Despite its unpre­pos­sess­ing name Hole Haven, the creek to the west side of Canvey Island on the lower Thames, is a wel­come bolt-hole for those bound up- or down­river need­ing to get some rest or wait out a tide. It has ful­filled this ser­vice since at least the 1890s…

Philip Temple’s 1965 account of an out­rageously bold exped­i­tion was pub­lished without fan­fare, without many good pho­to­graphs, and without even the bene­fit of a copy-edit­or; it van­ished without trace. The Sea and The Snow came to our atten­tion a few years ago as we…

Martin O’Scannall has enjoyed a love affair of more than forty years with his 1913 gaff cut­ter Sauntress, begin­ning with her rebuild and cul­min­at­ing in the glor­ies pic­tured here. Below is his account of her sojourn in a boat­yard at Brentford on the Thames in west…

The Albert Strange Association (bear with me), in which I am heav­ily implic­ated, held its Annual General Meeting in Lincoln a few years ago, and our very enga­ging guest speak­er was Dr Robb Robinson, a mari­time his­tor­i­an at the University of Hull. His sub­ject was…

Most people read­ing this have enjoyed lives markedly more com­fort­able than those of their par­ents or grand­par­ents. My own fath­er served at sea when a teen­ager dur­ing World War II, as a stoker and coal trim­mer on tramp steam­ers and later on deep-sea res­cue tugs, on…

My good friend Fabian Bush built me a (-noth­er!) boat a few years ago and we launched her togeth­er in 2014 at West Mersea in Essex. Teal is named for the ‘small dab­bling duck’ in recog­ni­tion of the dir­ec­tion my sail­ing was expec­ted to take in my dot­age, and she has…