STORMY LESSON

Dick Durham knows the East Coast of England better than most. He has sailed it, both deep water and shoal, since putting to sea in the 1960s as mate aboard the last Thames barge trading under sail. When he writes we can see straight away that his knowledge goes far beyond that of the casual yachtsman plying between Harwich and the Crouch. As a sometime Fleet Street journalist, he has a sharp ear for a story and an encyclopedic memory bank whose offerings flash from scholarly historical anecdotes to comments made by ancient fishermen caught between a rock and a hard place.

Dick has written a number of books. The following extract is taken from On and Offshore, published in 1989. In it, he describes a bread-and-butter passage up the channel known as The Wallet running inshore of the Gunfleet Sand between the Blackwater and Harwich. What in other hands could have been a dull account of the unremarkable is brought to vivid life by the fact that Dick’s crew is a dreamer who has never tasted salt water in anger. Dick is determined that this short heavy-weather trip in his small wooden cutter will disabuse the lad of any airy notions. He wins the challenge he has set himself,