Sailing without any hands [literally]

To my horror the tar-sided old barge clonked into yacht after yacht

- DICK DURHAM

May Flower was vacating Whitewall Creek - a graveyard of hulked barges – on Kent's River Medway, because it was soon to be excavated as part of a new road tunnel to be bored under the river.

We warped out of the creek very early one summer's morning: even the Chatham Dockyard workers had yet to up tools in the giant ship sheds across the river where nuclear-powered submarines twinkled under electric light.

With all sail set the barge nosed down river. But very quickly she lost the fickle dawn breeze under the wooded hills and the fast-flowing ebb swept her into the bight of the river among the mooring trots of the Medway Yacht Club.

To my horror I watched helplessly as the tar-sided old hull, built in 1888, clonked into yacht after yacht, as we rushed from side to side with fenders. Looking down on one small sloop, I saw through the port holes, a man and wife crew leap from their bunks as the shadow of the 48-ton barge loomed over them.