legends · 3 min read ·
Tide Table Errata
A harbour tide table acquires a third high water at 23:58, and boats that nobody moored.
**Skerrow Harbour Commissioners — Tide Table, October**
*Times are local. Heights are in metres above chart datum. Two high waters and two low waters per day.*
- **Date · High 1 · Ht · Low 1 · Ht · High 2 · Ht · Low 2 · Ht**
- 20 · 03:12 · 5.1 · 09:30 · 0.8 · 15:34 · 5.2 · 21:51 · 0.7
- 21 · 04:02 · 5.0 · 10:19 · 0.9 · 16:25 · 5.1 · 22:40 · 0.8
- 22 · 04:55 · 4.9 · 11:09 · 1.0 · 17:18 · 5.0 · 23:31 · 0.9
- 23 · 05:51 · 4.8 · 12:03 · 1.1 · 18:14 · 4.9 · — · —
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**Errata Notice 1 (Harbour Office, 24 October)**
*The tide table printed for 23 October omitted one tide. A third high water occurs at 23:58, height 5.3 m. This is not a printing error. Please see Notice to Mariners 41/26.*
**Notice to Mariners 41/26**
*Vessels moored at Skerrow are advised that an additional high water is predicted at 23:58 on the nights of 23, 24 and 25 October. The Commissioners have been unable to identify the astronomical cause. Moorings should be checked. Vessels should not be left unattended in the inner harbour between 23:30 and 00:30.*
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**Harbourmaster's log (R. Dunn, 23 October)**
23:40. Walked the quay. Night clear, no wind, moon in its last quarter. Water level at the gauge 1.1 m and falling, as the table says.
23:55. Water level 0.9 m.
23:58. Water level 5.3 m. It happened between one glance at the gauge and the next. No surge, no sound. The harbour was simply full, to the lip of the quay, as still as a plate.
00:03. Water level 0.9 m.
The boats had not moved on their lines. But I walked the quay with a lamp and counted the moorings, and the lines were wet to the top, and on the quay stones below the bollards there were fresh strands of weed and a few small crabs, going back to the edge in a line.
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**Harbourmaster's log (R. Dunn, 24 October)**
Repeated the watch, with the harbour constable. 23:58, as before. The harbour filled, stood, and emptied. This time I held the lamp over the water at the inner wall. The harbour was full of boats.
I mean that there were boats that were not ours. For about four seconds, in the clear black water, I counted sixteen hulls in the inner basin that I have not seen berthed there in thirty years. Wooden, double-ended, tarred. No lights, no crews. Each had a name on the transom in white paint: names of the lost, from the memorial in the church.
They lay head to quay, as boats lie when they have come home.
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**Notice to Mariners 43/26 (Harbour Office, 26 October)**
*The additional high water at 23:58 has now been observed on four consecutive nights. The Commissioners advise all vessels to leave the inner basin by 23:00. The Harbour Office will be closed between 23:30 and 00:30. Persons are asked to remain indoors.*
*Skippers who have moored vessels in the inner basin and who cannot arrange to move them should note that the Commissioners accept no liability for damage.*
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**Harbourmaster's report (R. Dunn, 27 October)**
Of the nineteen vessels left in the inner basin on the night of 25 October, all nineteen were found in the morning, undamaged, at their moorings.
All nineteen had been turned around on their lines. They lay with their bows to the sea wall and their sterns to the open harbour, facing inland, as if each had been brought in, and turned, and made fast, by someone who knew the quay.
The lines had been re-tied. The knots were not ours. They were old knots, the kind my grandfather could still make, flat and square, with the ends tucked and the loop left in the right place for the next hand.
The tide table for November has been printed. It has three high waters on each of the first seven days.