Suffolk Shipping

Acknowledging the wealth of photo histories of Suffolk ports already in print, the author sails clear of replication, avoiding the development of port facilities and focusing instead on the ships themselves, a regional feast of versatile craft which included one of the last operational commercial sailing fleets in Europe.

Almost surrounded by water, this English county has always had a multitude of vessels negotiating its complex shoals. There has been no shortage of disasters and some of them are chronicled here in an instructive chapter on Lifeboats and Service Vessels.

Suffolk’s maritime past extends back beyond the Romans but it was they who left the first substantial remains of maritime activity. The 89ft long Sutton Hoo ship, buried along with an exceptionally important Roman in the early seventh century provided a field day for archaeologists in the 1960s when a plaster cast of the vessel was made. A millennium later, small coasting vessels were refined into the galleon design such as Sir Francis Drake’s vessel of exploration Golden Hind . A stunning centrefold photo of Lowestoft’s inner harbour in the 1890s shows a Great Eastern Railway paddle tug towing a heavily laden barquentine past a newly constructed swing bridge.

The shipbuilding and marine engineering on display from a century ago are most impressive.

This entertaining volume does not confine itself entirely to older vessels. Klyne Tugs of Lowestoft are a local firm still going strong and their ETV Anglian Prince , chartered to the MCA, brings the reader very up to date, as do the 8,000teu boxships now calling at the local Port of Felixstowe and high speed ferries such Stena Discovery running to the Hook of Holland.

Suffolk Shipping
By Mike Stammers.
Published by Tempus Publishing Ltd.
ISBN 0 7524 2812 8.
Paperback, 128 pages.
Price £12.99