[Music] [Music] this week on Salvage squad were on the Midway Airstream Ken behind me is a Thames barge in its time and seen a lot of history unfold along the coastlines of Britain and is going to have to be all hands on deck to return it to its former glory now when we say Thames barge we ain't talking about those things that chug up canals we are talking a dirty great seagoing ship that was once the very symbol of the River Thames air Thames barge is called inna she's 88 feet long weighs 73 tons and is nearly 100 years old she's being rebuilt inside this makeshift drydock the hull of an old freighter her owner Luke did is about to introduce the squad to their biggest challenge yet [Laughter] it's a boat within a boat which one we're doing this one is doing that one you're doing the one that still looks like a boat right okay biology is like inna were the container trucks of yesteryear the big posh ones took cargoes like grain timber or bricks all along the south coast of England and as far off as Scotland Ireland or even France others acted as delivery trucks taking goods from the big ocean-going ships and bringing them further up the Thames to the warehouses of central London some even worked as dustbin lorries taking London's waste downriver to be dumped at sea they had their origins in the Middle Ages but by the time inna was launched in 1906 they'd become one of the most sophisticated sailing vessels ever built so efficient at their job the right up to the 1970s they were able to hold their own against more modern transport barges were brilliantly suited to the shallow estuaries and rivers of the southeast and their unique flat bottoms that they could float in just four feet of water bridges were no problem either their massive rigs could be raised or lowered by two men and to travel upriver where other sailing ships could not reach sadly even such a brilliant design couldn't compete with modern diesel powered ships and by the 1970s the age of the Salem barge was over today Arina is one of only two dozen or so still capable of sailing but she's been out of the water for over a year now and while a high is in good shape as the squad check her over they soon realized that it's going to be a huge effort if she's gonna sail again hey guys what do we think huge task big big task a it's a wood yard yeah faster hold fairly sound I mean this is this rot still on the decking decking the priorities and there yeah the engine is young since up to the back we sit down right at the del Sol was decking decks yeah yeah what deck and rot yeah and rot yes we'll move there for rot one engine to it's going to make sure it floats Henry it's got to be just a double check that it's watertight I think you better leave somewhere in there think you're not you're not about right and you can be pulling out the wrong piece of boat right okay watch the decking done which goes towards making it watertight from the top as well once masts it wants sails and logs rigging that comes with the masts and sails okay fair enough I think mister will get the expert in alone Gaffin even got a point so far yeah would then point for everything else everything else she's almost 100 years old but eanes only had to careful owners her entire working life was spent working for it which grain merchants are in w Paul Paul's owned 45 sailing barges down the years using their huge holds to transport around 200 tons of grain at a time all along the south coast she made her last commercial trip for Paul was in the early 1970s but they had a soft spot for barges and kept her on as a floating social club until two years ago when in need of a lot of work ace - Luke Luke's 24 and runs a pub but barges have been in his blood since he was a boy I've always been brought up on Barden and lived round barges and when you're younger everything seems so much bigger the deck seems so much wider and so as I grew up barge is not smaller but the one thing that really drew me to the ena it was just like being a kid on board again because everything's so big on her with the decks being so wide as well it was just as if it was back then and yeah that that really did attract me to her I mean we've been in a dry dock for a year now I've got to get the decks back on she's got to go back into the water because if she doesn't there's going to be more damage Don everything's really opening up she's really drying out it really needs feeding up it needs finishing off and it's a roof over my head the man in charge of getting inna back in the water is Luke's dead Robert he's our ship right of the old school who specializes in barge restoration he owns the yard and it's unique workshop normally to do the work you need to take a ship like ena into a fancy dry dock costing millions of pounds instead Robert found an old freighter that was on its way to the scrap heap chop the end off and used it to keeping her out of the water can't meet your new crew over here no this is Robert huh my captain he's Louisa Luke's old man he also knows a little bit about boats so you better look at it I want to tell you what you think you've got to do and then your weather we're on the screen okay boiling they need to tell you what you asked as oh if you have a look at that and so that's what we missed Oh lots of it mustard mustard come up with off the expert I thought was a pretty good assessment the way covered Reggie yeah bacteria recover dill you've started off with a deck as well which fruit all right yeah that's basically where you're going with we really protect lots of woodworking they see all of that brilliant muscles no love great I work here and it's serious wood work that needs to be done quick eanes meaning the dock far longer than was planned and as he son keeps reminding