From the end of the seventeenth century, the industrial revolution’s rapid expansion of the canal and canalised river systems of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, gave the keel a natural home. Bluff-bowed and strongly built to stand the heavy cross currents and short swell of the Humber, but with a shallow enough draught to work its feeder rivers and canals, keels’ roomy holds were a cheap, efficient way of meeting new demands for rapid transport of bulk produce and goods.

      W H Harrison's Yard, Beverley c.1910                                                     Clapson's Shipyard, Barton-upon-Humber c.1912

 

Early timber hulls were 'clinker-built' meaning the planks overlapped, by the nineteenth century almost all were 'carvel-built' meaning the planks were set edge to edge, on oak frames and oak stem and stern posts, with pine decks. Later, iron & steel keels like COMRADE, simply followed the same design. The high coamings over the hold were covered by wooden hatches, in turn covered by tarpaulins. Narrow side decks connected the short fore and afterdecks The skipper’s cabin was under the afterdeck and the mate’s under the fore.

Keels were tiller steered, and their dimensions, typically between 57ft (17.37m) and 74ft (22.56m) long and 12ft-6ins (3.81m) to 16ft-6ins (5.03m) wide, were determined by the lock size on the waterway they were intended to trade; for example Sheffield size, Manvers size and Driffield size.

 

The single mast was stepped in a lutchet, braced to the main beam at deck level by shrouds, and secured at the keelson. It carried a square white mainsail, hoist to the main yard, a topsail hoist to the topsail yard and very occasionally a top gallant as well. The two-man crew of skipper and mate needed all the mechanical assistance that could be provided, sails were raised and lowered with halyard winches and controlled by rollers, braces, sheets and tacks.

Oak or pitch pine lee boards, about 13ft (3.96m) long were hung by chain forward of amidships. When sailing across the wind the board to the lee side of the vessel would be lowered to help reduce sideways drift and then raised by winch to a horizontal position when no longer required.

Square rigged keels were the waterways’ workhorse for over five hundred years, also making passages seaward well before the advent of the sloop rig in the late 17th century. At least one keel reached London, they were regularly seen to the south in the ports of the Wash and to the north in Scarborough and Whitby. But as the early twentieth century brought opportunities for faster, cheaper transport. first by steam then by motor engined ships; sail trading began to decline. There was a steady fall in the number of sailing keels over the next three decades, and the outbreak of the Second World War caused grants to be available for converting the remaining keels under sail to motor, the final one being a vessel called NAR in the early 1940's.

 

Fred Schofield was one of the keelmen whose working life saw the changes from sail-power to diesel engine and the gradual decline in trade available to these vessels. In 1974 he sold his ship COMRADE to the Humber Keel and Sloop Preservation Society who, with Fred's knowledge and assistance, restored and re-rigged her. In 1976, the Society's ship became the first keel to return to sail in over thirty years.