Publisher's Synopsis
Michael Frost has described his sailing adventures, his attempt at building boats, his encounters with the local people and with the wildlife of the Mersea area, and his trips to pre-War Holland with a vividness and simplicity that conveys accurately a way of living and working which now seems lost to us for ever. The story of East Coast fishing smacks, particularly Boadicea CK 123, in the period between the wars. In telling it, her owner has combined an accurate and thorough record of the techniques of sailing this now extinct species of working boat with a sensitive description of the times and the people with whom he was involved. The boats and the men who sailed them were unpretentious, and in the end they were destroyed by commercialism and the growing impetus of the twentieth century with which they could never keep pace. The atmosphere Michael Frost has created is one of nostalgia. Bargees still sailed up 'London River’ with their loads of coal, sand and wheat. The oystermen practised a craft which had been handed down through generations and the manoeuvring of their smacks was almost always accomplished without speaking and was free from sound and smell of diesel. To us now it seems an idyllic life. These men did not suspect they were the last descendants of a long line, and now that they are gone, finally extinguished by the second world war, we must rely on records such as this book for an understanding of their ways.
