# 'Blue Bell'.



## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

'Blue Bell' was a Whitstable ouster smack. Built in 1910, she was of pitch-pine planking on oak frames. She was 42 feet overall hull length, 12 feet beam, with a square counter stern and a draft of five feet six inches. Gaff-rigged as a cutter, she carried a jib-headed topsail above the main on a fidded topmast. There was a foresail upfront of the mast, and a staysail forward, set on a 20 foot bowsprit... 15 feet outboard.
I bought her at the end of January, 1964, a week after I turned 18. Her previous owner had drowned while sailing her on the River Orwell, and I cycled to the village of Harkstead on the River Stour to secure the deal. Through the widow's solicitor, I had a year to pay for the vessel, but paid her off in six months.
She lay in a mud-berth at the Orwell Yacht Club at Bourne Bridge, Ipswich. The bilge-water had flooded over the cabin floorboards, and she was in a right old state. Over the next six months, me and my fellow investors went about 'doing her up' enough to get in a few sailing trips before the onset of winter. Money was tight, as almost every penny we had between us went towards the purchase, so bodging was the name of the game. We had to make do with what little we had... and that was that.
I first fitted her with a Morris Cowley car engine, which was the order of the day in that working-man's yacht club. It was offset to port, with the propeller on the port side of the rudder, as was the norm for smack conversions in the 50's and 60's. The next engine, procured from Fox's Boat Yard on Wherstead Road, was a 15 hp. two cylinder Kelvin Fisherman petrol/paraffin engine, which did her for a year or so. After that, I fitted her with a 36 hp. four cylinder Kelvin Ricardo petrol/paraffin engine, also procured from Fox's Boat Yard. Me and my mates trundled it down the middle of Wherstead Road on a WWII bomb trolley, as the footpath was too bumpy, and the near-side of the road had too much camber.
I started running fishing parties in the winter and, with friends, took her on many adventures across the North Sea. I formed a local police trawling club, and we trawled with her in the Orwell Estuary after fitting a winch running off the engine. I used her on several police operations during my six years as a police officer at Ipswich, in Suffolk, as they had no police boat of their own.
One morning, the police area car got me out of bed to search for a suspect yacht. The local Bobby in the village of Nacton had gone down the lane to the River Orwell at one in the morning for a quiet smoke. When he got down to the beach, a man was standing by his van, propped up against the radiator also having a quiet smoke. When the village Bobby asked him what was up, the fool said he was waiting to service his yacht, instead of making up a believable story such as having had a row with his missus. The Bobby pulled out his packet and offered him one, saying he would wait and service it with him. Who should turn up in an outboard-powered Zodiac but Terry Walker, a local villain who had spent time in Norwich Prison for stealing the 18 foot Zodiac from the Duke of Edinburgh's yacht, 'Bloodhound', moored at the Royal Harwich Yacht Club at Wherstead for a visit. On the stern of the dingy was the name, 'Tender to Carmen of Malden'. 
The Customs launch from Harwich had spent the whole night trying to find the vessel, combing Harwich Harbour, and the Orwell and Stour rivers... but without success. They were sure she was loaded with illegal Pakistani immigrants, the illicit cargo of the day.
With two police detectives as crew, I set off from my mooring at the Orwell Yacht Club with 'Blue Bell'. Within 20 minutes, I saw a red Bermudian sloop moored on the outer trots of the Royal Harwich Yacht Club, that shouldn't have been there. I was up and down the River Orwell several times a week, so knew every sailing yacht and motor boat moored by the side of the deep water channel. And would you believe it... the padlock on 'Blue Bell's' hatch was the same as on the 'Carmen of Malden'... and the key fitted. When I opened the lock and slid down the hatch, the yacht was packed stem to stern with boxes of contraband cigars.
We towed her back to the lock gates at Ipswich dock, where the Customs and Excise Office was situated. They swarmed all over the yacht, and even went through 'Blue Bell' from bow to stern. There were 77,000 cigars on board the yacht. For years later the joke went around the local pubs, how I was running a table at the Steamboat Public House selling boxes of cigars, alongside a local villain selling transistor radios from the 10,000 stolen from the No. 2 Transit Shed on Cliff Quay. When I returned to the UK in 1900, these stories were still going around the bars during a drunken haze. 
A year after getting married in 1966, I took my young bride, Kay, to Zeebrugge after visiting Oustende. A young friend and his girlfriend crewed with us for a romantic outing. Doug later also became a police officer at Ipswich, spending most of his 30 year service as a dog-handler. Moored up to a couple of large steel piles was the gaff yawl, 'Biche'. She was used as an accommodation ship for the Royal Belgian Yacht Club dinghy races, and for the visiting Sea Scout troop. The yacht club was building shore hostel facilities, and the old girl was in a bad way. I was determined to have her, so made an offer by letter when I returned to the UK.
'Blue Bell' was the escort for 'Biche' across the North Sea, after she had towed her out to sea from Zeebrugge Harbour. Because the NE wind backed to north, meaning that I couldn't fetch to Harwich, I set a course for the River Medway. After mooring 'Biche' there for two weeks, I returned with a new crew and enough fuel to tow 'Biche' all the way to Ipswich in light airs.
I used 'Blue Bell' for another two years for fishing parties and police operations, until I sold her to an old friend, 'Noisy' Parker. He carried on my business with fishing parties, while I got stuck into four years of hard work, rebuilding and refitting 'Biche' back to a seaworthy condition.
After my 12 year voyage around the tropical world with my fourth ship, M/V Debut, I returned to the UK with my young Samoan wife, Mariana, and our two young children. I just missed seeing 'Blue Bell' leaving Debbage's Boat Yard on the New Cut on a low-loader, bound for Paris. She is now on display at the Paris Martine Museum on the River Seine, as one of the last Whitstable ouster smacks under sail. One day, I'd like to go there and see her, on my way to La Rochelle to see 'Biche', and bring back all those wonderful memories of my first ventures out to sea. All the best, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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