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The new T5 is deliberately heavier and considerably more stable. Built-in buoyancy is improved, hull shape is refined (but still not quite right) and operational comfort is better. In short, I feel much safer. Enclosed are two photos.
Canoe Sailing In The 1870s (KeithM)
The cold and dark winter months are often times for contemplation about times and trips in the past, for poring over maps and making plans for the better weather and forthcoming season. During the Winter Meet our quick look at some historical aspects from 1936 prompted me to take another look at some other canoe sailing from the past that some members may not have heard much about.
Some years ago a paddling friend gave me a large bundle of photocopies. They were a copy of hand-written and unpublished accounts of canoe trips from the very early days of recreational canoeing. It includes a detailed journal account of a voyage in 1870 that started on the River Ribble and used the Preston and Lancaster Canal, the River Lune, Morecambe Bay, Windermere, Brothers Water, Patterdale, Ullswater, the Rivers Eamont and Eden, finishing at Armathwaite, near Penrith. Much of it was under paddle but sails were used on some of the more open sections. Railways and carts were also employed to link some of the waters.
The other is an outline account of a further trip from Appleby-on-Eden to Loch Lochy in the Great Glen in 1871, again using railways and steamers to link waterways at times. It is all nicely written and embellished with sketches and poetry, but will take some time to transcribe it all. Here are a few samples:
"The Merlin Canoe" was built by Messrs Searle and Sons of Lambeth, the builders of the "Rob Roy" of which celebrated little canoe she is a facsimile. She was christened, by her captain, after a favourite trained falcon and was launched on the River Wharfe at Greenholme, on which beautiful stream very many happy hours have been enjoyed, as her sailing and paddling capabilities were fully tested there, before making the following voyages.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore.
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more.
From these our interviews, in which I steal,
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
[From 'Childe Harold' by George Gordon, Lord Byron]
On getting out into the Bay again we saw sandbanks popping up in every direction and knew that it would be no good trying to reach the Leven Channel, so decided if possible to get to Grange and then take our canoes forward by rail to the Lakeside Station, Windermere. The wind was suitable for sailing, so I hoisted my sail and dashed along through the waves at a merry pace. I soon began to leave the Water Baby behind and on my arrival at Grange she was not in sight. The train was due in ten minutes and I never expected that George would be able to catch it, but he just managed to do so, owing to its being 20 minutes late. We watched him through a large telescope that the station master had when he was about 2 miles off. The carriage of the two canoes to the Lakeside cost us 10/-.
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