Heybridge Basin (Cannibal Island)

Click on underlined blue names for link to more details

Prominent families in the development of the village

'Darby' Stebbens

(below) 'Darby' in the back garden of his house in Basin Road, showing his home made punt gun.

(above) 'Darby' in the 'Jolly Sailor'in the 1980's

Ivan David Stebbens was born on Lock Hill, Heybridge Basin, on New Year's Day 1929. C.C.L Stebbens had two sons: Cecil Charles Augustus (b 1926) and Ivan David. Ivan married Janet Thimbleby in 1957. His father was the river pilot and was often away. Just before he was born his mother decided that she would stay with her mother in-law who was the landlady of 'The Old Ship' so she could be sure to have some company and help. He was known locally as 'Darby' or 'Darb' to his closest friends. He was one of the last of the Basin's sons who lived by their wits on and off the foreshore, taking any job that came along to make an honest living. He contracted to the Maldon District Council to break up and remove by burning many old barge and craft hulls, he also dug and laid the majority of moorings over a period of about 30 years. He was also involved in the anchoring and laying up of ships in the entrance to the Blackwater off Bradwell. He knows the names and owners of all the pre-war yachts and what happened to them. He was a skilled sailor who won the 'First Over the Line Cup' in the Blackwater Annual Sailing Barge Race and was feted at the Thames Sailing Barge Annual Dinner. He had a fund of interesting stories, many of which involved the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation, and was always ready to tell them to whomever may be passing by 'The Anchorage', his family home for several generations.

(above) When the war ended in 1945 the Maldon and Burnham Standard sent a photographer to the Basin to get a picture of the changes taking place. Darby said my father and I were asked to carry out some work on the decks of our boats so that it looked as if things were returning to normal. In the photo you can see me in a trilby hat (Darby) on board 'Helene' and dad (C.C.L.Stebbens) on 'Gracie'. Also in the picture are two canal lighters, 'Agnes' and 'Seven Sisters' and various cut down sailing barges, 'Olive Branch', 'Unity', 'Rose', and 'Beryl'.

The following is from an interview with 'Darby' in later life. I have lived in the village all my life. As a boy I used to walk the mile, with the other Basin children, along the canal tow path to school in Heybridge. At the end of the day my cousin Dick and I would race to the Wave Bridge to hitch a lift home on the canal barges returning from Chelmsford; they would nearly always arrive around half past three. 'Tulip' Clark and Albert 'Tiny' Woodcraft, my uncle, worked for Brown's all their lives. They would bring the barge in close to the walkway under the bridge and help us aboard. 'Now you be careful, boy', they would say, 'We don't want you falling in'. In the early days they used to go all the way to Chelmsford with a loaded barge and bring an empty one back - in later years they used to change over with the Chelmsford men at Paper Mill. When I left school I helped Cecil, my dad, look after and skipper gentlemen's yachts. There were always plenty of boats to maintain, the Basin was a favourite place for wintering yachts and many well known local people kept their boats there, Dr Henry brought Dudley Courtman, and his twin brother, into the world at Chelmsford Hospital - a long time ago!, the gynaecologist from Chelmsford, had the 'Ophelia'; and Dr. Matthews, who would sometimes sail to the Baltic for lecture tours, had the 'Lucretia'. I still have some of the old bills that my father sent them for work he had done on their yachts.

His father, like his father before him, was a Trinity House river pilot. He learned about the river sailing barges around the coast before becoming a skipper himself. When my grandfather was asked to become licensee of 'The Old Ship' he gave up his pilot's licence and my dad took it over. Father was a pilot for the next 45 years and I worked with him for 25 of them.

I remember the day in 1942 when the lock keeper, Jack Ellis, who lived in this house, The Anchorage, was drowned one night in the lock. He slipped on ice and hit his head on the railings. They couldn't search in the dark but in the morning my father was the first to find him and helped to get his body out. It was an awful thing which upset everyone for ages. Jack was my uncle and I still have the cards which were printed for his funeral.

