Ron Bosworth

Merchant Seaman

By Ron Bosworth

I hope with this true story it will help you to understand.

Well I'll start as I can remember it.  It began in the 1930's, I was 10 years old, my father from Saul, Moor Street, was a tugboat skipper at Bristol and Avonmouth (I must say skipper because in those days these people didn't need tickets. They just knew what was expected to know). As I had been versed in the art of seamanship, he sent me back to Saul to understand where he came from and its seafaring history.

Already in his early years he had been to sea with his father Captain Charley Bosworth in the Trow 'Spartan', sailing to Ireland and North Africa.  He also sailed in the Gloucester ketch 'Ann'.  The other son in that family Alfred come to Bristol to sail in the sand dredger with his cousins Oswald and Frank Phillips.  So after being put on a bus with ham sandwich and a bottle of water, I made my way up the A38 to Saul.

Down the road to Frampton Green, where my mother worked to earn a penny or two cleaning at the Pub, (her mother had died when she was young).  On towards Saul to see Aunt Flo Travel, the telephone operator and wife of the skipper of the Trow 'Flower of the Severn'.

While I remember this, Frank Phillips lost his life in enemy action on the SS Durham.  My mother lost her cousin off Barry in the Bristol Channel in the 1800s.

I wish to add here that the end of the two Trows was that 'The Flower of the Severn' landed up in the Pill reach and the 'Spartan' at No 1 Tobacco Bond at Cumberland Basin.

My Grandfather had sold the 'Spartan' to Benjamin Perry after she had carried cargos of gravel from Frampton pits to Avonmouth for the building of the new Dock.

Grandfather retired early, also because of ill health, (the usual complaint in those days, hernia), and Uncle Bill Travel with another complaint Trow men got - arthritis.

After travelling the oceans of the world I did run the gauntlet of the Severn to Lydney and Sharpness.  I did see some of the bad accidents on the Severn.  My father never wanted me to take a cargo up there but I did and after going through the war years, I still come out alive on both occasions.  Now I am 84 years old, born in 1923 and though Captain James of the 'Harp' the one that picked me up out of the Irish Sea (He was from Saul) well I'm the last one of the Bosworths and the one that spent their time at sea, though in dangerous times, I'm still here to tell the tale.

I enclose some snaps and a newspaper cutting.  The postcard of the Junction was sent to me when my grandfather C Bosworth was dying in 1947.

4 November 2007