One of the most idiosyncratic traditions of Rye Bonfire is the burning of a boat on top of the large bonfire on the Salts.
There are several theories as to why Ryers have burnt their boats: one such is that captured boats of Viking raiders were set alight on the Rye cliffs as a warning to other attackers, after being paraded around the town.
The most likely origin of this custom was during the 14th century when Rye, as one of the Cinque Ports providing ships for the King, and only 30 miles from France, was regularly attacked by the French. Rather than letting their boats fall into enemy hands, the people of Rye set fire to their own boats.
This year’s boat was the Lady Margaret, a wooden clinker fishing boat. She was built by a well-known Newhaven boat builder R Lower and Sons in 1987 who supplied many of the clinker boats from Dungeness to Shoreham, along with Harry Phillips of Rye at Rock Channel.
The Lady Margaret was built for John Gell, who came from a well-known fishing family of several generations in Eastbourne. She was first registered at Newhaven and given the port identification code and number of NN270.
She came to Rye in 1989 when Mick Varnish bought her and was registered as RX18 (RX is the registration for Rye and Hastings) and was berthed on the chain moorings by the Rye Harbour Lifeboat station fishing from Rye. Later, with a new owner, she was registered as RX19.
The artist, Jeremy Bear, came across RX18 when visiting Rye Harbour and drew the picture of her, seen in the featured image above. He has a passion for the sea and working boats and makes drawings and paintings of boats from around the country and in India. “My long-term project is to observe and portray the wooden fishing boats that are launched from the shingle beach in Hastings. This now forms a series of more than twelve drawings.”
Hastings is the home of Europe’s largest fleet of beach-launched fishing boats and the shingle beach has been used for this purpose for more than a thousand years.
No longer involved in fishing after 2019, the Lady Margaret was left for some time in the car park of the Rye Harbour Masters Office, her name and registration removed.
You can find out more about the work of the artist Jeremy Bear here.
Thank you to David Pepper for his help with additional information about the Lady Margaret.
Image Credits: Jeremy Bear , Steve Hutchings/Rye Bonfire Society , David Pepper .
That was a lovely looking boat back in it’s time, the work that goes into building a wooden boat is erased in an hour.