18
DOUGAL
on tour
ALL AT SEA JANUARY 2022
Solent based dinghy sailor David Henshall is a well known writer and speaker on topics covering the rich heritage of all aspects of leisure boating.
Dirty Waters
When we go out in our boats how often can we honestly say that we think about what is in the water around us? Perhaps you might take a closer look next time… The heavy, cast iron sewer pipes were at the mercy of wave action and settlement, at which point leakage could occur straight out on to a popular bathing beach. Image: David Henshall
corrective action is taken. Quite rightly, there has been a storm of protest and we will be following up on this story as it unfolds, for this is too important a topic to ignore. Having the waters around our coasts so polluted is a situation that must not be allowed to continue. And yet, before we jump on to the bandwagon of popular megaphone politics, it is worth stepping back and taking a longer and harder look at where we are, as this must surely help inform us as how we can best proceed. We often chart the growth of leisure boating back to that golden era in the 1960s, when getting afloat was the thing to do, and it is at this point that I should hold my hand up to admitting that I was already afloat myself by then. Better still, I lived in a house that backed on to the beach of Southampton Water, so in many ways I am a true ‘child of the Solent’. I grew up with the water as a back garden, and we were as likely to be in it as on it.
they are today, but I would struggle to explain just how bad they really were! For starters, this is not just a problem of today, or even one of recent times, but a situation that has roots as far back as the Middle Ages, a time when coastal trade was becoming increasingly international, which saw port areas such as Southampton and Portsmouth growing fast. Yet as the docksides and wharfs spread out, nothing had been done to deal with the massive increase in population, which saw the Solent’s double tides as little more than an ‘extended flush’ that carried the daily discharges from the cities out to sea. Little wonder that over 500 years ago there were complaints about the state of the water around Southampton, saying that “inhabitants of this Towne, espetially those dwellings nere about the watergate, doe cast the filth of there howses into the sea which is very dangerous for destroyenge the harbor”.
The good old days?
The problem then, just as it is now, is one of growth. Detailed records going back into our history show how the concentration of population into areas such as Southampton and Portsmouth had placed an incredible burden on all of the services needed, with the provision
However, before we set the tumbrils rolling down the streets, we need to understand that back in the ‘old days’, yes, those supposedly glorious, freewheeling golden years of the 1960s, that things were not only worse than
A growth problem
“No wonder the environmentalists have described the central South Coast, and the Solent in particular, as being one of the most ‘stressed’ areas around our coasts.”
H
ere at All at Sea we are proud to be able to bring you the news without getting dragged down into any of the great political debates of the day. Taking this stance is not always easy, as events in the bigger world do have an impact on our lives as boaters, be that in the issues of taking our boats abroad post Brexit, the ever-rising cost of fuel or the rights and wrongs of restrictions caused by the Covid pandemic. However, there is a debate that is currently raging in the Press that really does impact on us as we ‘go down to the sea in ships’ for it apparently seems that for various reasons some Water companies have been allowing torrents of untreated sewage to pour into our coastal waters and inland rivers. In some areas the situation is now serious, with the sailing hotspot of Chichester Harbour starting to look like, not to mention smell like, an open drain. I motored around a number of popular sailing locations and was disturbed to find large areas of mis-coloured and foul-smelling water that undoubtedly said ‘sewage’!
Wildlife at risk
The boating community are not the only ones that use the harbour, as the whole complex of wetlands and waterways has long been renowned for the diversity and quality of the wildlife who have relied on us to share it, without destroying it. Yet, looking at the statistics, the fear now is that it is not just that the wildlife in the harbour is under threat, but that there is a real risk of it being killed off before belatedly
The recent headlines about massive discharges of untreated waste into the sea and inland waterways is a national scandal. In a new three part series, local sailor Dougal Henshall looks at how things were, then how they now are, before hopefully looking to a brighter, cleaner future for our seas. Image: Jon Shore/Shutterstock
Even in the calm of a foggy day, the bell buoy will still ring out its warning to approaching sailors. Image: Dan Hanscom / Shutterstock
