Sailing through storms

Laying down the HF Bolt

Brunswick Wharf is located just downstream of the eastern end of Bideford Bridge and has been in existence since at least the early 18th century, with a plan of the town dating from 1717 showing a shipyard located there known as the Bridge End Yard.

The HF Bolt was built here in 1876 at Johnson's Shipyard. Robert Johnson opened his yard in 1839 with his son, John Johnson taking over after he retired in 1854 for another 27 years. During the time the Johnstons operated the shipyard they built or refitted over 100 ships, from small smacks like the 46 ton Annie to the 850 ton barque, Lady Gertrude. When John Johnson decided to lease out the shipyard in 1876, an avert in the North Devon Journal described it as containing saw pits, a steaming room, smith’s shop, moulding lofts, store rooms and offices.

Brunswick Wharf would later be the site of an accident involving our ketch when the steam ship Devonia crashed into her as the tide ebbed. According to the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette of 1920 the HF Bolt had docked just north of Brunswick Wharf to unload coal, when the Devonia, having been badly moored slid into the stern of the Bolt, spearing the ketch with her bowsprit and causing £40 worth of damage.

The first captain

The HF Bolt was commissioned and first captained by a Master Mariner called John Emmanuel Bolt, who lived with his wife, Mary Ann and two daughters at Carrisbroke House in Appledore. The ketch was built in 1876 and named after his two daughters, Harriett, who was 12 when the vessel was built, and her younger sister Florence, aged 9. Known to the family as Bessie. The Bolts also had a son, John Henry born in 1860, but he tragically died two years later.

Emmanuel himself was born in Appledore in 1835 and grew up at the Royal Hotel on the corner of Bude Street and Market Place, where his parents were the inn keepers. He died at the age of 65 on the 12th September 1901, having sold the HF Bolt on to William Fishwick.

Crew call

It was possible to sail a ketch single-handed, with the schooner captain WJ Slade describing a solo journey from Courtsmacsherry in Ireland to Lydney in Gloucestershire made by Andrew Murdoch, captain of the ketch Garlandstone in the 1940s.  But it was exhausting and dangerous work, and it was more usual for a ketch to have a crew of three - a Master, a Mate, and an Able Seaman.  The 1911 census shows that the HF Bolt was staffed in such a manner with the crew consisting of: William Fishwick (Master, aged 55), Richard Lang (Mate, 23) and Nathaniel Cox (Able Seaman, 21).  Both Lang and Cox where local lads born in Appledore, with Cox having gone to sea before his thirteenth birthday and Lang following him shortly after.

A good length of rope

A large ship-of-the-line like HMS Victory required a colossal 26 miles of rope or cordage to hoist her sails, with a standard Royal Navy rope having a length of 300m (1,000ft). The HF Bolt was a much smaller vessel but still needed around 2 miles of rope. As a result most ports had several ropemakers or ropewalks located in them, where long lengths of rope could be plaited together. When the HF Bolt was fitted out in the late 19th century two ropemakers were listed in Billings' Directory for East and West Appledore; William Joshua was recorded as a ropemaker and ship owner, and the company of Beara and Cook were described as rope and sailmakers. Both of them just a short step away from where Captain Bolt lived.

Making sails

The sails for the HF Bolt were made in Appledore by John Popham, who was born in 1807. Working with sail canvas was obviously in the Popham blood as his father Thomas, and son John were both master sailmakers. The Pophams lived on Bude Street, with their workshop just round the corner on Marine Parade. John Popham [senior] also acted as a ship broker, organising the sale of vessels, like the "fast-sailing schooner" Busy Bee, which he advertised for sale in March 1872 through the Shipping and Mercantile Gazette.

It's difficult to know how much the sails for the HF Bolt would have cost, as every sail and every vessel had its own peculiarities. However, in 1879 Popham made a topsail for the schooner Excel, which sailed out of Bideford and was owned by Thomas Lemon. This large square sail cost Mr Lemon £10 11s, or in todays prices approximately £1,100.

Haul away

A sailing ship the size of the HF Bolt would need several dozen encased pulleys known as blocks, used among many other things for raising and lowing the sails. Making these complicated wooden pulleys was specialist work and most ports, big and small, would have had at least one block maker in residence. We don't know where our ketch's blocks where made but in the 1870s, when the HF Bolt was being fitted out, Philip Green owned a block and spar workshop on Marine Parade. Just a short walk from where the owner of our ketch lived.

