The wherry Fir (above right) slips through the Norfolk countryside in light airs. The mate urges her along with a quant. At right, the Norfolk Hero in the heart of Norwich, doing work now done by trucks. (Photo from Robert Malster's Wherries and Waterways published by Terence Dalton, Suffolk, Eng. At bottom, a heavy-laden wherry in Womack Dyke. Photos: courtesy Michael Seago, Norwich.
manufactured goods to remote villages, plus, later, sugar beet to the factory set up at Cantley early in this Century. On occasions, passengers were carried, and one small wherry, known as the 'Cabbage Wherry,' took garden produce to market. The wherries were normally fresh-water craft, limited to the rivers and broads of East Anglia: but there were notable exceptions. One of their principal duties in the last century was lightering ships (mainly collier brigs from the Tyneside), in Yarmouth roads. Two famous voyages at sea should certainly be recorded. In 1857, a total of eight wherries were sailed from Lowestoft to the South along the East Coast, through the Straits of Dover, down channel to the Isle of Wight. They were used for a year or more sailing in open water off Portsmouth, and across to the Island, by contractors, for transporting materials in connection with building barracks at Gosport. One wherry was lost in the Solent. Two more were sold at Portsmouth, and ended their days on the Thames. But the remaining five returned eventually to the East Coast, and finished their days in peaceful trading on the broads. These voyages were entirely under sail. Another spectacular voyage was in 1888, when the pleasure wherry Gipsy was taken to Holland. She was actually towed by an old paddle-wheel tug from Yarmouth across the North Sea to Den Helder, where she entered the Zuider Zee, going as far as Stavoren, where she entered the complex maze of canals and lakes in Friesland. Gipsy spent the next four years cruising extensively in Holland and Germany. Her adventures are fully chronicled by her owner, H. M. Doughty, in two books, Through Friesland Meres in a Norfolk Wherry and Our Wherry in Wendish Lands. SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1980
After the first War, the number of wherries declined dramatically, hastened by the motor lorry, and by 1945 not one was left under sail, their trade having largely gone from our waters. In 1949 the Norfolk Wherry Trust was founded, as a voluntary organisation dedicated to saving one of these craft, not just as a static museum but afloat under sail on her home waters. Funds were raised by voluntary contribution, and eventually the hull of Albion was made available to the Trust through the generosity of Lady Mayhew, one of our Trustees. Albion is unfortunately untypical in one respect, being carve! built. The true trading wherries were invariably clinker built of 2 in. oak planks on 4 in. oak frames, fastened by galvanised bolts. In 1949 Albion, built by William Brighton at Oulton Broad in 1898 for W.D. and A.E. Walker, the Malsters of Bungay, had to be substantially renovated. Spars for a new mast and gaff had to be obtained and made up, together with a new sail and rigging, no easy task in post-war England. But success crowned these efforts, and eventually in November 1949 Albion made her maiden voyage under the Trust from Yarmouth to Norwich, carrying a distinguished party including the Mayors of these two towns. Albion is now fully employed for the summer months carrying parties of young, and not so young, for open air holidays on the Broads, sailing as their forefathers did, utilising only wind and tide in a vessel with no auxiliary power, now in her 82nd year.
.t .t .t Major Forsythe, Secretary of the World Ship Trust, invites any reader interested in visiting or sailing in the Albion to write to him at: Scoutbush, 129a North St., Burwell, Cambridgeshire, England. Tel: Newmarket 741612.