.ce for the more relevant and informing characters of Sam Prawle, Elijah Wadely, and their like.

The book aims at three things: (1) It tells how the problem of poverty--poverty judged by the standard of one who wished to give his sons a Public School education on an insufficient income--was solved by living afloat and avoiding the payment of rent and rates. (2) It offers a tribute of praise to the incomparable barge skippers who navigate the busiest of waterways, with the smallest crews (unless the cutter barges of Holland provide an exception) that anywhere in the world manage so great a spread of canvas. Londoners are aware that the most characteristic vessels of their river are 'picturesque.' Beyond that their knowledge or their applause does not seem to go. It is hoped that this book will tell them something new about a life at their feet, of the details of which they have too long been ignorant.

(3) It is a study in dialect. It was impossible to grow in intimacy with the Ess.e.x skippers of barges without examining with careful attention the dialect that persists with a surprising flavour within a short radius of London, where one would expect everything of the sort--particularly in the _va-et-vient_ of river life--to be a.s.similated or absorbed.

As to (1) and (3) something more may be said.

One of the authors (J. B. A.) published in the _Spectator_ before the war a brief account of Mr. Cyril Ionides' floating home, and was immediately beset by so many inquiries for more precise information that he perceived that a book on the subject--a practical and complete answer to the questions--was required. Neither of the authors is under any illusion as to the determination of those who have made such inquiries. Most of the inquirers no doubt are people who will not go further with the idea than to play with it. But that need not matter.

The idea is a very pleasant one to play with. The few who care to proceed will find enough information in this book for their guidance.

The items of expenditure, the method of transforming the barge from a dirty trading vessel into an agreeable home, a diagram of the interior arrangements, are all given. The castle in Spain has actually been built, and people are living in it.

Here is a scheme of life for which romantic is perhaps neither too strong a word nor one incapable of some freshness of meaning. The idea is available for anyone with enough resolution. Of course, not every amateur seaman would care to undertake the mastership of so large a vessel as a Thames sailing barge, but that natural hesitation need be no hindrance. The owner would want no crew when safely berthed for the winter; and in the summer a professional skipper and his mate (only two hands are required) would sail him about with at least as much satisfaction to him as is obtained by the owners of large yachts carrying bloated crews.

If he is a 'bad sailor' he could get more pleasure from a barge than from an ordinary yacht of greater draught. The barge can choose her water; she can run into the smooth places that lie between the banks of the complicated Thames estuary. She can thread the Ess.e.x and Suffolk tidal rivers; the Crouch, the Roach, the Blackwater, the Colne, the Stour, the Orwell, the Deben, the Aide, are all open to her, and are delightfully wild and unspoiled; she can sit upright upon a sandbank till a blow is over. Many people who could afford yachting and are drawn to it persistently think that it is not for them, because they are 'bad sailors.' If they tried barging on the most broken coast in England--say between Lowestoft and Whitstable--they would be very pleasantly undeceived, unless indeed their case is hopeless. This book, however, is not written to recruit the world of yachtsmen, but to show how a home--a floating home on the sea for winter as well as summer, not a tame houseboat--and a yacht may be combined at a saving of cost to the householder.

And by those whose heart is equal to the adventure this cure for the modern 'cost of living' will not by any means be found an uncomfortable makeshift, a disagreeable sacrifice by a conscientious father of a family. A barge is not a poky hole. The barge described in this book, though one is not conscious of being cramped inside her, is only a ninety tonner. It would be easy to acquire a barge of a hundred and twenty tons, and such a vessel could still be sailed by two hands. The saloon in Mr. Ionides' barge is as large as many drawing-rooms in London flats which are rented at 150 a year. In a small London flat which was not designed for inhabitants 'cooped in a winged sea-girt citadel' (though it might have been better if it had been) there is little thought of saving s.p.a.ce. In a vessel, one of the primary objects of the designer is to save s.p.a.ce. Sailors in their habits act on the same principle. The success that has been achieved by both architects and seamen is almost incredible. No one who has lived for any length of time in a vessel has ever been able to rid himself of the grateful sense that he has more room than he could have expected, and certainly more than ever appeared from the outside.

