BOATS OF THE ESSEX COAST. 269
being less than 50 feet overall length. The usual length of a
Thames Barge is 80 to 100 feet, although many have been built
up to 150 feet in length. The smaller boats, of some ninety
tons displacement, are sailed by two, or at most three, men.
The usual complement is skipper and a boy as mate, with a
third hand taken on to assist in the tricky business of shooting
the river bridges ; when the barge has to be sailed up to the
bridge and all gear (mainmast and sails) lowered to clear the
bridge, then heaved up into sailing trim again before the boat
has lost way. For years my barge was handled by one man
alone; the skipper is, or was, still living in Fowlness village.
There is one other type of flat-bottomed boat with leeboards
to be seen is Essex waters (sometimes in Hole Haven, Canvey
Island) and two or three specimens can always be found in the
Pool of London, moored by the north shore ; they are the
Dutch Eel-boats or Galliots. There is a tradition current that,
so long as at least two of these boats remain in the Pool, free
mooring is granted to all Dutch Galliots there. This may have
been a verbal promise, made when these boats brought food to
plague-stricken London in the seventeenth century, but I believe
no charter to this effect is extant. Never need the Dutch boats
be mistaken for Thames Barges, for they have no sprit, they fly
long pennants from their mastheads, and indeed their appearance
is quite familiar from Dutch tiles.
In days gone by the Hoys were a feature of every East coast
river and indeed they carried passengers and cargo while the
Barges were still small and unseaworthy. The Hoy is no
longer in existence, having been ousted by the coasting cargo
steamer in the last century, but the name is perpetuated in the
Hoy Inn, at Benfleet. It is surprising that a village at the head
of such a shallow creek should possess an inn named after a
boat usually of considerable draught, but perhaps that may be
an indication that Benfleet creek was formerly a deepwater
channel.
While the hoys carried both cargo and passengers, the Tilt
Boats (so named from the tilt, or awning which covered the
open well in the middle of the vessel) were used exclusively
for passenger transport on the Thames, and between Essex and
Kent, from the late Middle Ages until displaced by road transport
and river steamers in the nineteenth century.