him being out of the water is beginning to do a no good at all that's why it's called in the salvage wood the hope is that three more willing workers will help get her back where she belongs into the waters of the Thames Estuary if they're going to get a nurse angling again Axl will have to turn grave-robber Claire will face a canvas bigger than any artist and Jerry will be forced to walk the plank air Thames barge is called inna she's being rebuilt inside this makeshift drydock the hull of an old freighter but before they can put it together they're gonna have to take her apart most of Eanes old decking is in barge fake rotten as a pair and will have to be hacked out before it can be replaced [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] well Gary still was smashing out the old deck axel was about to start on the new deck and we don't mean the stuff you knock up in your back garden to keep up with the neighbors the decking on a barge has to be every bit as tough and waterproof as a hull because fully laden a barge is so low in the water that our decks are almost fully submerged as a result laying a new one is nothing like whacking down a few bits of muck out from your local DIY centre for a start there are a few straight lines on inna most of the 180 or so planks being a unique banana shape which means axel was going to have to be pretty nifty with his measurements or there'll be some nasty legs come sailing time now you won't find the raw materials for barge building near local timber merchants Roberts bought up half a forest and saw on each tree into three-inch thick sections the trees Rob's bought are a hard wood called OPP and Clare's busy cleaning a chunk ready for axel to mark out the shape of the plank [Music] with the shape determined axel can rev up the saw and prove to rob he's got the makings of a ship right the job takes an hour but when aina was built all 26 feet of it would have been done by hand just like when sailing Margie's first eye to appear on attempts in the Middle Ages for hundreds of years they remained pretty primitive that then 150 years ago the arrival of them newfangled railways and fancy steam ships started killing off sailing boats left right and centre back then bookies wouldn't have given you 1,000 to one on the Thames barge surviving and they'd have cleaned up if it were not for one Henry Dodd in 1863 it came up with a cunning plan that turned the slow lumbering barges of his day into a cargo ship so fast and efficient they remained in business until 30 years ago his idea was borrowed racing and it took off big time within a few years both owners and builders were thinking of nothing more than making their barges faster and faster the result was a ship crewed by two men capable of carrying 200 tons of cargo at a tenth of the price of the newfangled railways barges don't trade anymore but they still race though with Axl taking half a day to cut out one plank the chances of ena getting back on the water let alone taking part in a race look a long way off fed up with all the sawdust Jerry's persuaded Rob to let him check over the engine obviously with the roundup diesel engine in it so this all wouldn't baby what about a masters came here and this pace across here would have been the state room what I called the state moment this was a flashback was a flat one yes same room but you can get some three people around a table few barges had engines until after World War two and even then they were only meant to be used when the wind didn't blow this one had done 200 thousand miles in a truck before going to sea remarkably the only thing Jerry found it needed was a service and a bit of tweaking to a dodgy fuel pump up on top axel was preparing plank number 78 before it's fitted part of the edge at the top is planed away so when it's butted up next to its neighbor there will be a deep v-shaped groove between them a special string will then be rammed into the Grove and topped off with tar to make the deck water type the first job is to push the new plank hard up against his neighbor using a hydraulic jack then two holes are drilled down into the out deck thing below before axel gets all macho with a sledgehammer and smashes it into place with a huge six-inch nails shipwrights call spikes once the head of the spike is at deck level Claire steps in with a punch so axel can whack the spike in until it disappears an inch or so below the surface by the time the deck is finished 190 or so planks on Tina's deck will have been fixed down with around 1,500 spikes each one drilled hammered then punched into place but they're not done yet it's crucial that the deck is every bit as strong and as waterproof as a hull to finish the job 12 inch nails are whacked in horizontally pinning the plank to isn't ever forming a solid sheet of wood [Music] Gonski that's a good one we did that okay I'm going to do an Oliver Luke's hoping that inna will be so well restored that we'll be living on her for the rest of his life but when he bought her two years ago the first few nights he spent on board made him realize the enormity of the task he'd set himself it took a few weeks before it sort of really sank him but it was quite strange as well to start with because being away from barges for such a long time that I wasn't quite used to all the noises and the creeks and the wind and things like that and that's what really brought the responsibility of the barge to me having to I was the one that had to go up and tie everything up and and make sure that she wasn't taking on too much water and and things like that and it really sort of hits me then that was me and that were that was part of me and how important it was to me as well yeah in some ways having in is just like being a