Nor do the points in favour of a vessel as a house end there. A ship is cool in the summer and warm in the winter. In the summer you have the sea breezes, which can be directed or diverted by awnings and windows as you like. In the winter a ship is easily warmed and there are no draughts. Although a vessel is farther removed from the world than a flat, your contact with the world is paradoxically closer. If you go downstairs from your flat you must dress yourself for the street. The very man who works the lift, and mediates between you and the external world, expects it of you. But from your comfortable cabin on board ship to the deck, which gives you a platform in touch with all that is outside, there are but half a dozen steps up the companion. And yet, in touch with the world, you are still in your own territory. You have not, as a matter of habit, changed your clothes.

A sea-going vessel is a real home, a property with privileges attached, and a solution of a difficulty. We hear much praise of caravanning--a most agreeable pastime for those who prefer the rumble of wheels to the wash of the tide or the humming of wind in the rigging. But is it a solution of anything? It has not been stated that it is. Let any receiver of an exiguous salary, who trudges across London Bridge daily between his train and his office, not a.s.sume finally that a more romantic way of life than his is impossible. Let him lean for a few moments over the bridge, watch the business of the Pool, and ask himself whether he sees in one of the sailing barges his ideal home and the remedy for him of that tormenting family budget of which the balance is always just on the wrong side.

Life in a barge brings you acquainted with bargees. They are your natural neighbours. The dialect of those who belong to Ess.e.x has been reproduced in this book as faithfully as possible. If certain words such as 'wonderful' (very) and 'old' occur very frequently, it is because the authors have written down yarns and phrases as they heard them, and not with an eye to introducing what might seem a more credible variety of language. It is said that dialects are everywhere yielding to a universal system of education. In the opinion of the authors the surrender is much less extensive than is supposed. Some people have no ear for dialect, and are capable of hearing it without knowing that it is being talked. The users of local phrases, for their part, are often shy, and if asked to repeat an unusual word will pretend to be strangers to it, or, more un.o.btrusively, subst.i.tute another word and continue apace into a region of greater safety. The authors, however, have had the good fortune to be on such terms with some men of Ess.e.x that they have been able to discuss dialect words with them without embarra.s.sment. It is hoped that the glossary at the end of the book will be found a useful collection by those who are interested in the subject. Some of the words, which have become familiar to the authors, are not mentioned in any dialect dictionary.

Although the Ess.e.x dialect has persisted, it has not persisted in an immutable form. So far as the authors may trust their ears, they are certain that the p.r.o.nunciation of the word 'old' (which is used in nearly every sentence by some persons) is always either 'ould' or 'owd.' But if one looks at the well-known Ess.e.x dialect poem 'John Noakes and Mary Styles: An Ess.e.x Calf's Visit to Tiptree Races,' by Charles Clark, of Great Totham Hall (1839), one sees that 'old' used to be p.r.o.nounced 'oad.' In the same poem 'something' is written 'suffin',' though the authors of this book, on the strength of their experience, have felt bound to write it 'suthen.' In Ess.e.x to-day 'it'

at the end of a sentence, and sometimes elsewhere, is p.r.o.nounced 'ut'--in the Irish manner. Some words are p.r.o.nounced in such a way as to encourage an easy verdict that the Ess.e.x accent is c.o.c.kney, but no sensitive ear could possibly confuse the sounds. In the Ess.e.x scenes in 'Great Expectations' d.i.c.kens made use of the typical Ess.e.x word 'fare,' but he did not attempt to reproduce the dialect in essential respects. Mr. W. W. Jacobs's delightful barge skippers are abstractions. They may be Ess.e.x men, but they are not recognizable as such. Enough that they amuse the bargee as much as they amuse everybody else; one of the authors of this book speaks from experience, having 'tried' some of Mr. Jacobs's stories on an Ess.e.x barge skipper. No more about dialect must be written in the preface.

Readers who are interested will find the rest of the authors'

information sequestered in a glossary.

Mr. Arnold Bennett, who has settled in Ess.e.x near the coast, and is, moreover, a yachtsman, shares the enthusiasm of the authors for the peculiar character of the Ess.e.x estuaries. He makes his first appearance here as an ill.u.s.trator. He has given his impressions of the scenery in which the barges ply their trade, and which is the setting of the following narrative.

