The Sea People of Exeter
A Passage by Mark Myers
The intimacy and charm of the sheltered river port, already a backwater and ha ven of more glorious memories a century ago, survive today-enhanced by the burgeoning new life brought to it by people seeking to preserve a far-ranging seaborne culture. The museum must be approached by ferry across the river, an ideal way to come to its vessels. Below, the gallant ketch Nonsuch , visiting Exeter on August 15, 1969, with the author/artist aboard.
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Exeter is not the easiest of ports to reach from the sea , as I found out in the summer of 1969. I was then bo'sun of the Nonsuch Ketch , a replica of the little 17th century square-rigger which founded the fortunes of the Hudsons Bay Company some 300 years before. After taking her from the builder's yard at Appledore, North Devon , we had been passage-making along the south coast of England under the command of Adrian Small, flying the company flag and nosing into a score of ports between London and Land's End which hadn't seen a sailing ship for fifty years or more. We sailed for Exeter at sunset on August 14, standing out of Salcombe harbor under topsails and slipping quietly past the grave of the Herzagin Cecilie. As we bore to the east to pass Prawle Point and the Start, the sky astern was alive with color, our rigging etched jet black against it. My memory of that night is still fresh and clear-a picture of the Nonsuch beating silently up Lyme Bay against light north-northeast airs, under starlight bright enough to make her sails glow in muted tones of green and blue. To the west were the lights ofBrixham, that premier port of fishermen and fast trawlers. Beneath us the seabed was scarred with the bite of innumerable anchors-a legacy of the great days of the Channel Squadron on blockade duty in the Napoleonic Wars, and others back to the times of Romans , and perhaps before them the Phoenicians who had come this way. Early next morning, we picked up the pilot off Straight Point and stood into the estuary of the River Exe. Just past Exmouth (still a busy port for motor coasters) the river widened into a vast expanse of water, most of it shallow. The pilot cheerily guided us past the sandbanks with the aid of a few buoys and a lot of local knowledge. Some distance up the river he steered us toward a desolate looking spot where a solitary building and the entrance to a small lock mark the beginning of the Exeter Ship Canal . We learned while making fast outside the lock that the building was a pub-the Turf Hotel , no less-and we seemed to be the only customers for miles. Then a few locals materialized from nowhere and we lent them our muscle in working the old lock gates. They told us that although Turf Lock and this first stretch of the canal were fairly new (ca. 1830) some of the highe:r reaches and pound locks had been dug im 1564, the first in England . While waitimg in the pub for the water to rise we also I heard the tale of the big Dutch schomner Trio which had had her bowsprit SJEA HISTORY 100, SPRING 2002