T H E   D E R E L I C T   M I S C E L L A N Y

Along the backwater shore they lie, bleached whalebone wrecks garlanded with sea-slime, berthed in black mud. Children shriek and clamber hide-and-seeking about their broken prows while an old bait digger forks taciturn through the bubbling ooze which comes up to his knees. The air is filled with the sharp salt smell of seaweed, the clamour of yacht bells and the cry of gulls. These wrecks may be derelict but they are far from abandoned.

A motor minesweeper of the MMS I class commissioned in 1943, MMS 293 lies beached and derelict on the northern foreshore. Seen from the wall of the Forton RN Fuel Reserve, an unidentified vessel lies on her side in the mud Yarrow's patent Water Tube Boiler aboard the remains of a motor gunboat. North Shields registered trawler SN26 sits alongside the wreck of Gosport Ferry Vadne (left). A MK III Bomb Scow (used to supply flying boats at Southampton) lies at her bow. [click images below to expand & enlarge]

There has been a boatyard on the southwest corner of Forton Lake since at least 1795. The tidal inlet, just across the water from Portsmouth and lying between the Navy's Royal Clarence victualling yards and the gunpowder factories at Priddy's Hard was an important centre of military and commercial activity. After the Second World War the yard became involved in shipbreaking, and a number of vessels were scuttled here awaiting disposal or sale. Those boats left behind now line the mudflats on both sides of the lake, slowly decaying and sinking into the mud.

Walking below the tideline reveals liminal landscape most people will never see, but it comes with more than a few dangers; tides turn, shallow mud can quickly become deep and it takes a keen eye to spot the wade ways and shingle bars which will allow safe passage. When I'm not hiking or exploring old buildings, I spend a lot of time down here and elsewhere mudlarking; picking over muddy shorelines for artefacts from past eras. The foreshore here is studded with bone, china, glass and metal; in a short time I collected a brass shell fuze, pieces of 17th century clay tobacco pipes, Victorian bottles and part of a 16th century jug. Layers of history all jumbled together by tide and time.

And what future for Forton's rag-tag fleet? For once there are no plans to save them. No restorations, no salvage operation. They will simply continue to decay and fill with mud until nothing is visible. The vessels themselves have now taken on archaeological significance; in 1999 and again in 2006-9 detailed surveys were carried out of the wrecks, identifying among them minesweepers, gunboats and landing craft that may have served at Dunkirk and D-Day. Some may say that allowing them to decay is a crime against heritage, but I think perhaps there's something to be said for graceful decay...