Fortunes of a "Flat"

Introduction: The following article was given to me at St. Helens Show by Alan Sutton, son of John Sutton who was the skipper of the Mersey Flat "Protection". The article first appeared in the magazine "Sea Breezes" in 1947. It will be serialised over the next three issues of Canal Cuttings.

Colin Greenall

Many readers of "Sea Breezes" have asked what has become of the old sailing flats that used to trade into the Mersey years ago. This is the story of one of them - the oldest and last to have her rig taken out - which is now trading as a motor barge.

By John Sutton

This little ship was built at Connah's Quay in 1887, registered at Liverpool and named Protection. Her dimensions are 73.1 ft. x 18.1 ft. x 7.6 ft. When she was first built, I was told by someone who sailed in her as a boy, she carried one mast and a bowsprit,, and had a tremendous mainsail, foresail and stay sail. She was noted for her heavy rig and for the weight of the cargoes she carried. She is supposed to have brought as much as 150 tons of stone from the Welsh quarries into Liverpool, the trade for which she was built. It was a common sight to see her in the old days coming in from sea loaded, her decks invariably awash; sometimes, in fact, the bulwark boards have had to be hammered off to allow the heavy seas she shipped to run off aft. That was in the days before she carried Board of Trade marks.

She must have carried thousands of tons of stone in her days from Penmaenmawr. Often she would move alongside the loading jetty and dry out on the ebb tide and be loaded while she was dry. Sometimes the weight of cargo must have been miscalculated, for it was a common experience for the decks to be awash before she lifted, and frequently the cargo was man- handled and dumped overboard in a frantic hurry to get her to lift. That was a thing which often happened in the days before these wooden flats were marked with a loadline. Sometimes when she has been on the beach waiting to load in bad weather, the heavy sea coming up the beach on the flood has made her pound the bottom with her sternpost enough to make you think she was going to break up any time.

In later years she was fitted with a new mainmast and also a mizzen and sailed as a ketch, and is remembered by a good many today as one of the old jigger flats, trading between the quarries, Fleetwood and Widnes and Runcorn carrying limestone, soda ash and other chemicals. In 1929 she was fitted with a two-cylinder Kromhout oil engine of 44 b.h.p., which gave her, under power alone in favourable conditions, a speed of as much as eight knots. Due no doubt to the fine lines of her hull, she took some "catching" when under sail and with the motor going at full speed.

After a long and what must have been a very exciting career as a coaster, she was laid up at Sankey Bridges, to which place she used to bring slates. She used to come up the Mersey under Runcorn bridge and lock in at the Wooden lock, Widnes. There half of her cargo was discharged into a lighter and then she would proceed on to Sankey Bridges, towing the lighter with her, as there was not enough water up the canal to go up at loaded draught. Sankey was as far as she would go inland as there was nowhere higher up where she could swing to make the return journey.

At this stage of her career she was owned by Messrs. Claire and Ridgeway, of Warrington, who used her for carrying the slates from the Welsh quarries for their business of builders' merchants. She was laid up in 1936 due for a Board of Trade survey, but owing, probably, to the high cost of putting a wooden-built ship of her age through a survey, she lay idle until November 1937, when my uncle, Capt. S. Kirby, of Hale Shoal, bought her, and we ran her in the river trade, for which a Board of Trade certificate was not needed, until March 1948.

Her job during the 18 months prior to the Second World War was carrying grain, loaded in Liverpool or Birkenhead and taken to a mill at Frodsham. The route taken was up the River Mersey to Weston Point, a run which was noted for being "tricky" at the time owing to the channel through the banks shifting so often. It was a common sight in the old days to see the sailing flats high and dry on the ebb tide. Many a flat has been broken up and washed into the bank with the strong run of tide which is encountered in the upper reaches of the Mersey.

After we had locked in at Weston Point - this was always done at high water, the journey having been timed to reach there just a little before - we would proceed up the narrow river to Frodsham. It was very shallow there, though wide in places, with a very narrow channel, sometimes running close to the bank on one side, then running over close to the other side, twisting and turning all the way to Frodsham - a risky business on a dark night. Often has the Protection run aground and had to wait for a big tide in the Mersey to overflow into Frodsham river before she could float clear.

Freights were very low those days and the Protection, being a bit leggy (deep-draughted) and the river being so shallow, the amount of cargo she was able to carry hardly paid her way. In 1939 and during the war she did a good job carrying chemicals from the I.C.I. works at Northwich and discharging them into the big ships at Liverpool, Birkenhead and Manchester. She also carried a lot of general cargo, including heavy cargoes of copper, lead and different kinds of ores, a trade to which she was suited owing to her having been strongly built.

There are quite a few incidents I remember from the war years. During the heavy winter of 1940 the old flat was left lying one weekend in King's Dock, Liverpool, loaded with a cargo of gunny bales for Northwich, and when we came back to her on Monday morning she was level to the bulwarks with snow, and my uncle and I had to dig our way in. It took us all day to move enough snow so we could work her. It can be understood that she did not sail that day.

Later, during the Christmas blitz of the same year, she was lying in Canada Dock when a number of incendiaries landed aboard and set her alight. We had quite a hectic time extinguishing the flames. Some of the incendiaries, in fact, went through the hatches into the cargo. She was loaded with bicarbonate of soda in bags at the time and quite a number of these were destroyed and the soda ran out and smothered the fire below. I am quite sure if it hadn't been for the type of cargo which she had, there wouldn't have been any Protection today.

It was during the early part of 1940 we decided to take all the rig off her, as it was often in the way while she was loading and discharging. Most of the time she was under motor power alone and we were carrying a lot of weight about for no purpose. Moreover, the motor always did its work well, invariably being driven at full speed and never giving any trouble, which is a lot to be said for that type of engine. She was taken up to the Old Quay dockyard at Runcorn and the masts, booms and gaffs, in fact, all the gear, stripped off her. What a shock we had and what a time it took us to get used to seeing her without her rig! Still, she proved much handier for the job she was doing, but the art of sailing her about had gone. I might add that at that time she was the only Mersey flat left with the rig, and also she was the only one left that was run by an owner-skipper.

(To be continued in Canal Cuttings winter issue.)

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