Sailing barge Thalatta

Thalatta

Thames sailing barge Thalatta
History
England
Name:	Thalatta
Builder:	McLearon, Harwich, Essex, UK
Launched:	1906
Decommissioned:	2006
Status:	Rebuilding
General characteristics
Class and type:	Thames sailing barge
Tons burthen:	67
Length:	88.9 ft (27.1 m)
Beam:	20.6 ft (6.3 m)
Draught:	2 ft (0.61 m)approx
Depth of hold:	6 ft (1.8 m)approx
Propulsion:	Sail and auxiliary diesel engine
Sail plan:	mainsail, topsail, mizzen, foresail, jib
Complement:	2

Thalatta is a Thames sailing barge, built in Harwich, Essex, in 1906 and rebuilt in St Osyth in 2012. She is 90 feet (27 m) long and 26 feet (7.9 m) across the widest part of the deck. Like all Thames barges, she is flat-bottomed and has leeboards instead of a keel. She spent some of her life ketch-rigged and some of it spritsail-rigged. She is now permanently spritsail rigged, and has a mainmast and topmast that, together, are about 90 feet (27 m) high, and a mizzen mast. Thalatta has had two periods with an auxiliary engine and two without. She carried cargo for sixty years and was then converted for use as a sail training ship in 1966. She was completely rebuilt between 2006 and 2012 at St Osyth with assistance from lottery funds.

Thalatta was built by McLearon's shipyard in Harwich. She was bought from McLearon's by Fred Horlock of Mistley, who gave her a spritsail rig suitable for sailing in the smooth waters of the Thames estuary. She was registered on 6 February 1906 and her first skipper was James Alliston of Mistley.

Thalatta's first freight was from London to Lowestoft, and from there they went to Hull and then back to Mistley. On 24 March, they sailed to Ipswich to load beans for Nieuwpoort in Belgium and there they loaded a cargo for Antwerp. During that first year of trading, Thalatta visited Hull again and also Dunkirk and Rotterdam.

The spritsail rig isn't a good rig for the rough waters of the North Sea, and at some point, early in her life, Thalatta was re-rigged as a ketch, with a boom and gaff mainsail