A huge welcome to the Sailing Barge Lady Daphne. She has just joined the Topsail Charters Fleet. Lady Daphne sails down the Thames on her first charter this Saturday.
Find Lady Daphne in St Katherine’s Dock, her home base from where she will be cruising the River Thames. Step onboard and experience Tower Bridge lifting as the Banks of the Thames slip past. whilst you enjoy freshly prepared food onboard an Historic Thames Sailing Barge.
LADY DAPHNE was ordered in 1921 from Short Brothers, Rochester, by David Watson a part-owner of Thomas Watson (Shipping). The company had a tradition of naming vessels with the prefix ‘Lady’, and when launched in January 1923 LADY DAPHNE was named after David Watson’s eldest daughter Daphne. The barge was constructed of wood – with oak frames, side planking and wales, elm chine planks, Oregon pine spars – and a steel keelson, and had a marked sheer to the foredeck as befitted a vessel intended for coastal work.
Together with her near sister, LADY JEAN, she was amongst the very few wooden barges built after the First World War and, unusually for a sailing barge, she was built from lines.
LADY DAPHNE was known as a lucky ship following a bizarre escape in December 1927. On passage from Weymouth to Fowey in a thick snow storm driven by an easterly gale the skipper was washed overboard and lost. The mate and third hand desperately burned improvised flares as the vessel drifted out of control. This was a forlorn gesture but the barge was at last spotted by the Lizard signal station, their final hope, late on Christmas Day. The Lizard lifeboat was launched and rescued the two exhausted crew members in the early hours of Boxing Day leaving the vessel to run on into the blackness, with only the pet canary left on board. A day later she was seen heading for the rocks near Crowe Sound in the Isles of Scilly, and the St Mary’s lifeboat was launched. Her crew boarded the barge which was still underway under jib alone, about three hundred yards from the shore of the island of Tresco, and were surprised to find only the canary aboard. Reaching the wheel the lifeboatmen put the helm over, whereupon the jib split with a crack like a gun, and headed for the shore, beaching the barge in two feet of water on safe shelving sand. After a full refit she was back in service within a year and continued trading for another 45 years.
