Saucy Is There……
‘Saucy’ is there….I can see her!
The tugboat is pulling her slowly into dock.
I’m sitting on the timbers of other ships….. it’s a desolate sight.
I started as a carpenters boy on the Temeraire, many years ago, and I’ve had a good life…….
Aye, I was at Trafalgar, and I can tell you that we had a huge job refitting her and making her seaworthy again after that little fistfight. She did a great job and fought bravely.
My shipmates are as heartbroken as I. We’re all gathered to see her last journey.
She and hundreds like her are being decommissioned, by royal decree. That means that her timbers will also sit here on the dockside waiting forlornly for one of these scavengers to take her pieces away.
Yes……. There are several vultures hovering, here in the docks, waiting for her to moor. They will lay a claim to her bones….. and I will be paid to pull her apart and stack her pieces into the waiting carts.
These are the church’s men and have been told that the timbers are theirs so long as they ‘salvage’ the ships timbers and take them away.
So…. Here I am…. Waiting to cut ’Saucy’ up into little bits! ( that’s the name we sailors have nicknamed her with.)
I have the promise of work, somewhere in Devon, in a little church in Tavistock. I’ll escort the timbers to the town and help to rebuild its roof. Apparently sailors…. Carpenters like me are in great demand all over the country.
So many ships!
As I lead small group tours around the country, I come across many small parish churches where the roof was very clearly rebuilt in the 1830s by men such as this…. The very carpenters who kept the vessels afloat had become their executioner. Many then become responsible for their rebirth.
When walking into a church…. Look up!
Mahogany, teak and of course English oak will be found aloft.