A handful of brass fittings, photographed and explained.
Six small objects from a single afternoon's poking-around in the back room of a Sheerness salvage yard. Each is, in itself, modest. Together, they are a quick sketch of how a coast outfits a boat.
The back room of the salvage yard I have written about elsewhere in this issue is — if you have not been in one — full. The shelves are full. The floor is full. The boxes are full of smaller boxes. The proprietor has, over the years, developed a system for navigating the room that depends on muscle memory rather than on any external indexing system. He can, when asked, find a particular fitting in under a minute. I, an interested but ignorant visitor, would not find the same fitting in a week.
On a Wednesday afternoon in late April, I asked him whether he would mind if I sat in the room for an hour with the cardboard tray that holds his loose brass and looked at it carefully. He told me to help myself, and went back to the office. The six objects below are the ones I noticed, and asked about, and have since looked up in such reference material as I have been able to find. They are, in my limited expertise, characteristic of what a small working port outfitted itself with for a century or so. They are not, individually, valuable. Together, they are a sketch.
One — a cleat
A standard small brass deck cleat, perhaps four inches across, of a kind made by several British foundries between roughly 1880 and the 1940s. This particular example has a maker's stamp on the underside that the proprietor identifies as belonging to a Birmingham brass-founder who supplied a number of small Kentish boat-builders. The cleat shows the wear pattern of a piece that has been used: a deepening in the rope-bearing surface, a faint vertical scoring near the base, and a uniform patina that has been polished only in the places where the user's hands would have touched it during routine handling.
Two — a porthole bezel
A small brass bezel, perhaps six inches in diameter, which would have framed the porthole of a small fishing or pleasure boat. The bezel has six threaded holes around its inner edge, which would have held the glass in place; the glass is, of course, long gone. The metal is in good condition. The proprietor tells me he could sell it tomorrow to a restorer working on a 1930s pilot cutter. He has not, so far, mentioned the bezel to anyone. He prefers, in his words, to wait until the right person walks in.
Three — a small lamp gimbal
A piece I had to ask about. A small brass gimbal, perhaps three inches across, with the remains of two pivoting screws. The proprietor tells me this is what held an oil lamp in the cabin of a small boat — the gimbal allowed the lamp to remain upright as the boat rocked. The gimbal is incomplete; one of the pivots has corroded and broken. The proprietor would, if asked, charge perhaps fifteen pounds for it. He has, he says, sold several similar pieces over the years to people doing accurate restorations.
"The cleat tells you about the rope. The porthole bezel tells you about the cabin. The lamp gimbal tells you about the cabin in the dark. You can read a boat by what it had screwed into it."
Four — a winch handle
A short brass winch handle, perhaps eight inches long, of a type that would have been used on a small hand-winch on a fishing boat. The handle has been worn smooth on the gripping surface. The square fitting at the working end shows the deformation characteristic of a piece that has been used hard, against a winch whose internal mechanism was probably also somewhat deformed by the time the handle was retired. The piece is, the proprietor says, more characterful than valuable. He sells perhaps two or three a year, mostly to people who want them as decorative objects.
Five — a small instrument bezel
A circular brass bezel, perhaps two and a half inches across, with the remains of a glass face. This piece, the proprietor tells me, was almost certainly part of a small compass or a small clock from the cabin of a working boat. The glass is fractured but mostly present. The dial that would have sat behind the glass is gone. The hands are gone. The mechanism is gone. What remains is the small brass ring and a fragment of the dial face — too small a fragment, on inspection, to identify what the dial was.
Six — an unidentified fitting
A small brass fitting, perhaps two inches across, with a threaded shank and an octagonal head. The proprietor and I cannot, after some discussion, agree on what it is. He thinks it might be a part of a small fuel-line fitting. I think it might be a piece of furniture hardware that has, somehow, ended up in the tray with the marine brass. We agree, in the end, to disagree, and to come back to the question on my next visit. The fitting goes back into the tray.
What this is for
I want to be honest about why I am writing this. The six objects are not, individually, worth writing about. Together, they are a small portrait of how a small coast equipped itself for a century of working life. Each object is the trace of a particular kind of use: a rope tied; a lamp lit in a swaying cabin; a winch turned by a wet hand. The objects do not, in themselves, contain a great deal of history. They contain, however, the trace of the working pattern that produced them.
This is, in a small way, what salvage is for. The objects are not, on the whole, valuable. They are not, on the whole, beautiful. They are the small physical residue of an enormous amount of routine work. They are worth, in my view, the small effort it takes to read them.