27th and 28th September 2010

I got up on a dank, cold and dark Monday morning at 6am, felt my way to the light switch and activated the rocker, and to my surprise and annoyance I was still standing in the dark. Yes, a district power cut had occurred. Using my wind-up torch, I managed adorn my cycle gear without putting any item on “inside out” and proceded to find all necessary items for my back pack. Leaving my apartment, I walked into the drizzle and mist at 7am…

Unfortified with any breakfast or even a cup of rosy lea, I mounted my Brompton and took my well spun route to the City via Isleworth, Richmond Park, Roehampton, Putney Heath, Wandsworth, Battersea Park, Nine Elms Lane, Waterloo, Southwark, Tower Bridge, Jamaica Road and finally arrived at Rotherhithe at 9am. The FROG were already at work, so I thought it only polite not to disturb them so early. So I made my way to a lovely Italian cafe in Albion Street to recover from the taxing journey, and refreshed myself with a cuppa and something to eat (if anyone is down that way again I recommend this cafe). You can’t miss the cafe, as it is nearly the only one left open, as all other shops in the street appeared to be closed and boarded up.

Finally climbing down to the foreshore, I started work on cleaning up various items of timber, which I was advised may be from old broken-up vessels of previous centuries. It appeared that some of the timbers were reused for the possible purpose of creating a slipway or similar surface. One of the timbers appeared to be length of a keel of wooden sailing ship, possibly a man-of-war and appeared to have a scarph joint as shown in the photo at the top of the page.

Looking up scarph joints in one of my collection of marine books, it revealed that there are in fact many types of scarph joints which were used for joining timbers. The sketch illustration to the left shows a number of different scarph joints in use on warships in the eighteenth century. In the photo above, you can see an example of a keel with a scarph joint from the FROG fieldwork at Rotherhithe being ‘cleaned’ in readiness for recording. The sketch below shows the section of a typical Navy standard keel. It will be interesting to know what part of the keel this particular timber from Rotherhithe came from.

It is difficult to imagine when you look at an isolated piece of timber such as that found abandoned on the foreshore at Rotherhithe, how, when used collectively, shipbuilding can produce a magnificent work of art such as this beautiful model warship as shown in the photo below from the National Maritime Museum Greenwich,

For your information there is an excellent library there for reference purposes. The Caird Library generally by appointment only. After the days events I donned my cycle clothes again, and departed to my next destination, The George Public House in Borough High Street, to meet my long time friend, “Roger the Dodger”. That’s it guys till the next event….