A FLOATING HOME.* THIS book about a Thames hoarse has
the sovereign merit of taking a reader clean out of the war into the dim past, five years ago, when one could go sailing in the Thames estuary and up the Essex coast with never a thought of enemy submsrines or mines. The authors' primary object is to describe how an old aniline barge was chosen and bought and fitted up as a floating home, whose owner pays no rent, rates, or taxes, which is as commodious as many London flat, and which can be sailed by a crew of two men whenever the household wants a cruise or a change of surroundings. Some of our readers may recall an article in the Spectator on that floating home ; the book gives full particulars, with photographs and a plan, of the barge 'Ark Royal,'. which cost complete, as refitted, no more than £375. As we are told that half-a-million new homes will be required after the war, we may recommend romantic and thrifty people to see how this home was provided for RO modest a sum. But we must warn them that Mr. Ionid.es is evidently an expert carpenter— one of those handymen whose skill Any Husband, poor fellow, is always recommended by Any Wife to emulate when something goes wrong in the house and the plumber forgets to come. It is inter- esting and amusing to read of how the 'Ark Royal' was refitted, but it meant months of hard work. When tho good ship was finished, she was moored within reach of a railway station so that the owner could follow his profession in London and yet sleep in great comfort on board his barge.
The main interest of the book lies, however, not so much in the floating home as in the descriptions of the unfamiliar little world of which an amateur barge-owner becomes part. Few Londoners, as the authors remark, know the Thames below London Bridge, or realize, as Taine did, that the river is the only proper approach to London. And fewer still have noted the beauty of the sailing barges which are characteristic of the Thames. The excellent photographs in the book and Mr. Arnold Bennett's spirited im- pressions in colour show that there is nothing overstrained in the assertion that
"a barge never is, or could be, anything but graceful. The sheer of her hull, her spars and rigging, the many shades of red in her great tanned sails, the splendid curves of them when, full of wind, they belly out as she bowls along, entrance the eye. Whatever changes come, we shall have a record of the Thames barge of to-day in the accurate pictures of Mr. W. L. Wyllie. He has caught her drifting in a calm, the reflection of her ruddy sails rippling from her ; snugged down to a gale, her sails taut and full, and wet and shining with spray ; running before the wind ; thrashing to windward with topsail rucked to meet a squall ; at anchor ; berthed. Loaded deep or sailing light ; with towering stacks of hay ; creeping up a gut ; sailing on blue SCRs beneath blue skies: or shaving the count- less craft as she tacks through the haze and smoke of a London reach, she is always beautiful."
The bargees to whom the authors introduce us are more fascinating still. There are queer folk among them, like the surly skipper and his virago of a wife whom the would-be barge-owner tried vainly to propitiate with gin. But the Essex bargees, whose dialect and manner of speech have been reproduced with singular success, are a shrewd and kindly people, absorbed in their own calling and curiously remote from the life of the busy communities which they are always visiting :— " I don't reckon,' said Sam Prawle, 'there ain't nawthen as good as bargin', same as on the water, my meanin' is. Ye see, yaou gets home fairly frequent, yaou ain't got no long sea-passages to make, yaou can see a bit o' life in the taowns, and ef yaou ye got a good little ould barge and freights is anyways good ye can make a tidy bit o' money. Then agin, in respect o most all barges carries a gun, and there's some I could name as carries oyster drudges ; then there's a bit o' fishin' to be done, and accordin' to where yaou're brought up there may be winkles, or mussels, or cockles, and, as I says, chance time a few oysters ; so my meanire is the livin is good.' " Sam Prawle was the professional s,kipper of the Ark Royal,' and his reminiscences, especially in regard to "salvage," are very comical indeed. But there is nothing more lifelike in these sketches of bargees than the report of an overheard conversation about the 'Ark Royal's ' new kedge anchor which was lying on the quay. It begins :—
" First Voice: Yes, yes ; that's a good anchor, that is. As I was a sayin' to Jim this mornin', " That's got good flues, that has, and a good stock. I lay she 'on't never drag that," I says, " if that gnt aholt in good houlding graound. No more she 'on 't faoul that. That'll hould she in worse weather than what they'll ever want to be aout in," I says. " Then agin', that's a good anchor for layin' tout, for that ain't a heavy anchor to handle in a ho t," I -* A Floating Horns. By Cyril IonicV5 and J. II. Atkins. WW1 Illustrations in Colour by Arnold Bennett. London: Cluato und Matta. (12s. 4d. net.]
says "None the more for that, she 'on't never drag that. The chap what made that anchor knaowd what he was abaout." ' " Then the "Second Voice" and the "Third Voice" take up the tale, and pronounce expert approval in almost the same words. We feel that the authors really know their bargees.
Previous page
