Bucked in the Yarn: The Unique Heritage of Coker Canvas
128 pages
David Childs
In 2005 I remember admiring the foretopsail of HMS Victory pierced by shot it received at Trafalgar without even wondering where and how that sail had been made. This book provides the answer which is just a few miles down the road at East Coker near Yeovil where the best quality sail canvas, called coker-canvas, was produced.
Why it was the best is revealed in the cryptic title. Bucking was the process of bleaching and washing fibres, yarn or cloth. Most sailmakers did this once the canvas had been woven (in the piece) but in the Cokers (East, West and North) bucking took place before the yarn was woven when it was steeped in hot water then bucked in an alkaline lye before being hung out to dry. The process was repeated four or five times before the yarn was soured with milk to neutralise it. Only then did the process of sail-making begin.
Given the demand for twine and canvas by both the Royal and Merchant navies, the fields around the Cokers were sown principally with flax and hemp both of which had their specific planting, growing and harvesting regimes. This was a vast cottage industry that gradually became centralised creating long twine work buildings (90 metres long) one of which has been restored and survives today (open fourth Saturday of the month).
Coker-twine may have been the best but it wasn’t the cheapest and the manufacturers were frequently dismayed to see a preference given to foreign imports that did not weather as well thus creating a false economy. Sound familiar?
This led to many companies being established, flourishing and withering, to meet the fluctuating demand for twine and sail. One of the survivors, Ratsey& Lapthorn, the world’s oldest sailmakers, was so admired that for over 100 years they produced the sails for both sides in the America’s Cup competition. Very apt, is their slogan, ‘there is only one standard of work in this loft, that is the very best.’
This beautifully illustrated book is obviously a work of love by someone who is very fond of these three small villages and wants to tell the reader all about them. Thus, there are excellent chapters on: Coker plantations and slavery in Jamaica; the circumnavigations and natural history research of local buccaneer, William Dampier; the America’s Cup and Thomas Lipton, the sailing mad tea magnate; and the poet whose poem East Coker made the village known around the world, T.S. Eliot. If this makes the book read like one of Lipton’s most exotic flavours, with milk and sugar added, then that is its strength. Seldom have I reviewed a book in which the enthusiasm of the writer is so palpable and joyous. If that does not encourage readers to buy it, then I would encourage an outing to the villages from Yeovilton or a detour on the way to or from ‘Guzz’.