daddy source there's so many responsibilities and looking after her and making sure everything's okay and giving her everything she needs at the end of the day and I should hope she's been around a long time before I was born and I just hoped she'd be around a long time after I died as well and sort of being part of keeping her up and and keeping her going really at the end of the day you see so many barges nowadays end up in the scrap heaps and just moored up and rotting away loop's had to spend the last year in a caravan but now it looks like it will soon be back on board the planks of a deck are almost finished and in a couple of weeks he's dead Rob is planning to float around the dock to meet his target he's brought in enough lie about to build a pyramid outside the squad are under orders to take on the biggest paint job they've ever come across in all inna carries about 4,000 square feet of sale to stop them rotten or chafing on the rigging barge crews would paint or dress them once a year with a mixture of coddle urine and a coloring called red odor how do you think this going Gerry gov it upside down luckily times have moved on and there's now a modern sail paint that doesn't stink of dead fish and we we still paint in 4,000 square feet of canvas would have daunted even Leonardo after four hours on the floor I think we can safely say that the squad can't dance but at least the sails are a nice reddish color back on board Bob's girlfriend Liz is on stopping duty knock in each of the spikes down below the deck level has left 1,500 holes each of which lid is having to fill in with a length of Dowling once the glue is dry that we planed flat to create a perfectly smooth deck tough job not half as tough as filling in the v-shaped grooves between the planks the idea is to ram in a special string called oakum to form a flexible seal which is then topped off with a layer of tar the techniques called caulking and is one of the oldest of the shipwrights arts underneath the hull Claire's cheating the cracks between Nina's planks would traditionally have been caught in the same way as the decks but allegedly this modern expandable foam does the same thing much quicker the crack is about this big there's nothing going in there at all but even if it's useless it's still a good laughs in fact although it looks a right mess once it's hardened off the excess cut away it does seem to do the trick leaving a solid seal deep within the crack let's just hope it's waterproof because all this lot will be under the water in a few weeks time with everybody bust in their gut to get inna finished problem II went down below to check out eanes brass work here we are Dunkirk 1940 do you know what we did over there did it now I'm just knowing where it was one of the Dunkirk will shoot now those plaques Makena a very special barge indeed in 1940 with world war ii less than a year old britain was staring defeat in the eye france had as good has fallen to the germans and most of the british army was surrounded on the beaches of Dunkirk in desperation the government ordered the most daring rescue in military history every available ship from the best the Navy had two fishing boats and even river cruisers were pressed into service in just ten days they rescued around two hundred and twenty thousand British and French troops who lived on to fight another day like stomach that quite like to find out what happened there I mean it was it's possibly some survivors knocking about it may well have even been brought back under by oh please to find out more about Amy's role at Dunkirk Rob put me in touch with her previous owners R and W Paul of Ipswich and I arranged to meet up with Brian Pinner who looked after Rena at Paul since the 1970s as we chatted in a local Yacht Club Brian told me the most incredible story inna had indeed gone to Dunkirk in 1940 but with the German forces closing in her skipper Alfred Page was forced to abandon or on the beaches and escape on a Navy destroyer as far as the company knew their barge had been lost along with many others on the beaches of the French coast that was until they got a phone call from an irate Harbormaster in Kempe a few weeks later we had a telephone call from the harbor master it deal suggesting that we collected our barge so we sent what the company then sent him the skipper down to collect it and which he did he did when he got back he said that everything had moveable had been taken including his horse teeth which he'd left in a glass of water by the birth I had fun just how weiner found a way back to the Kent coast remained a bit of a mystery until after she attended the 40th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation after we'd been there to the 1980 anniversary there was an article in The Daily Telegraph about the reunion as soon as it appeared brian was inundated with old soldiers all claiming it was they who sailed inna back from the beaches there was a letter from a captain at Lee who said that he actually brought the barge back after that I had a another gentleman John Cook came from New York's Richmond who said now he brought her back and later that and Eric steward from the first Lancashire Regiment came on and said no no no I brought her back and I've even had a lot a visitor from the Kent from Kent who said I came back on her so who would you say the best person against a date with regards to who bought that from Tonto well captain Utley was there his story is very plausible and in fact would accommodate what other people said as well so he's the man he's the man with Captain at least seeming the best bet I headed off to yoga to track him down while the squad was getting ena ready for her first voyage in over a year out of the dock and round the