This is a guest blog I wrote for Antoine Vanner’s Dawlish Chronicles – follow the link for the original in context. The part at the end where I talk about Dawlish refers to Antoine’s protagonist, Nicholas Dawlish, who is a Royal Naval officer in the latter part of the 19th century. I have reviewed several of his books before, and am looking forward to reading the latest, Britannia’s Amazon, available now in paperback and shortly in Kindle.

Antoine has kindly given me space today to talk about gigs and their use in south-west England, specifically the Scilly Isles and Cornwall. So far as I am aware these have never been used in war, but their history is no less exciting or varied for that.

First, what is a gig in this context? Picture something that looks roughly like a clinker-built rowing eight. Keel to gunwale depth is around two feet, and once crewed, the waterline is almost exactly at the mid-point. At 32′ long, just under 5′ beam, but with elm planks only 1/4″ thick, the boat is light enough that the crew can pick her up and carry her into the water. Many years of experience mean that a gig has been built robustly enough to take on the Atlantic swell, despite the apparent flimsiness.

Like an eight, each oarsman has a single oar, and they sit to row alternately port and starboard facing the cox’n. But curiously, they have only six rowers, reflecting part of their history. A mast and lugsail could be fitted if desired, though in commercial practice this was rarely done. They are fast, tough little boats, and at one stage played a crucial role in the economic livelihood of the islands. Today they have retired from commercial use, but have found a new lease of life in competitive sport. The annual world gig racing championship is held on Scilly every April/May. In 2016 it attracted more than 150 boats from many different countries.

We can trace the history of the gig back to 1666 at least, when vessels from St Mary’s were involved in rescuing the crew of the Royal Oak, wrecked out at what is now the Bishop Rock lighthouse. We have no reason to suppose there were not earlier vessels of essentially the same pattern. All modern gigs are based on the lines of an early 19th century design by William Peters. They had two principal uses, the main one being to get local pilots out to incoming ships as quickly as possible. Whoever got there first got the contract, hence the need for speed. Scilly was one of the major landmarks for vessels inbound from the western trade routes, but the seas are treacherous here, with countless rocks and reefs. Even with modern navigation aids they are hazardous: how much more so in former days? So families or village groups would aim to spot new arrivals as early as possible, and get out to them as quickly as possible.

The other use, more humanitarian than commercial, was as a kind of early lifeboat system. Gig crews over the years have saved a great many lives by going out – frequently in horrendous weather – to rescue crews and passengers suffering shipwreck. Cargo could also be brought back, and an 1887 rescue of 450 cattle from the Castleford involved lashing the animals’ heads and horns to the sides of the gigs Gipsy and O&M, and towing them to a handy nearby island! Such rescues were fearfully dangerous acts, and the churches on Bryher, St Agnes and elsewhere remember many who never returned.

Now, gigs came to the attention of the revenue authorities, who suspected that they had a third use – for smuggling. Certainly they would have been capable of it, with their proven seagoing capability. Even the Cornish coast was within a day from the Scilly Isles for a good crew – the 40-odd mile trip to Penzance typically takes under 10 hours, and Newquay was within comfortable reach. Gigs could easily make the 250-mile round trip to France’s Breton coast by staying out at sea for a day or so, and were robust enough to cope. Bonnet (of which more later) rode out a thirty-hour storm on one such trip by keeping head to wind until conditions improved. A good crew can sustain speeds of around 7 knots, but speeds of nearly 10 knots have been recorded over a measured mile with racing crews rowing at 40 strokes per minute. But therein lay a problem – an eight-oared gig was faster than the customs cutters of the time. This was clearly unacceptable, so a law was passed in 1829 limiting the crew to no more than six oars per boat.

Time passed, and both piloting and rescue ceased to be the responsibility of the islanders. The last recorded pilotage was in December 1938, when the Bryher boat Gipsy went out from St Agnes. As for rescue, the last known one was of the Panamanian steamship Mando in 1955. For a time, it seemed possible that gigs in the traditional sense would die out. Some of the older craft were laid up in storage, others suffered the usual fate of wooden boats which are not constantly cared for.

Then competitive racing emerged, giving a new lease of life to the design. Informal races had been part of gig culture for a long time: now it has become organised. Inter-island men’s, women’s and mixed races take place weekly during the tourist season, quite apart from the challengers coming from further afield. And here, the robust nature of the vessels is once again proved. Bonnet still races today – she was built in 1830 and had a long and busy working life. She is heavier than her modern siblings, but if there’s a bit of a sea this might not be a disadvantage. Back in August, I saw her beat a dozen other boats to win her race. The Cornish gig Newquay was built back in 1812, and is claimed to be the oldest ship afloat which is still being used for broadly the same purpose as when she was made. Appropriately, she is owned by the Newquay Rowing Club, who also look after Dove (1820) and Treffry (1838) – all still racing.

So, this brings us to Antoine’s own protagonist, the naval officer Nicholas Dawlish, and the timeline set out for his life. Bonnet had been working for 15 years when Dawlish was born in December 1845, and for over fifty years at the time of Britannia’s Spartan. There’s a fair chance that Newquay was built before Dawlish’s father was born. On the assumption that Dawlish passed the Scillies at some stage during early career – and it would be wildly improbable if he had not had cause to see them at close quarters – he would have seen gigs in active commercial use. I wonder, with his eye for design, if he took the time to appreciate their blend of speed, strength and elegance?

