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Title: Whe’re Yer For?
Author: Anthony Osler

Price: £8.95 + p&p

Details: Harold Smy was born into a large seafaring family in 1902 at the waterside hamlet of Pin Mill on Suffolk’s River Orwell, in a cottage ‘up the lane’ – a little group of houses set back from the boatyards and inaccessible at the top of the big spring tides. Harold’s father, William, was also a Pin Mill man, born in 1858; his mother, Bertha, came from the nearby port of Harwich – ideal parents for a man who was to spend nearly 77 years earning a living from the sea.

Here is set out, mainly in his own words, what it was like to serve aboard the Thames sailing barges, those workhorses of the coasting trade that remarkably survived in competition with the railway, road transport, and the modern motor coaster, until 1970.

Smy tells it as he lived it; the hard work, the humour, the resilience of the sailormen, as both the crews and their craft were known in the coasting trade. Expertly compiled and edited by East Anglian artist Anthony Osler, this book is illustrated by atmospheric pencil drawings from the talented Angus Stirling, a one time member of the East Anglian Group of Marine Artists,

‘Whe’re yer for?’ – a turn of phrase once hailed from one sailing barge to another when plying their trades in the spitways and channels of the south-east corner of England, is Harold’s own story of a remarkable life. ‘Ipswich with wheat’ ‘Queenborough with hoof and horn’ or ‘Light for the London River’ would have been typical responses, as the barge skippers and mates kept their fingers on the pulse of the coasting trade.

Specification:
Size 250 x 180, 56 pages, 50+ illustrations, perfect bound with laminated card covers.

ISBN 0-9532422-9-3