Stocking up

The crew of the HF Bolt would likely have visited the chandlers on a regular basis. According Billing's Directory of 1857 there were three ships chandlers in Appledore. Originally a chandler sold candles, but by the 19th century they sold everything you would need to equip a sailing ship, regardless of whether you were nipping across to Lundy or heading out into the Atlantic. From chains, anchors, and oakum,* through to telescopes, sextants, and ships charts. If you needed it a chandlers would likely sell it.

*Oakham is a mixture of old rope fiber and pine tar, used to seal the gaps in hull planking and keep ships relatively watertight.

What's for dinner?

On short journeys across the Bristol Channel the crew of the HF Bolt were likely to be able to enjoy fresh food but on long voyages, like when they headed for North America, they wouldn't have been so lucky. And food that stayed reasonably digestible for a long time was the order of the day. Those provisions would likely have come from victualler, with 14 of them listed in Appledore in 1857.

Ships biscuits or hard tack were still a common meal component in the 19th century. These were a dense, tough biscuit made from flour, water, and salt with little flavour. The biscuits were so tasteless sailors would often soak them in stew to make them vaguely edible.

Lobscouse was one of the most frequently eaten stews by sailors, made with salt beef or salt pork, carrots, and potatoes, and if you were lucky spiced up with pickled cabbage or beetroot. It became particularly associated with crews sailing out of Liverpool Bay heading for the Baltic, giving us the nickname Scouser.

By the late 1800's canned foods like corned beef, condensed milk, and tinned peaches made meals on board ship more palatable, but the food was still nothing to write home about.

An endless journey of trade

When the HF Bolt was first built she headed out into the Atlantic, crossing the ocean to Newfoundland and Labrador to collect salt cod, before flying back to the Mediterranean and selling her well-preserved cargo in ports like Seville and Figueira da Foz. But for most of her working life the ketch was a coastal trader, running down the Severn Estuary from Gloucester or Bristol and around the west coast to Cornwall, Wales and Scotland. The ketch carried a wide variety of cargo: 4,000 bushels of wheat to the Cornish port of Hayle, 900 tons of coal to the village of Fremington on the River Taw, 62 tons of Barley to Swansea, manure to Port Talbot or Dublin, pig-iron to Glasgow, potatoes to Bristol, and on and on for over 60 years.

A salty cargo

Some of the first trading voyages the HF Bolt made were between Canada and Iberia, bringing salt cod from Newfoundland and Labrador to the ports of Spain and Portugal. While some the ketches last cargo runs were between Gloucester and the harbors of St Ives, Penzance and Newlyn, carrying salt down south to preserve the pilchards caught off the Cornish coast.

Salted cod and pilchards were in high demand as they were easily packed into barrels and lasted for months on end, while the fish were plentiful and easy to catch. As a result they became a common, if ill-liked component of a sailors diet for centuries.

A dangerous trade

The entrance to the estuary for the rivers Taw and Torridge is notorious, as the wind in Barnstaple Bay frequently and suddenly changes to the northwest, forcing vessels on to the shore; while the large sandbank at the mouth of the estuary known as the Barnstaple Bar has been the end of many ships. A lifeboat was introduced to Appledore in 1825, with a further two stations built in the middle of the 19th century, at Braunton Burrows in 1848, and at Northam Burrows in 1851. A horse and cart was bought by the RNLI to take the lifeboat crew from Appledore to the Northam Burrows station in 1873 to prevent them being exhausted on arrival. Having three stations, in different locations meant that the rowed lifeboats could reach stricken vessels quicker and easier if the weather was against any one station, giving a greater chance to rescue those in peril.

Just a little jeopardy

The HF Bolt was a sturdy little ship, but sailing at all times of the day, and in all weathers meant that on several occasions her crew were put in life threatening situations, and more than once needed to be rescued by lifeboats.

On the evening of the 7th January 1896 the schooner Woolton was making her way into the Taw and Torridge Estuary as the HF Bolt was heading out into the Bristol Channel. The ketch not seeing the larger vessel crashed into her, causing considerable damage to the schooner, almost sinking her. As a result both ships had to limp back into Appeldore for repairs.

