B&W gallery: Purton hulks

The Purton Hulks lie on the banks of the Severn River in Gloucestershire. Old hulks - mostly

barges and lighters, but including the odd schooner and ferry boat - have been driven

ashore here for over 100 years to help protect the local canal bank from erosion. The site

receives no official protection against the ravages of time or the main predator, man, so all

the remains are gradually sinking into the mud. What's there now is often resting on other

remains beneath. That's entropy, I suppose. This shot gives a flavour of what's there,

although most of the hulks, from what I've seen, are not as striking as this.

The day I visited followed days of heavy rain, and the site was a quagmire of mud and

slippery grass, with little incentive to venture much beyond the first few hulks. Among all the

colliers and concrete barges was this hulk, clearly a more substantial vessel than many

others here, but whose details I failed to make note of from the local information. It would

make an interesting project to go back at night with a generator and some decent lamps

and shoot these eerie shapes against a night sky...

The Purton Hulks lie on the banks of the Severn River in Gloucestershire. Old hulks - mostly

barges and lighters, but including the odd schooner and ferry boat - have been driven ashore

here for over 100 years to help protect the local canal bank from erosion. The site receives no

official protection against the ravages of time or the main predator, man, so all the remains

are gradually sinking into the mud. What's there now is often resting on other remains

beneath. That's entropy, I suppose. This shot gives a flavour of what's there, although most

of the hulks, from what I've seen, are not as striking as this.

The day I visited followed days of heavy rain, and the site was a quagmire of mud and slippery

grass, with little incentive to venture much beyond the first few hulks. Among all the colliers and

concrete barges was this hulk, clearly a more substantial vessel than many others here, but

whose details I failed to make note of from the local information. It would make an interesting

project to go back at night with a generator and some decent lamps and shoot these eerie

shapes against a night sky...

"Land ahead!..."