We recieved this wonderful poem from Roy this week. Roy told us he served in the Merchant Navy for a seven year span, from 1959 – 1966, sailing on Wilson Line vessels Borodino, Cattaro, Trentino and Rialto and Port Line’s Port Brisbane and Port Halifax along with United Baltic Corporation’s Baltic Importer. Roy’s a full time writer whose books include: Tiger Heart, Velvet Paw – a collection of marine memorabilia and poems, and All Aboard The Calaboose records his long trip with the Port Halifax, 1960-62, encompassing Canada, USA, South America, Panama, New Zealand, Australia and Mexico.
The Silent River
The day is fresh, the stylish promenade
plays host to the curious, with gazing children
who think you might even be the sea.
Yet I knew you, old rolling muddy friend,
when you were a jugular vein,
the bloodstream of a vital city.
The lives of men began upon your tides
when you were a water highway,
a cavalcade of masts and smoking funnels
A riot of Hogmanay horns and whistles
Exotic vessels cutting wakes
from Trent Falls to wind-lashed Spurn.
Now this silent riverbank,
a maritime place of muffled echoes
slumbers beneath the big skies of
Holderness and Lincolnshire
straddled by a monumental bridge
of elevated, defunct dreams.
Included in this Humber hush
Those cenotaphs of long-gone commerce
King George, Alexandra, Victoria, St. Andrews
Docks of departure, deserted docks of homecoming,
Haunted now by towering ghosts of rusting cranes.
The wide and silent river now presides over
Britain’s once beating sailor’s heart
with its tobacco, rum and bitter aromata
The swinging bales of exotic imports
The bustling tons of cod and haddock.
These memories are Britannia’s anchor
To her past, where nostalgia dies
With each advancing generation,
Yet mute and muddy, our river still persists
In silence to the waiting sea.
Roy Bainton
Thanks Roy and for the lovely message
Rich & Lou
Dear Rich and Lou,
My son has just forwarded details of your site and I’m so impressed I simply had to let you know. I’m 80, have been a full-time writer for the past 30 years and from 1955-1959 I attended Hull Trinity House Navigation School. I never (much to my parents’ disappointment) became an officer, but I did spend 7 years in the Merchant Navy as a deck hand. In your photo collection there’s at least 2 ships I sailed on. I spent much time on Hull’s waterfont and I still meet up with a shipmate every week at the Minerva pub down by the old Corporation Pier. The Hull Fishing Heritage Centre on Boulevard, off Hessle Road, has on display some of my work, and I thought the poem just matched the many moods of your site. So congratulations on making an old salt very happy.
Roy Bainton
