Gray Matter
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From SS Great Britain to a college barge
Twice within a week last month, I boarded venerable vessels whose survival from a very different age provides a valuable reminder of the way things used to be. At Bristol, during the Venice Simplon Orient Express steam excursion I described here last week, I paid a first visit to Isambard Kingdom Brunel's maritime masterpiece, SS Great Britain, which travelled more than a million miles during its long career. Four lays later, at the Swan, in Streatley, I joined members of Magdalen College Boat Club past and present, before a celebratory dinner aboard the college's former barge. This has travelled nowhere very much at all during its lifetime; now moored beside the hotel, it is used for private functions.
SS Great Britain first took to the water, with its wrought iron hull and revolutionary steam-powered propeller, as long ago as 1843. But such was the length of her working life - much of it spent carrying emigrants to Australia - that it overlapped by six years that of the Magdalen barge which was built, with a hull of ferroconcrete, as late as 1927. Remarkably, Brunel's great ship was still ploughing the waves in the first year that the Rev Jock Fletcher-Campbell rowed in the Magdalen College crew at Summer Eights. This was in 1932. The crew went Head of the River, as it did in the two succeeding years when Jock again rowed at number three.
Meeting him last month before the boat club dinner - where at 96 he was much the oldest member present - I marvelled at his still mighty hands, picturing them wrapped around the oar on sunlit waters so many summers ago. They doubtless stood him in good stead, too, during the rough times he experienced - as he hinted in conversation - as a curate in wartime Portsmouth.
His memories of the barge - "lovely cold showers" apart - focus on its precarious state during the triumphant days of Eights, when supporters piled aboard in numbers that would cause apoplexy to an Elf 'n' Safety official of today.
Talking with Magdalen's President, Prof David Clary, I was interested to learn that the college is currently enjoying its most successful period of rowing for a great many years. Later this month during Eights Week, its crew is hoping to be Head of the River for the fourth year running. During Torpids in February, they scored their first win since 1934, when Jock was in the crew. The timing could hardly have been better for a club celebrating its 150th anniversary - the reason for the dinner aboard the barge.
The club's senior treasurer (and college home bursar), Mark Blandford-Baker, told me a much larger affair is planned on the Thames in London soon. In the meantime, he is publishing a lavishly illustrated history, Magdalen College Boat Club 1859-2008. Anyone interested in buying a copy (£35 - £30 before May 31) should write to him at the college.
Compared with the SS Great Britain, the barge had a short life in the role for which it was intended. Completed in time for Eights Week in 1927, it was used by crews and their supporters for just 20 years. Later it served as a store for a firm of Oxford boatbuilders and as a houseboat, before being sold to the Streatley hotel in 1979.
At the start of its life, as Peter Fullerton described in an article for the Magdalen College Record in 2004, there was some difficulty in bringing the vessel from the Chiswick boatyard, where it was built, to Salter's in Oxford where it was to be fitted out.
He wrote: "When the barge reached Abingdon, the bargee realised that he could not clear the bridge. He did not want to risk taking in water into the concrete hull to improve the headroom, a technique occasionally used by other bargees. So he decided to tempt on board with free beer a large number of people drinking in the pub at the bridge. The crowd piled on board and the barge cleared the bridge."
Famously, the SS Great Britain, too, had trouble moving from the dry dock (to which it has returned today) ready to begin her work. This is explained in the excellent guide book to the ship (a visit to which I urge upon anyone who has yet to see it).
"It took four years to build the SS Great Britain and then another 18 months to get her out of Bristol. This was because Brunel made her too big to fit easily through the lock at the entrance to the Floating Harbour. The GWSSC had to persuade the harbour authorities temporarily to dismantle the lock gates so the SS Great Britain could squeeze through on a high spring tide."
5:50pm Wednesday 30th April 2008
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