Rye Castle Museum

  Fishing boats on the Rother at Rye Harbour.    Looking across to the Harbour Master’s Office.

Rye has always been a port, from the time it was an island. The Roman iron production in the area was under the control of the Roman Fleet, Classis Britannica, which exported it from here to the rest of Europe.  A senior Cinque Port from the 12th Century, it was the home of the Royal Galleys from 1240, and has been a fishing, shipbuilding and trading port throughout 1000 years. It has also been very involved with pirating, smuggling and also coastguard patrols! Pirating ships, cargoes and their sailors for ransom was a lucrative source of income for the Town and a legitimate one in time of war and when Ryers were licensed by the Crown as Privateers.

Wool smuggling

Smuggling began when Edward I imposed customs duties on wool to boost the royal revenue. Despite the penalty being death, almost everyone in the area was involved in ‘owling’ . This was the term for smuggling  here because of the calls between the men. A specialised lantern used for secret communication amongt the smugglers is kept in the Museum.

Wool was smuggled out in return for luxury goods, including spirits, tobacco and tea. There were few convictions as the juries were local,   and also because many buildings in Rye were modified–with secret cupboards, panels and ‘hidey-holes’ for the contraband, and secret passages and ways through the attics for the smugglers to escape capture.

 In the 1670′s it is estimated that 200,000 packs of wool were exported from Rye to Calais alone each year. Riding officers and later dragoons tried to control it, but by the 18th century, gangs ran the ‘trade’, using the inns in Rye as bases. The notorious ‘murder’ of Allan Grebell, Deputy Mayor of Rye,  by one John Breeds was possibly a smuggling-related crime. Whatever the reason, that killing resulted in Breeds being hung in chains and swinging on Gibbet’s Marsh for many years.

A blockade of the port in 1817 and the later establishment of the coastguard began the final defeat. A fight at Camber in 1832 was between 200 smugglers and coastguards. A boat with 26 casks of spirits was seized and several men shot and wounded.

Society then began to change, and the abolition of duties with a policy of  Free Trade helped in the decline. A long coastline, however, is always difficult to patrol and, in more recent times, drugs and illegal immigrants have been smuggled in.

Barges, boulder boats and ferries

Rye was a cross-channel port, especially to Boulogne and Dieppe, and was the main postal route for London-Rye-Dieppe-Paris and beyond for centuries. It was also a trans-shipment point where imported goods were put into river barges to be taken up the Brede, Tillingham and Rother; t wun be delivered to points inland.  These barges, used until the 1930′s, had not changed from the Middle Ages. Manned by a skipper and a mate, they were 50 feet long and carried 20 tons of cargo-usually coal, shingle and timber. The cargoes were loaded and unloaded in large wheelbarrows that held 4 hundredweight, which were pushed across planks between barge and bank. 

‘Boulder boats’ were loaded with coastal shingle, which was then transferred by men carrying the blue boulders in baskets suspended from yokes, to the railway wagons, to be sent to the Potteries.

There were ferries across the Tillingham on Ferry Road for traffic to go to Hastings via Udimore and across the Rother, as part of the route to the Marsh until 1893 when Monkbretton Bridge was built. The ferryman’s cottage is still there.

 The Rye Harbour ferry, run by the Cutting family for many years, ran until just after the last war,  when people were expected to ‘ go round’ via Rye, to the Camber side of the river.

Rye shipbuilding

Shipbuilding has been very important for hundreds of years. In 1377, when a fleet of 20 ships took troops to the Hundred Years War, four of them had been built in Rye. Most were about 40 tons, but the 1000-ton Regent  built at Smallhythe, was fitted out in Rye for Henry VII.  Another, of 150 tons, the  Hercules, was built and crewed in Rye to go on the Cadiz expedition in 1596.

 The peak of the shipbuilding industry was in the mid-19th century,e.g.

•  In the four years 1852-6, twenty-six vessels, schooners and brigantines were built.
• In  1856, three mortar boats were built for use in the Crimean War.
• By the 1870′s the main ships built were fishing vessels and sailing trawlers, especially for the North Sea ports.

 During the Second World War, extensions to the jetties, slipways and a turntable were built. G&T Smith built 8 MFV’s (Motor Fishing Vessels), for sweeping magnetic mines. At least two were sent to Singapore for the war with Japan. 

Small craft, mainly in fibreglass, and RNLI boats were built along Rock Channel until very recently..

All the associated trades were well established in Rye such as chandlers, blacksmiths and sail-makers, and, from the latter part of the 19th century,  iron founders. It is a sail-maker’s loft that now houses the Heritage Centre and Tourist Office.

For a detailed article  go to Shipbuilding

Rye ships and mariners sailed the world

Rye’s mariners have always been intrepid. A Rye ship went on a voyage of exploration to Brazil in 1539; a sailor went with Captain Hawkins to Guinea in 1567 and yet another went with Drake on his round the world voyage from 1577-80.

A Rye ship, the Cadborough was bought by the Hudson Bay Company and used to explore and mapthe coast of British Colombia, and another became the first European ship to sail direct to Chicago in 1859.

Emigrant ships from Rye took local settlers to Rye, New Hampshire in the 1620′s, Rye, New York in the 1670′s and to Rye and Winchelsea, New South Wales, Australia in the 1830′s and 40′s.