Nancibelle
|
Nancibelle's name appears in several official records of the Little Ships which helped in the evacuation of Dunkirk and is credited with bringing back ninety-seven troops in a single voyage. But no further details are known.
After the heyday of the successful and romantic spritsail working barges in the nineteenth century, around 1890 the new concept of half-sized 'barge yachts' was developed. Compared with the 80ft-90ft length and 22ft beam of the working boats, these 'barge yachts' were 40ft in length, 11ft wide and had only a 2ft draft. In place of the cargo hold they had comfortable and roomy cabins which made them ideal to adapt as house-boats and they were provided with a ketch rig and the traditional lee boards.
Unusually, the Nancibelle was spritsail rigged and her main mast was stepped above the coach roof. She was built by the Sittingbourne Ship Building Company, Kent, in 1930 but her first recorded owner lived in Colchester, Essex, across the Thames Estuary. She changed hands three times before the war. After she came back from Dunkirk she had one more owner in the south of England and then moved up to Yorkshire - presumably through the canals, for which she would have been well suited with her narrow beam and especially modest draft.
In the mid 1970s she became a houseboat and a home for a number of families in succession. At that time she had her mast and rigging removed and when she had been taken on to the river Penryn, in the Fal estuary in Cornwall, she finally also lost her two Thornycroft engines.
Denise Pipkin, who originally bought Nancibelle as a mobile home, has had a struggle to maintain her and is now (in 1989) looking for someone who might once more restore the veteran to her original condition.
Source: 2, 3, 4, 11 & 19
Not yet updated