Beginning

What can you say about a 78 year old ex-cargo steamship? 

That she is beautiful.  That she enchants all who meet her.  That she is beloved by us.  By Boat Husband-Captain.  And me.  That she had been waiting for us, our Gorgeous Little Ship, and we for her.  That she is all our dreaming made reality.

Here is her portrait, as she looked when I first set eyes on her last September.



Splendid isn’t she?

You can see why it was a coup de foudre.  Why she is our sun, moon and guiding star.  Why I use that pronoun unapologetically.

There are people or events that happen to us that are transformative.  They leave marks on our timeline; divisions so profound that life thereafter can only be understood, in the almost Biblical sense, as a Before and an After that happening.  Davenham’s coming is one of those marks.

Boat Husband found her. 

“I’ve found us a boat.”  He announced on the phone, approximately a week after our decision to search for a floating home.  “I think she could be The One.”

“Then she must be.” I told him.

“I want you to see her.”

And when I stood on the riverbank gazing at her - part Molly Aida, part industrial hulk - oh, the sheer heart-pounding wonder of her… I knew that she was. 

We had been in love before: a Dutch barge named Thankfulness.  She was our First Love and resides in a special place in our memory - no-one ever forgets their first.

But Davenham.  Davenham was The One.

People tell me: “You’re courageous.” I reply that no, we fell in love, the Captain and I,  with Davenham.  Anyone who’s been in love will understand; you are in an altered state.  You are, quite simply, demented.  The fact is, that long before the in-mud inspection was conducted and the visible, tappable parts  of her hull were pronounced sound, The Captain and I were too enamoured of Davenham to concieve of a life without her at the centre of it.

Everything about our relationship with this Gorgeous Little Ship has been

uncanny, as though she was waiting for us and drawing us to her.

Our telephone conversations were almost breathless with disbelief:  the reuniting of the Captain with the boat he had wanted to buy fifteen years before; the convergence of opportunity and timing that had delivered her into our orbit; the small craft “Tintin” which helped manoeuvre Davenham from dry dock in a balletic choreography of ropes - the same name as my True North’s dog (small feral terrier, HUGE personality);

Tintin

 Davenham’s destination, a place which had been the captain’s password since our exploratory visit to its marinas in the nineties...... The consellation of events and signs were too many to ignore or brush aside as coincidence.  Experience has taught me to take heed of them.

I have taken  heed too, of  Lovely Sister Sandra’s suggestion  that I should write about Davenham, having initially dismissed the idea, thinking that nobody would be terribly interested.  But so many other (kind and indulgent) people have also suggested it that I thought, well, at the very least, it would be a record of our watery exploits and a way to document the tales of our historic Little Ship.   

I realised, when contemplating our life with Davenham so far and making a list of various happenings, that scarcely a day has passed without some event or adventure and suddenly there seems such a great deal to say.   Moira encapsulated it, being quite an expert, living as she does in something not disimilar: “She is part museum, part home.”

 

These days, people ask, “How is Davenham?” before they ask about me.  I am instantly infused with a glow of almost inexpressable delight. The state of me being intimately bound with the condition of Davenham, the answer would be the same in any case.  Joy.  She is such joy.

To the Captain and I she is fascinating and magnificent and if you don’t think so too you should read no further (and will, in the passage of time, be forgiven).

If you are interested you can read our story and I promise to try:

a)     to confine my nautical preoccupations to the pages of this diary

b)    to endeavour to cultivate other topics of conversation

Davenham’s previous owner, S, bequeathed to us an archive of her official papers, letters, surveys and cuttings which I hope to make accessible via the blog.   She had an interesting life before our coming, our Gorgeous Girl:  a number of letters regret to inform Dear Sirs of “contact” made with other vessels as she steamed her cargo along the River Weaver; saved from the fate of some of her sister ships by the installation of a modern diesel engine; declines and restorations.

But the most exciting adventures are those she hasn’t yet lived.

They will be chronicled here,  and begin around the first anniversary of Davenham coming into our lives.

Welcome aboard our home.