Reviving traditional skills

Toby Heppell is the sailing editor for Yachting Monthly. He has been sailing all his life and has been writing about the subject for more than 15 years.

The muddy rivers, tributaries and estuaries of the UK’s East Coast provide the perfect breeding ground for any number of bivalves, but oysters are the foodstuff for which the area has long been known for. The traditional fishing fleet around the Essex coast was long made up of a plethora of oyster smacks. In truth, these boats didn’t just fish for the oysters now prized the world over, their crew instead filling their ship’s bellies with a variety of fresh fish and racing up the Thames to be the first to deliver their catch to London.

Many different boats fished the Essex estuaries and further out into the North Sea, and some still survive today. In addition to smacks you also have the famous Thames barges, but there are the smaller bawleys, shrimpers and others besides. Though their professional fishing days are long since over, those that survive continue to sail on the East Coast, keeping traditions alive from the days when good seamanship could be the difference between life and death in the cold North Sea, or fetching an acceptable price for your cargo in London.

I grew up in the Essex town of Brightlingsea and, though I raced dinghies and yachts very different to these tan-sailed old girls, I have fond memories of waking early each September to watch the start of the annual Smack and Barge Match. It was something of a town tradition where sleepy-eyed families would sit and