Wakeley's coasting barge NELLIE PARKER claws off a lee shore during a gale in the Blackwater. Wakeley's blue masthead 'bob', with its white cross, was well respected in the barge fleets and the NELLIE PARKER was always well sailed. Built at Ipswich in 1898 she was owned for many years by Clement Parker of Bradwell and sailed the east coast with cargoes of grain, timber, cattle food, cement, hay, straw and in the 1930s and 40s, with Kentish ragstone for repair of the sea walls on the coast.
Here she is bursting through the short seas which build up quickly in the lower Blackwater, with her topsail rucked down, the mainsheet hard in and the full cut foresail driving her to windward with astonishing power for such a bellying sail. The barge is tramping ahead, smashing her forefoot down on the waves with a spine jarring shudder. Though we cannot see him, the cloth capped skipper is there at her cast irong, chaff cutter wheel, giving her a spoke or two each way in the puffs, spary soaked and cold, in a soggy old overcoat over his blue guernsey and serge trousers. [JL]
NELLIE PARKER Official No. 112619 [MNL 1916]
Plate.12 in SWW.
Used in The Sailor's Coast, page 87.