It remains to say that in the narrative several names of places in Ess.e.x, as well as the real name of the barge, have been changed; and that the authors wish to thank the proprietors of the _Evening News_, who have allowed them to republish Sam Prawle's salvage yarn, which was originally printed as a detached episode.

A FLOATING HOME

CHAPTER I

'I will go back to the great sweet mother, Mother and lover of men, the sea.'

One winter I made up my mind that it was necessary to live in some sort of vessel afloat instead of in a house on the land. This decision was the result, at last pressed on me by circ.u.mstances, of vague dreams which had held my imagination for many years.

These dreams were not, I believe, peculiar to myself. The child, young or old, whose fancy is captive to water, builds for castles in Spain houseboats wherein he may spend his life floating in his element. His fancy at some time or other has played with the thought of possessing almost every type of craft for his home--a three-decker with a glorious gallery, a Thames houseboat all ready to step into, a disused schooner, a bluff-bowed old brig. He will moor her in some delectable water, and when his restlessness falls upon him he will have her removed to another place. Civilization shall never rule him. As though to prove it he will live free of rates, and weigh his anchor and move on if the matter should ever happen to come under dispute.

Nor will he pay rent resentfully to a grasping landlord. For a mere song he will pick up the old vessel that shall contain his happiness.

Her walls will be stout enough to shelter him for a lifetime, though Lloyd's agent may have condemned her, according to the exacting tests that take count of sailors' lives, as unfit to sail the deep seas.

Certainly those who have the water-sense, yet are required by circ.u.mstances to earn their living as landsmen, have all dreamed these dreams. In many people the sight of water responds to some fundamental need of the mind. To the vision of these disciples of Thales everything that is agreeable somehow proceeds from water, and into water everything may somehow be resolved. When they are away from water they are vaguely uncomfortable, perhaps feeling that the road of freedom and escape is cut off. Inland they will walk, like Sh.e.l.ley, across a field to look at trickling water in a ditch, or will search out a dirty ca.n.a.l in the middle of an industrial town. The sea, which to some eyes seems to lead nowhere, seems to them to lead everywhere.

Iceland and the Azores open their ports equally to the owner of any kind of vessel, and the wind is ready to blow him there, house and all. The water-sense is the contradiction in many people of the hill-sense. They of the water-sense cannot tolerate that too large a slice of the sky, in which they love to read the weather-signs, should be eclipsed; the wonderful lighting of the mountains is less significant to them than the marshalling of vapours and tell-tale clouds upon their s.p.a.cious horizon.

But this water-sense which lays a spell on you often exacts severe tolls of labour. The yachtsman who employs no paid hands, for instance, must sweat for his enjoyment; the simple acts of keeping a yacht in sea-going order, of getting the anchor and making sail, and of stowing sail and tidying up the ship when he has returned to moorings, mean exacting and continuous work. If he goes for a short sail the labour might reasonably be said to be disproportionate to the pleasure; and if he goes for a long sail the pleasure itself may easily turn into labour before the end. These disadvantages and uncertainties the yachtsman knows, and yet they are for him no deterrent. He may spend a miserable night giddily tossed about in an open and unsafe anchorage, and call himself a fool for being there; but the next week he will expose himself to the same discomfort. Why?

Because it is in his blood; because he has this water-sense which compels him, bullies him, and enthrals him.

The houseboats of the Thames are famous centres of a dallying summer existence in which life tunes itself to the pace of the drifting punts and skiffs, and seems to be expressed by the metallic melody of a gramophone or the tinkling of a mandolin. At night there is enough shelter for paper lanterns to burn steadily; and as the wind is tempered, so is everything else. All is arranged to add the practical touch of ease and comfort to the ideal of living roughly and simply, and the result is a mixture of paradox and paradise. One wonders what proportion of the population of the houseboats, if any, lives in the houseboats in the winter. The boats always seem to be empty then, and of course they were not designed for regular habitation. A wall or roof which, like

'The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through c.h.i.n.ks that time has made,'

is not a meet covering for the winter. Nor would even a thoroughly weather-proof boat be so if it have no fireplace. But thought runs on from the spectacle of the mere Thames houseboat to the further possibilities of this mode of life. Why keep to the tame scenes of the upper Thames? Why not live on the Broads, under that clean vault of sky, scoured by the winds, among the wilder sights and sounds of nature? Thought runs on again. Why on the Broads, after all? They are a long way from London, and it may happen that one has to be often in London. And in the summer you might imagine that the upper Thames had been transported to Norfolk, so full are the Broads and rivers of picnicking parties. Why, then, not live in a houseboat on sea water?

