This short article is not intended to be scholarly and detailed but only to make readers aware, if they are not so already, that barges played a big part in the history of Rye. Present-day Rye seems so divorced from its maritime past that it’s quite an effort of imagination to see it as it was.
Three main types of barge were to be found here: the river barge, the coastal barge and the ocean-going barge. Many were built in Rye. Specialist barges plied the three rivers Rother, Tillingham and Brede. They traded upstream to places like Winchelsea, Bodiam and Smallhythe, and downstream to Rye Harbour. The coming of the railway made them obsolete and thereby undermined much of the society and ancient character of the town.
The main picture shows the sad, rotting wreck of The Primrose, one of the last of the Rye barges. The story of her recovery in 1992 and removal to the Shipwreck Heritage Museum for conservation has been told by Haydon Luke in Rye News.
Coastal barges were common and traded around the coast into and out of Rye. Thames barges docked here frequently including the Olive Mary, Royal Oak and Leonard Piper. Ketch-rigged boomsail barges (boomies), with topsails, were built here, some by G&T Smith at Rock Channel.
It’s hard to believe now that barges built here in England were intended for trade with South America and for South American owners! But that is what happened. Some were intended for work on the Amazon for which their flat bottoms and shallow draught were suitable. Barges went out to British Guiana and Demerera. It is certainly possible that ocean-going barges called in at Rye as, indeed, other types of ocean-going ships were built here.
Rye was a thriving maritime town in the nineteenth century, buzzing with coastal and international trade and shipbuilding and it is worth noting that though the Appledore (Devon) shipyard was closed just over a year ago through lack of orders it is now planned to reopen it as Harland & Wolf (Appledore) so surely there is hope for Rye!