In April 1899 a heavy gale blowing from the northwest raged across the Bristol channel, whipping the river into a mass of foam and the HF Bolt broke free of her mooring in the river and was driven by the wind across the Torridge to run aground at Instow.

On the 7th November 1900 the weather closed in on the Bristol Channel, lashing the crew of the HF Bolt with heavy rain and gale force winds, which were so strong the captain of the ketch was forced to call out the Clovelly lifeboat. The lifeboat managed to rescue the crew, but was forced to leave the HF Bolt riding her anchor in a dangerous position.

On the 23rd June 1908, as the HF Bolt was heading into Appledore a sailor slipped from the rigging and fell overboard. Luckily for the sailor, he landed in the river rather than hitting the decking and was able to tread water before he was picked up by the boat.

Lime to burn

One of the most common cargoes that the ketches of Appledore carried was limestone from South Wales, used to improve the acidic soils of upland Devon and increase the yield of farmer’s field. The limestone would be burnt along with coal in large kilns, located close to were the processed lime was to be used.

The earliest reference to a lime kiln in the Torridge valley comes in a 17th century will, which mentions a kiln built in Instow. The job of unloading the limestone from the ships' hold and carrying it to the kiln often fell to the women of the area, with 23 limestone porters recorded as living in Northam on the 1851 census, just 4 of whom were men.

A profit in peril

Being shipwrecked or having your ship grounded was always dangerous, but on rare occasions there was profit in it! On the 16th June 1905 the HF Bolt was heading into Barnstaple, having sailed from Bristol with a bulk cargo of wheat, when she grounded on the Barnstaple Bar and flooded. The crew were removed from the ketch by the Appledore lifeboat, and she was refloated and towed to Bideford for repairs, where the saltwater-damaged wheat was also off-loaded. Just six days later the owner of the ketch, Captain William Fishwick, placed an advetisement in the newspaper, the Lloyd's List, offering the damaged wheat for sale. The listing stated that the sea-stained wheat could be dried in Bideford at a price of twopence a bushel, while Captain Fishwick could also organize the washing and onward shipment of the wheat for a small sum more. Incredibly, two days later all the grain was sold, with the final lot being purchased for £7,600.

The last captains in Appledore

The last two owners of the HF Bolt to live in Appledore were William Fishwick, a sailor from a long line of seamen, and his son-in-law who would rather pound the beat as a policeman.

William was born in 1858 and grew up on Dart Lane (now Vernons Lane) in Appledore with his five brothers, and a sister. His father John was a Master Mariner and later owned one of the ferries that carried people across the Torridge to Instow. As a young boy William regularly sailed on the mail-ship across to Lundy with his father and by the age of 17 was an Able-Bodied Seaman on the Louisa, a ketch captained by Fishwick senior. For a brief period, William retired from the sea and became a gardener, but quickly returned to Neptune's embrace, first as a pilot then as owner and master of the HF Bolt.

He was charged with causing an affray twice, once for assaulting a fellow ferryman in an argument over a passenger and once for scuffling with a drunk fisherman. But on another occasion he dived into the river to save a drowning boy, after the lad had slipped from the quay, and regularly manned the lifeboat's oars.

When William finally retired, his son-in-law left the police to captain the ketch, but his tenure didn't last long as the ketch was sold in 1931 on William's death.

Up for sale

When the last owner of the HF Bolt, William Fishwick, died in 1931 his daughter Ursula listed the ketch for sail in the North Devon Journal. The listing noted that the ship could carry 125 tons and the vessel's motor and ship's boat were included in the sale price.

The ketch was bought and managed by Adrian W Beecham, based out of Stratford-upon-Avon, and sailed down the Severn for another 10 years, often passing by her home town but rarely stopping.

Poster child

In the 1930s the HF Bolt was the ship chosen to represent the ketch in a series of postcards produced by the National Maritime Museum showing the typical sailing ships of Great Britain.

Laid to rest

Unlike many of her sister ships from Appledore the HF Bolt was never called up for war work. Instead she kept working in the coastal trade, moving over and around the mine fields laid in the Bristol Channel to catch Nazi raiders.

Eventually time and tide caught up with her and she returned to Appledore to be laid up at Shipyard Beach. But her end came more suddenly than was expected in 1945, when a military landing craft dragged its moorings and crashed over the top of the ketch, splitting the hull in two and bringing an undignified end for this work horse of the river.