About 14 years ago I had heard that the North East Maritime Trust – NEMT, had been asked to think about making boat as a prop for a knitting group for an exhibition in the Customs House in South Shields but while the Trustees showed little interest, one or two of us did.
About a decade before, a friend who had heard that I had moved to South Shields, with the intention of taking up boating again, had persuaded me to buy a coble that was for sale in Hartlepool. I had sailed one with him in Seahouses and was easily persuaded because I thought it would not to difficult to take the ‘Glad Tidings’ back into sail again.
“Dream on” I hear you say but I was told soon after I decided to bring her up from Hartlepool, I heard that she was originally built on spec and named ‘Peggy’ when she was bought from Harrison’s Boat Yard in 1924 and the first time she was repainted I asked for her name to be rewritten as Peggy and that is what she has been called since.
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