Voyage around EAnglia

Our September meeting showcased the maritime experiences of Robert Simper, who enthralled his 50-strong audience with a whistle-stop voyage along the East Coast, starting at the port of King’s Lynn, then passing by the shores and estuaries of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, before finally ‘mooring’ at St Katherine’s dock, close to Tower Bridge, London.  

A native of Suffolk, whose home is located on the banks of the River Deben, Robert Simper is the author of 42 books, and has sailed extensively around Britain with his wife Pearl.  Continuing the family tradition, their son Jonathan and grandson Harry also both make a living from the sea.

Robert’s talk, delivered with great eloquence and a gently mischievous sense of humour, was accompanied by many of his own photographs, providing a colourful background to a stream of fascinating facts.  Along the way, we learned about the impact of the changing topography of coastal East Anglia on local communities and their livelihoods, the see-sawing fortunes of fishermen, and the gradual decline of traditional boat-building, as ‘wind’ power lost popularity to more efficient steam-driven vessels.

So spellbinding was Robert’s presentation that some of the audience were moved to comment that they had felt like one of his crew members, even to the point that one claimed to feel the rise and fall of the ocean waves from the comfort of her seat!

If you’d like to see more of Robert Simper in action, he can be seen in John McCarthy’s excellent film, ‘Life on the Deben’.  He also starred in an episode of the recent ‘River Walks’ series on BBC1.

Robert's family have lived in East Suffolk since at least the eighteenth century.  He was born at Blaxhall in 1937, but has lived most of his life in Ramsholt.  Robert left school in 1953, and started work on the family farms when horses were still being worked beside the first tractors.  Drawn by the lure of the sea, he went off crewing on some of the last barges trading under sail, and these two experiences gave him a great passion for the old ways of life, when the countryside moved at the speed of a horse and the merchant fleets of coastal Britain were moved by wind power.

Just after World War II, Robert started going out with an uncle on his fishing boat, and at the age of nineteen he bought a small boat and sailed to Holland.  He has owned a large number of boats over the years; recently they have got smaller, but he is still on the water whenever he gets the opportunity.

Robert has written over forty books, and he also starred in John McCarthy's recent film "Life on the Deben".  With his wife Pearl he has travelled endlessly, recording and photographing the age that has almost gone.

© Robert Simper