corner to a new birth where the squad will help reunite her with her mast and sails the underside of her hull has now been painted and the decks have had a likto but there are a few last-minute fittings to add but the main task is to clear a year's worth of junk Jerry hauls up the anchor while the others help take down the tarpaulins I've been protecting Lena's decks from the elements for a year [Music] inna has been sitting inside Rob's imaginative drydock furnished from the hull of an old freighter it might look like a load of old scrap but it's a work of pure genius every high tide the freighter floats lifting inna whither and keeping a drying but today Rob is going to pull the plug allowing water to pour into the freighters home sinking her and allowing inna to float through when I say plug I mean plug that's all it is one little hole at the back with a cat bolted on the top once Rob's got it unscrewed nature will do the sinking the tide here rises some 18 feet in six hours and soon the freighter is beginning to take on water so there's not a moment to lose because one scene is floating the water will only be deep enough to clear the jagged edge of the freighter for about half an hour I was telling me all sorts of lurid tales of when don't have stock haven't quite right including a time when the only half out in the mouth and a whole lot went like that before it's finally to submit in if there's any holdup then before they know it inna will be a ground stranded half inside and half outside the dock the squad are hoping that soon shall once more look like this a fully rigged pem sailing barge but before that happens there's a short but perilous voyage to make from the dock to her new berth once she's floating they'll have about half an hour to tar out before she's a ground again if they get it wrong inna will end up stuck half in and half out the dock a hole broken over the stern of the old freighter it's d-day for inna that M sailing barge the old freighter she's been lying in it's sinking nicely and inna is about to fill the water around a hole for the first time in a year close to high tide Robin e's girlfriend lids get the tugboat ready taking Able Seaman axle with them as inna begins to float the effects of a year out of the water are making themselves felt the planks of a hole of shrunk and despite Claire's best efforts water is seeping through the cracks so the pumps are going full blast as soon as the time arrives Axl gets the tow-rope on board and inna can begin her first voyage in over a year there's only a few inches to spare on each side and the main job for those on board will be to make sure Riina's hole doesn't hit the jagged remains of the freighter [Applause] she's out of the drydock with minutes to spare but they still have to get her through a maze of old holes and around the corner to her new mooring before the tide recedes [Applause] [Applause] the next I mean is underway the squad hope that will be under sail with Luke Annie's dad at the wheel to get there they'll have to help reinstall a rig a 100-foot mass than five massive sales but for the moment the dramas over eanes made it safely to a new birth and it's time to pop a beer Alec pluck is one of the few old-time bar skippers left and he's been helping out Rob in the squad he doesn't miss the bargeman's pay but he does miss the food if I aren't fourth Campbell weakens a lot of money and staffers on ration so you give you a ration books to your mum because amusing way bear that could you could think enough off the ships to live on do you only had to go out and see the top men on the ship and give him five bulb and he drop off a sheep over the side or after care and if he was good he dropped to alpha cows over the side you flogged the out a bit when you got down the Colchester summer long net which change it would you ever sing office job you know not cool no no this is real real life I thought it was very hard work and when I said to my dad I said well you know well it's not very much money dad he said well he says it's not a job it's another while living he said if you can make up enough off the land and enough will steamships were in a wrap in the dog he said you live well so Alec Claire and the rest of the salvage squad are able to live well on eNOS deck today his little short of a miracle as over 60 years ago she'd been dumped along with many others on the beaches of Dunkirk only to turn up back in Blighty weeks later the full story of how an ER escaped has never been told which is why I've headed to York where I've tracked down the man I think may have saved us sixty two years ago 88 year-old no latley at that time a young captain in the North Yorkshire Regiment was ring any bells for you Reggie something like that because attends barn should see do you remember the name of it yes it was a moat but ena ena well if you look there at the bomb oh it is a may that's the very boat does it bring back any memories yes I thought it was bigger than that captain at Lee and his men were among the last British troops to arrive on the beaches during the evacuation and who told there were no more bugs finished so long my god what do we know now definitely about two or three hundred yards away in sea was this barge realizing that this abandoned barge was his last chance captain Atlee got as many men on board as he could and raise the anchor to head for home but as we're doing that the Germans dropped a bomb in front of us I saw it leaves the plane and just missed the ship by about 20 feet I mean with the bomb just lifted the boat straight out the door and down again we did this with machine-gun bullets to her sails were riddled with her senior bullets from aircraft and now any find at the stands in its time we're off