A look at Hamble River through the years

THIS is the time of year when those who can tie bowlines make their way down to the Hamble, imbued with the ‘sea fever’ that John Masefield evokes in his famous poem.

It might be for a gentle cruise up Southampton Water, a beat across to the Lepe shore and on to Keyhaven, or a reach across the Solent for a night on the piles at Yarmouth – provided there’s space. Others following the ‘vagrant gypsy life’ will be making more ambitious plans, for the Channel Iles, Brittany or much further afield.

The Hamble is, of course, world renowned as a mecca of boating – a jewel of the county, one of the joys of living here. It starts as a tiny waterway in the wetlands of Bishops Waltham and runs down to Botley (once also the route of a railway). Below Curdridge it changes from a stream to an inlet. Pinkhaven marks the limit of navigation, named after the small chubby flat-bottomed vessels called ‘pinks’ that ferried goods upstream.

Until relatively recently it was more often called a creek than a river. Over the millennia its valley has been drowned, making an estuary with relatively deep waters and plenty of mud, which is ideal for laying up boats. It was a good place for ships to take on fresh water and another virtue was its high-water stand or double tides, which Bede mentioned nearly 1,400 years ago in his Ecclesiastical History, albeit using an early place name.

“In this sea, the two tides of the ocean…meet in conflict beyond the mouth of the river Homelea, which runs …through the lands of the Jutes, belonging to the country of the Gewissae; and after this struggle of the tides, they fall back and return into the ocean whence they come.”

The maritime status of the river is demonstrated by the fact that when the best location for a naval dockyard was being considered, Portsmouth was favoured as ‘being near Hamble’. In 1346 when troops embarked for Crécy, Hamble mustered seven ships and 117 mariners, whilst Portsmouth managed only five ships and 96 mariners.

Place-name experts think that the full name, Hamble-Le-Rice, probably means ‘crooked river in the undergrowth’, as it was once deep in woodlands and has a Z-bend at Bursledon. In fact, this quirk made it an ideal place for shipbuilding. Vessels built on the west shore could be launched into deep water reaching across to Swanwick.

The first substantial ship to be built at Bursledon was probably the St George, launched in 1338 in the presence of Edward III and blessed by the Bishop of Winchester. A century later the Keeper of the King’s Ship, William Soper, built Petit Jesus here and also used the river to lay up several ships. One of then the Grâce Dieu was struck by lightning in 1439 and burnt to the waterline. The wreck still lies in the river, marked by a yellow buoy topped with a cross.

Shipbuilding at Bursledon resumed when William Wyatt launched the Devonshire in 1692. He won contracts from the Navy Board for several other ships before smallpox claimed him a year later. His widow Anne took over the yard, which was no mean feat. Another stalwart was Philemon Ewer, who built seven ships at Bursledon in the 1740s. His memorial in the local church calls him “an ingenious Artist and excellent workman and an honest Man”. And apparently: “All his Undertakings were crowned with Success”.

The heyday of shipbuilding on the Hamble was the late 18th century during wars with the French and Americans. Between 1780 and 1807 George Parsons built 16 ships on a site near the Jolly Sailor pub graphically called Land’s End. His most famous ship was HMS Elephant, Nelson’s flagship during the Battle of Copenhagen. Another of his vessels, HMS Nymphe, is commemorated at Rockport, Massachusetts, where in 1812 she successfully took part in an action to capture a rebel fort.

Faced in 1807 at the age of 78 with the end of the Bursledon lease, Parsons decided to transfer his entire works to the Warsash hard. Here he laid elm launchways, built seven houses for workers and an inn, the Shipwright’s Arms (now the Rising Sun). It was the start of a new era in the river’s history, where lobsters and crabs were later brought ashore for shipping to the cities.

It was essentially a distribution business made possible by the railways. It started in about 1850 when the schooner Peri brought over shellfish from Concarneau. According to a newspaper report of 1883, the shellfish were “brought by vessels [as many as eight] with wells at the bottom of the hold from Devonshire, Cornwall, the Scilly Isles, the west coast of Ireland and the rocky shore of France and Norway”.

Vessels would anchor off rocky shores where shellfish abounded, and local fishermen would row out with their catch. Lobsters were kept in ponds at Warsash and Hamble Point and crabs stored in ‘carbs’, described as “floating chests with the lids just a little above the level of the water”. A clue to the past is the Lobster Quay Pound of the Warsash Sailing Club, founded in 1957, and its burgee, a lobster on a yellow background.

Elsewhere, in Hamble village, shellfish from the river provided a living for centuries for the monks of the priory – one of many owned by the Abbey of Tiron, near Chartres, founded in 1109. The cathedral priory at Winchester was entitled to 20,000 oysters a year and in return provided a variety of essentials – clothing, shoes, loaves and ale.

William of Wykeham purchased the so-called ‘alien’ priory for Winchester College in 1391. The Muniments, meticulously edited by Sheila Himsworth, contain a listing of deeds on Hamble still held in the school, covering no less than 35 pages. Its lands were sold off piecemeal from the late 19th century, with parts of the foreshore only going in the 1990s.

Much more on the Hamble River can be found in the publications of the local history societies of Warsash and Hamble, both founded at the turn of the century, and from the work of an informal group at Bursledon.

The meteoric growth of moorings and marinas on the river has transformed it. A yachtsman writing in 1912 remembered that “as far back as 1874 I sailed up to Bursledon then a deserted and charming little duck pond. Now the bight below Bursledon railway bridge looks like a pond made for toy boats and there is really very little room for more”.

In fact, a great deal of ‘room’ has been found over the years, with fore-and-aft trots between piles, marinas and most recently dry stacks. The first marina at Port Hamble opened in 1964, followed shortly by another at Swanwick, built by A. H. Moody & Son (sold in 2005, now called the Premier Marina). Talking in the 1980s, a director remarked: “Not having a marina today is like trying to run a pub without a car park.”

For more on Hampshire, visit: www.hampshirearchivestrust.co.uk.

Postponement: Due to changes in Covid regulations, the event to commemorate the life of beekeeper Rev Charles Butler at Wootton St Lawrence announced last week has been postponed from July 17 to August 21, which happens to be during National Honey Bee Weekend. For details, contact: robson.ken48@gmail.com.