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In the days of the brigantines

Extract from the article ‘In the days of brigantines’, which appeared in the Hartlepool Mail in the mid-1960s:

“Way back at the beginning of the twentieth century, in the boom days of West Hartlepool as a seaport, the town’s docks were constantly choked with shipping. It was in 1895 that Mr. William Swarbrick first sailed out of the port, as a 14-year old apprentice on board the Aberdeen-registered brigantine Alexandra, carrying coal between the Hartlepools and the London reaches.

It was a trip Mr. Swarbrick recalls that could be done in 30 hours – but it might as easily take three weeks. In that case the trip was a continual struggle against the weather for the eight-man crew of the Alexandra. It meant clawing out to sea to escape the dangers of a lee shore and as often as not sailing ships like the Alexandra would be forced hundreds of miles off course into the middle of the stormy North Sea. On more than one voyage the ship was given up for lost ashore, but turned up nearly a month overdue.

The Alexandra was owned by her skipper and two London Pilots, so the fsater she could complete the voyage the better they were pleased. It was a tough and dangerous life for a 14-year-old just out of school. The threat to the ship was always there, often impressed on her crew by the fate of many other vessels on the same run. Mr. Swarbrick remembered one gale that sent half a dozen coasters hurrying for  shelter into the Humber. With the wind in the north-east it took tremendous seamanship to keep them safely away from the rocks under their lee – but one did not make it. She was driven onto the rocks and ripped apart. Only her skipper survived.

Mr. Swarbrick had four years at sea in those early days when sail was gradually giving way to steam. While working between trips at Gray’s shipyard he broka a leg and had to “swallow the anchor”. But before that happened he saw more of the Seven Seas than the stretch between the Tees and the Thames. He made the switch from sail to steam before he was 18 and signed on the tramp steamers that wandered around Europe and across the Atlantic.

A typical trip took the small steamers across to Norway with coal, back with timber, across to Italy, and then the long haul to the United States with iron ore. After his accident the nearest he came to going to sea again was when he came close to getting a “pierhead jump”. The system was to keep an eye on the docks in case a ship that was about to sail was short-handed. On one occasion Mr. Swarbrick was all set to put to sea once again when an errant regular member of the crew turned up at the last minute and the chance was lost.

Mr. Swarbrick remembered from the days of his connection with the docks how West Hartlepool was the jumping-off point for hosts of people whose children became American citizens. At that time there was a steady traffic in ships between the Hartlepools and Hamburg. Passenger steamers and freighters made regular trips, and when they arrived here, they were full of European families – many of them Jewish – who were leaving their homelands for the United States. They would file off the ships carrying all their possessions on their backs, bedding rolled up in a single counterpane, and swarm aboard the Liverpool trains.

For Mr. Swarbrick, the next 48 years were spent in the Wages Office at Gray’s. When he started work there the yard was building ship No.601 – when he left No.1121 had gone down the slips. Mr. Swarbrick lives in Penrhyn Street, West Hartlepool.”

 

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