until he boarded ena captain at these and the experience of boats was a childhood holiday on the Norfolk Broads yet amongst all the bombs and bullets the Luftwaffe could throw at him he managed to sailor clear of the French coast and drew small Cruiser on something came across and elders said well with from wish and don't care so tins of food a lot and I could learn anybody about and they're all sort of running around trying to open these tins it goes directly and the terms into Margate how many men did you bring back I use about 35 or 36 or something with fear wounded how the hell it happened somebody was looking after his I don't know how it but that's a perfectly true story I can't say more about it without captain Atlee ena would have been left a wreck on the beach at Dunkirk and without ena captain at Lee and 36 others would have been condemned to a prison camp or worse instead she's still with us a whole replant her deck replaced and reunited with her mast now this squad are hoping to get a back sailing as soon as possible the axle still seems to be smashing her apart new bit of metal work on her here oh god this chain rubbing out the fifth deck for the lead board for those of you like me who are nautical II illiterate a word of explanation is June the Lea balls are too dirty great tear shaped bits of metal that can be lowered down to act as a kind of nautical brake to stop eNOS slipping sideways when she's sailing the problem is that the chain that pulls the labeled up and down runs over the wooden rail running aside the metal ax was pulling off acts as a kind of guard to stop the wood being worn away but it's seen better days and needs replacing which is why Axl's going wading I can walk on mud by the 1970s the last of the thames sign Lombardi's had lost their long battle against modern motorized transport and the estuaries of the east coast of full of skeletons like this those less fortunate than inna luckily they serve as a pretty good secondhand shop for bar G bits and bobs for those few that remained lien that's a bit rough but the laws of salvage be explained to me puppet of the crown dear any boat that's not tied up and slightly drifts or listen like it is here thunk you can come and get any bits you like that's low Salvage so anybody out there wants a bit of a boat they ain't tied up it's yours and this bit here is ours for our boat now just before you all turn off your TV and run down to the local marina I should just point out that if you untie the boat you claim to be salvaging or if somehow enticed it onto the rocks and that's called Nikki and you'll find the strong arm of the law filling in a fairly hefty book at you however if you need a bit of metal to guard your rail from a bit of chain and there is a genuine wreck down the road then like axle you have the law on your side it's too much hard work I was called by one partly because it cost money but mainly because then you look wouldn't have the fun of watching Axl wallowing in the mud wages coming off oops yeah I know it would be funny if I fell over win it I'm not going to give you the pleasure back on board Axl's first job is to stop water damaging the wooden rail under the metal guard and to do it he's going to apply a rather traditional compound believe it or not it's actually horse to do mixed in with half yes the reason that has got horse poo in there is to make the tar not so runny it's like a binding agent maybe hold it all together horse poo and tar look there you can actually see this straw lovely while Axl was happily nailin on his bit of Salvage Jerry was hoping to put on in his mind so the two biggest sales on inna the main saw and the top talk can only be fixed on when the mast is down the first job is to attach the top of the main tool onto the end of the huge sprint a massive lump of wood that runs up from the bottom of the mast and holds up the top of the sail unfortunately when it's lowered it sticks out over eNOS stern and the lads are keen to find out if Jerry's got the makings of a sailor man glad we're getting a lot near the end of the boat here I've done a lot of stupid things are selfish Scotland this gentleman is taking the biscuit yeah it's quite short they said you sly so it's got a hook yay that way right grant oh yeah yeah can anybody see whether that's round because I tell you I am NOT going any further yeah it doesn't look this is very strange because it doesn't look mealy sitting here and yeah no problems at all but it just seems off for some way plop it in the mind actually yeah to writes in the mind is 5 4 out from the boat and 6 feet up from the water hardcore wimps territory unlike where Claire's going along the mast to tie on the front of the Topsail to the top mast it's attached to a set of giant curtain rings that sailors call hoops [Music] with the top so on the squad can start the hardest work of all winching up for tons of mast and sail go on then it's going to go up into sections first the main 50-foot mast and then the top mast number 44 so of timber the only problem is that to raise the mast one foot takes about sixty four turns on the winch handles and with about four tons to be lifted it's one of the toughest jobs on a barge now you might think that all of this is a bit old-fashioned and inefficient but those mast and sails are every bit as powerful as the engine in any modern truck given the right wind they can push 73 tons of boat and a hundred and sixty tons of cargo along around 10 knots in all it takes about two hours of back-breaking work to lift the main mast and sails up to the vertical it's good to look okay there I'm not going to hunt so how did we do this to people man and boy man and boy spot if you're going under that's robots not to Bridget so you're