10: The Sailmakers

Whilst sailmaking as a trade can be traced back many centuries, it came into prominence as an industry in Britain in the 15th century with the formation and subsequent growth of the Navy. At one time it would have featured as a trade at every port and boatyard around this island nation.

Between 1949 and 1951 when Oakdale was being built as the next to the last Mersey Flat at Richard Abel & Sons Castlerock boatyard, Runcorn, Charlie Rowe, was the in-house sailmaker. Although by this time the great tan-red sails that once provided these vessels with their motive power, had long been replaced with towage by tug.

His work had by this point been reduced to the making of waterproof covers for the hatch coamings, the painting of boat names and the waterproofing of life rings. His wooden sailmakers hut, that sat near the arches of the Britannia Bridge, was still filled with the remnants of his past industry and festooned with oil lamps and drying waterproofed canvas that hung on racks from the ceiling.

Sailmaking is today on the red list of nationally endangered craft trades. And although there were somewhere around 21-50 sailmakers around the UK in 2017, the number of trainees in that year was counted as being between 15-20 UK wide.

To return Oakdale to sail, means turning back the clock to a time between the wars when a number of the Mersey sailing flats still plied their trade on the river. Her strong wooden hull, although redesigned to allow for even greater loads, was still based upon a design first used by Abel’s boatbuilders a hundred years earlier in the 1850’s.

Just 9 years after Oakdale was launched, a sailmaking company was started by James Lawrence, himself a commercial barge skipper who traded under sail. His company, now run by Mark Butler, who started with the firm in 1977, have provided the Oakdale project with price estimates for her traditionally made mainsail and foresail. Crafted, it should be said, just as they were in the 1850’s, by hand and using skills and techniques passed down through generations.