Michael Stammers - Böcker

Suffolk is almost surrouned by waters. To the north are the rivers Waveney and Little Ouse, to the west the river Lark, to the south the river Stour, and to the east the North Sea. In the heyday of the North East coal trade, hundreds of sailing colliers negotiated the complex of shoals off the Suffolk coast, and the lighthouses at Lowestoft and Orford were welcome beacons on their passages. Today, the coastal trade is much reduced. The coal trade has gone and has been replaced by traffic in furl, oil, petrol and diesel from the refineries of local distribution depots. On the other hand, bulk cargoes such as grain, stone and timber are still carried by coaster. There are also new trades such as delivery of steel plate and coastal container services. Suffolk Shipping covers just some of the wide range of vessels that have been a part of the maritime scenery of the county for the past two millennia.

Looking at ships over the past two millennia, this book considers the question of 'what happens to a ship when it's no longer needed for its original purpose?' From Roman galleys to ship-wrecking, the whole history of shipping is considered in answering the question.

In the days before steam, sailing barges were a common sight on the British coast, its rivers, estuaries, broads and river navigations. The most well-known of these vessels are probably the Thames barges and Norfolk Wherries. Whole communities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were based around the ownership of fleets of barges which were essential to the commercial infrastructure of the areas where they were from. The 1920s saw the gradual decline of the use of barges but they were far more in their whole than the articulated machinery that replaced them.Sailing Barges of the British Isles describes the skills required for building and maintaining barges, as well as sailmaking, shipwrighting and sailmanship were spread across the maritime world in Britain and through generations.