going up to ten yeah they used to take people on because you have to drop the mast to get under the bridge right and they used to actually take someone on whose sole purpose would be to wind the mouse up and down and then kick you off once they're done with this I was apparently good money sounds like Axl was angling for a pay rise but he's only done half the work there's still 40 foot of top mass to go up and this winch seems even slower once it's up there's only one task left to climb 30 foot up a dodgy rope ladder then another 10 foot up a ladder that's been temporarily tied in place to insert a pin through the bottom of the top mask that will stop it crashing down again for an axle than a jerry sword job yep it cost the freight yes course it's gonna fall out the other side now it's got pasta feed bit more just a little bit more rope all right all right they grab back now the pins in the rig's finished it might look like a mad cobweb of rope and wood but when she's underway those ropes holding up her mast we'll have to deal with forces of around five tonnes let's just hope they're up to it it's a week since the mast went up but so far spring goers have stopped the squad from taking her out but today the wind is set fair and eNOS sales are about to go up the dogs on board and the oldest cabin boy in the business has been out to round up the owner Luke dears how long have you been out of it a hand it's got to be close to two years now yeah so you finally going into your proper home again I am here we go I'm going to do it this way if you don't mind it debris flakes no Jerry max all right well first things first is this the life raft it is the life right now this is mine go any further this I think you'll find it's actually bald men and children first place I think you've been quite miserable about the picture Serena she's gonna sail isn't she yeah why are you wearing a life jacket and because I can't swim you can't swim now you live on a boat at the end can't swim at when you live on a boat will you like the laughs all your life Alaska you want to do it for you mother as the whooping for you you've got the sails up and Colleen did you put them up what is that like least Martha would you lift the phone here if you winch that up yeah I want on this no with that the big monster I don't want to give that up 64 turns yeah wonderful you're joking though no joke along that take too long it's revelat wander down to exhibit and what's the back end cook with going to stir this one little stir it still seems a little bit sorts hey are they saying it's not happy no I'm saying it's untidy is the words really busy okay I'll go adapt when they arrived inna was a rotting Hulk with chainsaws and sledgehammers they rebuilt the deck painted 4,000 square foot of sales with yard brushes then winched up for tons of mast and now she's sailing again but unfortunately for axe although the winch in ain't over the Xena takes to the Seas again the first job is to winch up the nine hundred square foot Topsail its huge white cross being the symbol of the original owners are in W Paul with the tops all set the main song can be pulled from the mast and finally if she makes her way down the s3 it's Jerry's turn to do some of the hard work inch by inch the eanes force all snakes skyward all this sailor ish activity was making my stomach remind me that I was a landlubber born and bred and I retired to the blunt end for a sit-down with a nice happy owner I'm not feeling too bad I just don't fit a little bit just enough of your talk they don't really doesn't bother me at all the opposite if you get homesick we miss the water yeah I know it's there just when I was beginning to think Luke had a point things started to go wrong up the sharp end the wind had got to a force 5 which is the nautical inclined we'll know that Ted breathing a bit Sabinas rig decided to show their age guy the rope that holds on the bottom of a giant force all decided to go ping allowing Gary to redeem his earlier wimpish miss and play the big butch hero for a while and then the top of the sail decided to part company with its rope and around 500 square feet of canvas descended to the deck the main problem was that the bit of rope to pull it back up again was now 44 up the mast and it took a far brighter man and Jerry to go aloft to retrieve it 20 minutes later and we're sailing again we shouldn't be too hard on ena given that she's not sailed for more than a year it's hardly surprising something started to play up in a wind like this your family kite a mere two square foot of material we exert a force of around ten pounds the Rope I mean is fossil had to deal with around two hundred and fifty times that force but once the skies began to clear I could see why Luke could never dream of being away from a barge properly they've been charged with [Music] absolutely ruff every minute [Music] inna was launched 96 years ago and spent the next ninety four years with the firm of R&W Paul but now she's about to start a second life in the hands of a meal with a snapper of a boy look we're not going to will die I think it's time for little formal handover the colony oh yeah not so bad I suppose yeah yeah not too bad with you pal think with a bit more practice now would benefit they usually be quite like all right probably not probably normally we got any food anybody can just inna has seen nearly a century of history when she was launched there were 2,000 barges on the river at 34 she survived the hell of Dunkirk and sailed on for another 60 years until long after most other barges were abandoned on the mudflats now with the help of the squad Luca knees dad hopes you'll go on for another 60 years keeping the wonders of the barge alive on the River Thames [Music]
