270 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
These steamers (nearly all of them paddle boats) are an
important feature of Essex coastwise shipping in the summer
months, but when winter makes sea-travel in small ships an
unhappy business for most people, these "butterfly" boats,
as they are called by Essex sailors, are laid up till their voyages
shall once more be made prosperous by bright days and calm seas.
Essex has several modern shipbuilding yards, particularly
on the Colne and Blackwater rivers, where steam vessels have
been regularly built in the years before the recent shipping
depression ; these yards are no less interesting but perhaps
not quite so picturesque as the older yards where the sailing
boats of the past have had their beginnings. To name two
only of the many small Essex boatyards there is Shuttlewood's
barge and boat yard at Paglesham, where still may be seen
the adze, used with its curiously direct stroke by the fifth or
sixth generation of Shuttlewoods. I doubt if another barge
will ever leave the slips at Paglesham, but the demand for
stoutly-built sailing yachts and other small boats keeps this
little home of boatbuilding craft vigorously alive. The other
centre which I have in mind is Leigh near Southend. There is
a Bundock's yard there now, and I believe that a Bundock
fitted one of the vessels which sailed out of the port of Leigh
to meet the Spanish Armada. The gradual silting-up of the
Thames estuary shores, has of course, now closed Leigh to any
vessel of more than 8 or 10 feet draught.
The smaller war vessels of 1914-1918 used the Blackwater
and Stour rivers but the Motor Launch and the Submarine can
hardly be included as typical Essex craft.
Apart from a "one-design" type of racing dinghy, it seems
impossible to claim any type of pleasure yacht as peculiar to
Essex, although from the sixpenny trip "sail-out" boat to the
millionaire's thirty-six metre yacht, the summer seas of Essex
are alive with pleasure craft.
Fishing in the Thames Estuary has long been, with agricul-
ture, the main occupation of Essex men; the peculiarly close
union of the two industries being well exemplified in the coastal
region of interpenetrating creeks, where barges brought chalk
and fish manure to the farms and carried away hay and other
farm produce, and the fishing boats found safe anchorage.
The "Plough and Sail" Inn at Paglesham is well named.