Finally, for those who want to look at videos, this video has the 2016 men’s final and lots of links to other clips:

Today’s blog was written as a guest post at The Review.

In Britain, we’re used to history – and historical fiction books – where the terrain is basically the same as today. The human presence on the surface might well change, so that towns and cities grow, old buildings turn to ruins, rough tracks turn into railway lines, and so on. Or we might alter the clothing of vegetation – marshes are drained, forests felled, or fertile land turns to peaty bog. But we generally feel here in England that the bones of the landscape itself remain the same on a human timescale. We expect the land to change form only over geological timescales.

Other people though, in other parts of the world, have a different expectation. Earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis can not only cause loss of life or damage to property, but can reshape the terrain. Mount St Helens was reckoned to be one of the most attractive of the Pacific Rim volcanic cones until May 18th 1980, when the eruption removed over 1/8 of the volume of the former cone. Iceland gained a new island in November 1963, when Surtsey emerged from the waves as a result of subterranean action.

But often we Brits think of that as something which happens in other lands. But actually there are signs of change in counties like Norfolk and Lincolnshire. Near to Cromer, several villages named in the Domesday Book or other more recent records are now up to half a kilometre out to sea. There is evidence that the Lincolnshire coast was, until the 13th century, protected by a chain of offshore barrier islands. The demise of these in a series of storm surges drastically altered the coastline and its vulnerability to the sea. But despite these signs here in our own land that our not-so-distant ancestors walked across a different landscape, it takes a bit of adjustment.

The geology is quite straightforward. During the last ice age, a little over 10,000 years ago, a hugely heavy layer of ice pressed the land downwards, to a greater degree in the colder north than the warmer south. When the ice melted, two things happened. The sea level rose because of extra water. But also the land shifted. The land in places where the ice had been heaviest started to lift up. Outside that, further south, it started to sink down. Try placing a heavy book on a soft cushion and you’ll see the effect in action.

Now, 8000 BC is not all that long ago, really – the Neolithic Age, and so the beginnings of recognisably complex society started not all that much later, around 5000 BC. And although the vertical movement of land in any one year is tiny – perhaps a few millimetres – over the course of a century it adds up. Our Neolithic and Bronze Age ancestors in some parts of the country experienced quite different terrain.

In the north, where the land has lifted, we find settlements which used to be on the coast now stranded well above the waterline. Stone circles at the southern end of Coniston Water, in Cumbria, used to be close to an arm of the sea reaching in from Morecambe Bay, but are now over five miles from the coast.

But in the far south, in the Scilly Isles, we see an even more dramatic change as the land sinks down. During the Bronze Age, when many of the prehistoric monuments were being built, there was basically a single large island. Around that, especially to the west, there were a few scattered outposts including what we now call St Agnes, Annet, and the Western Isles. The whole central area, now a submerged area in which quite large vessels can anchor if they find the deep patches, was then a fertile plain supporting crops and animals.

All that has gone – perhaps spawning tales of Lyonesse or Atlantis – but its passing has been recorded in history. Even now, low tide allows careful explorers to go well beyond the shoreline, disturbing herons and other wading birds browsing what has been left in the seaweed and rock pools. You pass by the remains of stone walls which presumably served as boundary markers, but are now submerged much of the time. At especially low spring and autumn tides, tall people can still cross between most of the islands without swimming – so long as you know where the sand bars and shallow patches are.

As well as simply projecting backwards the change in sea level, at a rate of 30 centimetres per century, we can look back at history. We know that in 1127, Tresco and Bryher were still a single island, with the two names referring simply to internal parish divisions. By 1600 they were separate, and the Grimsby Sound between them had become a sheltered haven for ships. The transition did not take many generations, and you have to wonder what the occupants made of the stories of their ancestors.The central area between St Mary’s and the northern cluster of islands probably flooded around 6-700AD. On the other side of the country, ship burials were happening at Sutton Hoo.

But a change of 30 centimetres per century disguises the more dramatic way in which these events unfolded. This figure comes into perspective when you remember that the tidal range in a big spring tide on Scilly is around six metres. During a winter storm, waves coming across the Atlantic sometimes break over the top of the Bishop Rock lighthouse, some fifty metres high. The changes to separate island from island have not always been the result of a steady trickle of rising water; some will have been dramatic, cataclysmic events.

This continues to happen today. It used to be reckoned that there were 146 islands in the archipelago, where an island is defined as a body of land separated at high tide and able to support vegetation of some kind. A few winters ago, this became 147, when a severe storm broke through a thin land bridge at Rushy Bay, Bryher, and converted a peninsula into an island. You look at some places as you walk around, and wonder how long they will remain attached.

From a fictional point of view, these kinds of gradual changes to the land itself offer a new storytelling dimension. Authors have explored – and I hope will continue to explore – sudden changes like the eruption of Vesuvius, or various earthquakes. Gradual change has not, I think, been used nearly so often. It could perhaps make for an interesting historical plot based on prehistoric Doggerland, in today’s North Sea. Or a speculative fiction story where diminishing land serves as a variation on resource failure. It’s worth remembering that the terrain we see today is not eternally fixed – even in this green and pleasant land – and has its own changing history.