At Chaffcutter Books our aim is to produce quality titles with a broad appeal to those who wish to learn more of the way of life of seafarers in days gone by.

Our focus interest, though by no means exclusively so, is the ubiquitous Thames sailing barge.

Chaffcutter has been privileged to have the opportunity to publish the stories of a number of those who have captained these craft, some 3,000 of which traded around our shores and further afield.

Chaffcutter is a word more usually associated with farming in a bygone age. The agricultural machinery so called sported a distinctive, curiously curved, spoked wheel.

When the sailing barges abandoned their tillers in favour of a steering wheel in the late 19th century, the close affinity of these tan-sailed

traders to the farm wharves they served, and the Victorian foundries which served both agriculture and ship-building, may well have 'cast the die' which influenced the sailing barge's iron wheel.

Although many of the large coasting barges preferred the traditional brass bound wheel, like those that graced the clippers, schooners and ketches, by far the majority of workaday barges adopted the Chaffcutter.

A young Alf Kelsey at the chaffcutter wheel of the sailing barge Kathleen belonging to Daniels Brothers of Whitstable, Kent.

This photograph, taken on 24th August 1921, clearly shows the characteristic design of the chaffcutter wheel.

Kathleen, launched from the Thamesside yard of Lewis Glover at Gravesend in 1901, traded for sixty years and seventeen days before being 'laid up out of commission'.

She was purchased for a brief period lightering timber before she was sold for restoration to sail as a yacht.

In the early 1980s she became derelict near Spaarndam in The Netherlands. Alf Kelsey outlived his barge, passing away aged 96 a few years later.

Kathleen's original Chaffcutter wheel was rescued from Holland and returned to the UK to serve as the symbol of Chaffcutter Books.