Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in excellent bright condition.Cover has some marking and wear. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Indeed the River Parrett was coming down in full flood owing to the heavy winter rains in the Dorset- Somerset Hills to the southeast. Most of the Levels lay under water and with the wind in the quarter it was there would be a bore towards the small hours of tomorrow morning. About one fifty-three I reckoned in my head. We had finished supper here in my house at Bridgewater. Either side of Bridgewater Town Bridge lay my two inherited ships. Up-stream The Trowbridge a Severn Trow a converted flat-bottom sailing barge. (The word comes from the Anglo-Saxon drinking vessels.) And down-stream my bigger ship The Barbara not quite a schooner nor a clipper but a bit of both. Well able as a merchant’s ship to sail to the European ports from which I mostly fetch my merchandise. The Parrett is encumbered by a number of shoals which shift in the time of floods and frequently ground and damage vessels. Though the waterway is less hazardous for goods going southwards than the very rocky passage round Land’s End and in time of war privateer ships from the Channel Islands. Old stone Bridgewater Bridge had been replaced about forty years ago with an iron one some few yards upstream from where I have been told the very narrow stone bridge once was outside my door. This was long before I knew the town. Many people complained about the three stone piers which supported the triple lofty arches that in time of floods was a serious obstruction to the waterway. I think it may have been a little like Pill Bridge near lichester to which place we bring many goods the most being coal We Trowmen are able to go upriver from Combewich at the mouth to Langport or up the River Tone to Taunton free passage owing to a Charter in King Charles I reign when we had infection in the town. But the weather makes it too risky to move with our tidal problems. We all six of us are comfortable. (MP)