Severn Trow Norah stamp collage

We live not far away from the beautiful River Severn and enjoy walking along the banks at various points including Purton, Arlingham and Gloucester.  At one time, the river would have been busy with vessels such as the Severn trows, known as "open moulded" trows, with a hull constructed of planked wooden frame with an open waist and small decks at bow and stern. The two-masted ketch rig allowed easy access to the hold for loading and unloading of cargo.  The overall length of the trow was 56 feet.  
The Severn trows carried various cargoes along the river during the late 19th and early 20th century.

 I came across a scale model of the Severn Trow Norah at Maritime Museum in Greenwich and have just completed a stamp collage based on this.  Built in 1868 at Bridgewater, Norah carried bunker coal from coal ports such as Cardiff, Barry and Newport.  This coal was for domestic users, but also for coastal steamers - vessels such as the SS Robin, also featured in one of my collages, rescued from destruction and now in the Royal London dock.  
When her working days ended, Norah was bought by Captain Leonard Smart in 1932 and he beached her at Weston as a houseboat.  After his death in 1936 she was left there with other wooden hulks until the outbreak of war, when she was stripped of all her metalwork, for the war effort, and then burnt.  

Detail

Severn Trow Norah 

The Dispatch - Purton Ships' Graveyard

Sketch

Name Plate

My first visit to Purton was over three years ago when I went there with my daughter, currently in her final year of a Photography Degree. She had been told about the Purton Hulks and thought it would be an interesting place to go and take some photographs. We've returned there together and separately several times since then and I've also taken photos and made sketches of some of the remains of the ships and boats that are on the banks of the Severn.

The Dispatch fired my imagination, and having made a sketch recently I then managed to follow this up with some research on how this ship originally looked.

I'm currently working on a stamp collage of the Dispatch in full sail and will post this shortly. In the meantime more details about this magnificent Schooner built in 1888 can be found on the website http://www.friendsofpurton.org.uk/ which also has information about the other vessels in the Ships' graveyard.