The 117 year old barge you can sail down the Medway
The Edith May is offering free sailing trips down the river. We went to check it out.
“Do you want to take the wheel for a while?”, I hear behind me.
It’s Stephen, the skipper of the Edith May sailing barge. The barge is a familiar sight to many in Medway, regularly sailing up and down the Medway between its home in Lower Halstow and Sun Pier, where we’ve climbed aboard today.
The question slightly takes me aback. I am, to put it mildly, not a boat person. I can probably count the number of times I’ve been on water on one hand. I cannot swim, so I’m one of only two people on board today wearing a life jacket. It isn’t the most flattering look, and I spend the rest of the trip paranoid that I’m going to pull the emergency cord and inflate like a balloon accidentally, but it makes me feel slightly less anxious on the water.
Despite all better judgement, I accept the offer to take the wheel, and suddenly, I’m steering a 117-year-old sailing barge down the River Medway.
It’s an exhilarating experience and not one I was expecting to have when I woke up a few hours earlier.
The vessel
The Edith May is a wooden Thames sailing barge, originally built in 1906 to transport various cargoes (often grain), largely between the east of England and London.
As sailing barges went out of fashion, the vessel was refitted with a motor engine in the 1950s and became a star of the barge racing circuit of the 1960s.
Following this, the Edith May went through periods as a museum ship and periods of disrepair, before finally being purchased by Geoff Gransden in 1999, who moved the barge to its current home in Lower Halstow and began the long journey to restoring it to its former glory.
The full restoration was completed around 2010, and since then, the barge has hosted art events, been a regular competitor in barge races, and operated as a charter vessel.
By 2019, the vessel was operated by Tiller & Wheel, an organisation set up by Ed Gransden (Geoff’s son) and Heather Burgess. Ed and Heather are familiar faces on the creative scene in Medway as the owners of one of Medway’s leading art spaces, Sun Pier House.
Part of the ethos of Tiller & Wheel is to make sailing more accessible, and so it was that I found myself steering a barge down the Medway on a Wednesday afternoon after seeing an advert on social media.
The experience
The advert that popped up on my feed that morning offered a free sailing down the river. At first, I ignored it, assuming there would be an inevitable catch. Eventually, curiosity got the better of me, and I booked myself in.
A few hours later I was on the barge along with a handful of others. The capacity on these trips is 12, but six arrived on the pontoon at Sun Pier for this sailing.
Stephen the skipper took us through a quick safety briefing, and shortly after, we were sailing into the river and heading toward Chatham Dockyard, which is where the wheel was thrust into my control.
Steering a sailing barge is very different to driving a car, the only wheel I’m familiar with. But with supervision, I started to understand the nuances of steering the barge, and its constant corrections and anticipating when you’ll need to turn the wheel, even as the vessel takes a long time to respond.
We were on the water for about an hour before returning to Sun Pier, having an experience that showed familiar Medway scenes from a new angle on the water that was somehow entirely free.
I was curious about how taking people for free trips up and down the river several times a day was a sustainable business model, so I headed to Sun Pier House to sit down with Ed Gransden to find out what they are up to.
The offer
He was blunt that it is difficult for a vessel like the Edith May to “wash its face”, and that they didn’t see a future in the old charter model. The same few people would book the barge repeatedly, running the risk of sailing becoming a playground of those who could spend chunks of money on trips.
But more important to Ed and Tiller & Wheel seems to be just getting people out on the water. It’s well known that Medway, for all of its dreams of being a ‘waterfront city’, barely makes use of its river. Ed talks about the lack of a new generation getting involved in sailing as an almost existential crisis for his barge and others like it. So if running some free trips down the river lights a spark underneath someone, it’s a worthwhile endeavour.
Ed is honest that the free sailing model is an attempt to find more people who can support the barge over the long term, whether from those learning the trade or financially.
When you book a free sailing, you need to pay a £10 deposit, which is refunded if you turn up, or you can choose to donate it to Tiller & Wheel. Asking people if they’d consider a small donation while having a lovely time on the river, unsurprisingly, works much of the time.
Those taking a trip are also pointed toward the Tiller & Wheel Patreon, where people can support their operations in various packages from £3pm up to hundreds. Each level contains different rewards from early access to sailings right up to fully wined and dined private cruises. There’s no obligation of course, and as I write this, 167 people are currently supporting the organisation with regular donations.
The future
Maintaining a sailing barge like the Edith May isn’t without its difficulties.
The huge sails on the vessel need replacing every 20 years and cost upwards of £30,000, and having last been done in 2010, it’s something coming soon over the horizon once again.
In recent years, the Edith May has faced challenges to its right to dock at Sun Pier, and (admittedly non-final) Chatham 2040 vision shows a new pedestrian bridge to Medway City Estate that would stop the barge from reaching its second home in Chatham.
In the immediate term, Tiller & Wheel are seeking companies to partner with to help support the future of the vessel.
But more than anything else, when asked what people can do to help keep the Edith May sailing, Ed has a very simple answer: “Come and try it out.”
It’s a compelling argument. One week on, I can already feel the itch of wanting to have another go, and I suspect I’m not the only one.
You can book free sailings on the Edith May, learn more about Tiller & Wheel and how you can help keep them, ahem, afloat on their website.
Footnotes
Music that soundtracked the creation of this newsletter: Searching For A Stream by Garden Centre.