Sea water is a great purifier. No fear that it will become stagnant or rank. Its trans.m.u.ting process turns everything to purity. Take an odd proof. Even rubbish or paper in sea water is not an offence as it is in fresh water. Hurried along on the tide, it bears a relation to the great business of ships; but in fresh water it reminds one of disagreeable people, careless of all the amenities.

The houseboat, then, must be a ship lying with her sisters of the sea in a harbour. Attracted by the Government advertis.e.m.e.nts that appear from time to time in shipping newspapers, one thinks, perhaps, or buying an old man-of-war. But old men-of-war, though very roomy, are more expensive than you might suppose. Besides, in the conditions of sale there may be a stipulation that the buyer must break up the ship.

A barque, such as is often bought by a Norwegian trader in timber, and spends her remaining days being pumped out by a windmill on deck, might serve for a houseboat. So would a steam yacht when the engines had been taken out. But then the draught of either is not light, and the occupier of a houseboat might want to lie far up a snug creek, and there even the highest spring tide would not give him the necessary depth. A sea houseboat might be built specially, but that is not the way of wisdom; the cost would be very great. The houseboat must be a vessel of very easy draught, and also one that can be bought cheap and be easily adapted for the purpose.

Often had my thoughts carried me to this point by some such stages as have been described. But the floating home had remained a phantom because my desire for the sea was partly satisfied by the possession of a small yacht, the _Playmate_, of which I was the Skipper and my wife was the Mate, and in which we had spent all our holidays. Our home was a country cottage, which I had bought at Fleetwick, not far from a tidal river that strikes far into the heart of Ess.e.x. But at length circ.u.mstances, as I have said, caused the dream to become for me a very practical matter.

It happened in this way. The shadow of the change from governess to school had fallen on our two boys. We regretted it the more because there was no school within reach of home, and they were, in our opinion, too young to go to a boarding school. And so there seemed nothing to be done but to sell or let our cottage--if we could--where we had lived for nine years, and move to some place where there was a good school for the boys. Whatever place we chose had to be on or near salt water, for neither my wife nor I could seriously think of life without water and boats.

We found a satisfactory school near a tidal river in Suffolk, but we could not find a house--at least, not one we both liked and could afford. One day, having returned dejectedly from a search as futile as usual, we were discussing the situation, which indeed looked hopeless, for our means were obviously unequal to what we wanted to do, when the idea of a floating home suddenly repossessed me with a fresh significance.

'Let's buy an old vessel,' I said, 'and fit her up as our house. We have often talked of doing it some day. That may have been a joke, perhaps. But why not do it _seriously_--_now_?'

The Mate evaded the startling proposal for the moment.

'I wish the children wouldn't grow up,' she commented sadly.

'If we don't have the vessel,' I persisted, 'we shall fall between two stools, because with all the expenses--school, rent, and so on, which we've never had before--we shall have to give up the _Playmate_.'

'That would be worse than anything.'

The mere idea of giving up our boat was more than we could contemplate--our boat in which we two had cruised alone together, summer and winter, on the East Coast, and from whose masthead more than once we had proudly flown the Red Ensign on our return from a cruise 'foreign.'

'I would rather live in a workman's cottage and keep the boat, than live in a better house and have no boat,' said the Mate emphatically.

'Well, we've got to leave here, and it's something to have found a decent school. I suppose, if we take a house really big enough to hold us, it will cost us forty pounds to move into it.'

'_Much_ more than that if you count all the new carpets, curtains, and dozens of other things we shall want.'

I thought an occasion for reiteration had arrived.

'Just think. If we had a ship, we should do away with the expense of moving for one thing, the rent for another, and the rates and taxes for another. We may be absolutely sure our expenses will increase, and our income almost certainly won't.'