Broad Mooring Charge?

[Broads01]

14 hours ago, TheQ said:

Salhouse broad, ex gravel pit. As far as I know no staithe  and no rights to use it but no objection from the owners.

Is "staithe" defined in a particular way in this context? Do the moorings at Salhouse count as a staithe?

[CambridgeCabby]

I believe , a staithe is specifically a loading / offloading point for goods / cargo , as opposed to merely a mooring point to gain access to land , so would assume a staithe historically must have been used for commercial purposes 

[Vaughan]

Without looking it all up again (it's all here on the forum somewhere) we must remember that the best way around Norfolk in the old days was by water.  Navigations were dug out, largely by hand and we are, in fact, using only about one third today, of all the navigations which existed in the days of the keels and wherries.  There were no railways and roads were only rough tracks made unsafe by robbers.

I remember there is a difference between a private staithe, for the produce of a local farmer, and a public staithe, which is usually in a village and serves the community in general.  A staithe is not the same as the common land of a village green, used for grazing of livestock.  It is usually, as CC says, a place where cargo is transferred from road to water.

Navigations had to be maintained to a staithe and a good example is Tunstall Dyke, which is still there and runs under a low bridge on the Acle Straight, just between Acle and Stracey.  Hard to believe when you drive over it now, that it was once navigated by two wherries, owned by farmers in Tunstall.  They must have been pretty small ones, I imagine!

Another good one is Barton Turf, which looks today much as it did hundreds of years ago.

[Vaughan]

On 18/09/2021 at 20:46, Wussername said:

My old grandfather, (all grandfather's are old.........I'm a grandfather) told me that there is an ancient statute bound in the history of time, in days of old when boatmen were bold, you were allowed to anchor in tidal water for one full turn of the tide.

Wussername is quite right about this but you do, of course, have to be in a pure sailing vessel with no engine.  The wherryman had to work the tides and if the wind dropped off to nothing as night fell and the tide turned, it was either moor on the bank or start going steadily backwards.

The Broads are the only inland waterway  I know where there are no tow paths, as commercial transport was by sail. 

So no "horse power"!

[Smoggy]

1 hour ago, Vaughan said:

The Broads are the only inland waterway  I know where there are no tow paths, as commercial transport was by sail. 

I assume you mean not including natural rivers used for navigation, the gt.ouse and nene has no towpaths and part of the reason narrowboats venturing off the canals can be such a pita when they assume they can just moor up anywhere.

[Vaughan]

9 hours ago, Smoggy said:

has no towpaths and part of the reason narrowboats venturing off the canals can be such a pita when they assume they can just moor up anywhere.

Which I think is exactly my point.  

The Thames has towpaths, which may be part of the recent live-aboard problem in the reaches around Reading and Oxford these days.

The Broads is unique in that there are no locks and very few bridges, so commercial traffic was sailing keels and wherries. The existence of a towpath means that there is a strip of land owned by the navigation authority, where you can always stop.  On the Broads all the river banks are owned by someone or other.

So it eventually entered into law that a wherry had the right to moor for the turn of one tide.  I also understand that there was only the right to "go ashore" in order to tend the mooring lines.

 

[Wussername]

My understanding is that is was not a right to moor but a right to anchor on the shore, for one full turn of the tide. An anchore line from the craft to the bank. The helm or anybody else for that matter was not allowed to encroach upon the land other than to attend to the anchor, a matter of a feet. 

Andrew