#164: Maryport and The Vanishing Age of Sail
About this episode
The episode explores the shipbuilding history of 19th-century Maryport through the journals of Kelsick Wood, featuring insights from author Simon Francis Brown.
...in which we return to 19th-century Maryport in the company of author Simon Francis Brown to explore the world of regional shipbuilding through the exquisite illustrated journals of master shipbuilder Kelsick Wood. Starting our walk at the Shipping Brow Gallery overlooking the River Ellen, we set the historic context for Kelsick’s arrival in Maryport in around 1818 – Britain as a maritime superpower, the age of empire, the political endgame of slavery – and paint a picture of the town’s bustling harbour, its numerous taverns, the lavish dinners held for Lord Senhouse, the squalor of many residents. Battling weather on the harbour wall, we introduce Kelsick Wood, the Workington-born shipbuilder who travelled the world before acquiring the family yard at Maryport and starting the illustrated journals (excerpts below) that Simon discovered in a Greenwich archive. Sheltering from the gale in a harbourside ginnel, we discuss the business of shipbuilding: the crafts required to bring together a finished brig; the unforgiving economics of timber imports; the impact of Cumbrian weather on operations; and the insurance stranglehold held for a time by London shipbuilders. Retiring to the…
More episodes of Countrystride
- Countrystride #165: Wool, Wine & Wordsworth – Hawkshead and its remarkable Grammar School
- #163: Walla Crag – A short history of Lake District guidebooks
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