Down the Dart

Sailing down the dart yesterday it is amazing how much history has taken place on a very short stretch of this waterway. Starting in Totness, home to one of the best preserved Motte and Bailey castles in the country, the boat was lifted in at Baltic Wharf where it had been stored over the winter. This was originally built for shipping timber out to the Baltic though now it is primarily a shipyard with the large sheds, built by the Americans during World War Two, home to a variety of craft in various stages of restoration.

Going down the Dart past Sharpham estate you eventually get to Galmpton Creek where you might just be able to see the hulk of a Fairmile motor gun boat. The one that lives hear is one of two owned by the Greenway Ferry company and is used as parts to keep the other operational so that it can take visitors from Torquay and Brixham to Agatha Christy's former home at Greenway.

The famous writer was not the only one to make their mark on that house as during the Second World War it was taken over by the US Coastguard, and still contains murals painted by one of the Coastguard officers.

She was not the only one that was forced to move by the war. Even the Brittania Royal Naval College was forced to change locations during World War Two to give up the college buildings to be used as the headquarters of the Free French.

The college was built in 1903 to replace the ageing hulks Brittania and Hindustan. Not that Dartmouth was their first mooring either. Originally Brittania had been based in Southampton, but the temptations of this busy port were considered bad for the cadets so it was moved: first to Weymouth, and then to Dartmouth, a small port that did not even have any routes in over land until into the twentieth century.