After Uncle Jack died, Francis Stunt, the Company's chief, called to see my father. Although my dad was river pilot at the time he was asked to take over as lock keeper as well, as he was the only local man who had enough experience. To be close to the job we all went to live in Lock House and I looked after the lock when my dad was away doing his pilot's job. There were always things to do looking after the gates. Even during the war the Canal Company still carried out their annual inspections and I had to paint up the lock. One day during the war three Scottish drifters came down to the Basin to be prepared as mine-sweepers. I operated the locks when my father took them away - they all had to lock out on one tide to be towed to Brightlingsea, so you couldn't waste time. Depending on the draught of the boat and height of tide, you only had time for four or five lockings. Around that time one or two sailing barges came into the Basin carrying timber from London. There was a Captain Morgan with the sailing barge 'Gladys', and my brother Cecil, who was mate on the 'Memory'. The timber was off-loaded onto the canal barges and was towed by horse to Chelmsford by 'Tulip' ClarkThere were so many Clark's and members of the same family's in the Basin that they had to have specific nicknames- 'Tulip' was named after his horse. Others were 'Trooper', 'Dilbury' and 'Tinker', and 'Skinny' Woodcraft. The horses were stabled behind the Jolly Sailor, and The Old Ship. They would journey up one day and come back the next. Timber was scarce in wartime and Scottish fir was used, which was a lot heavier to handle than Baltic timber.

The other barge skippers who called at the Basin were the Keebles, the Springetts, and Pup Simmons, all from Maldon, and Jack Petitt from Pin Mill, sailing such barges as the 'Mayflower', 'Ethel Ada', 'Maud', 'Aldwick', and 'Gladys'. One cargo was bomb rubble from London to be unloaded at the Hythe Quay, Maldon, for the building of the runway at Birch for the American bombers. I remember seeing fourteen barges tied up at once. As well as rubble some carried grain and others bricks. Some had moorings just 'off the lock' opposite the Basin. The 28th Company Royal Army Service Corps was stationed in the Basin during the war. They had three or four motorised wooden barges to carry their machinery, together with a "Tid" tug, a bit like the old steam tug Brent which you can still see at the Hythe in Maldon. There were also a dozen or more Thames lighters tied up all along the sea wall as far as Mill Beach ready for D-Day. They must have been in one heck of hurry to get away because on the day they left they just threw all their mooring chains overboard and left them on the shore. What they used to tie up with when they arrived I'll never know.

There was a lot of military activity around the Basin with soldiers and sailors billeted at The Towers in Heybridge and in the Manor House on Osea Island. Certain boats in the Basin were commandeered for military services: the yacht Francis II, for example, was turned into a river patrol boat and was moored off Osea. One night Lord Haw Haw which was the name given to William Joyce, a German sympathiser, who regularly broadcast propaganda during the war. He joined the Nazi movement in England in 1939 and fled to Germany as war broke out. His intimate knowledge of Essex was rather disconcerting although he made a mistake with the location of the submarine base because it was on Osea Island in the First World War! told us on the radio that German planes were going to bomb the submarine base at Heybridge Basin. The attack happened several nights later: six people were killed and several houses received direct hits. It was at that time that we heard that Jan Bottomer, a Dutch skipper who used to come to the Basin with his boat, had been sent to a German POW camp for belonging to the Resistance; it was said that he helped escaping British airmen. There were frequent air raids as German planes flew up the river thinking it was the Thames. At night our family went and slept on our boat, Gracie, moored on the saltings, so that we would not have the house fall down on us if we were bombed. One night a land mineThese mines were dropped by parachute and were therefore silent until they hit the ground! landed right next to the house on Northey Island making quite a thump, but there wasn't much damage because it went into the soft mud. When I was at Mill beach one day I saw a Hurricane crash near the Doctor's buoy off Osea.

(above) 'Darby' and Mona Clark. 1977 Jubilee Village celebrations.

(above) 'Darby' and son David. 1980's