The brig Ebenezer – Worthing History

The brig Ebenezer was built at Shoreham in 1860, worked out of Littlehampton – mainly as a collier – for more than half a century, and was sunk by a German U-Boat in 1917.
Richard Bacon worked on it as an ordinary seaman for just one voyage, but quickly found he preferred life as a “jumper” unloading coal.

**The brig Ebenezer** **built at Shoreham in 1860**

In later years, Richard became an apprentice carpenter and was employed for a short time at the Worthing Theatre Royal, where he was paid four-and-a-half pence an hour.
     But when that came to an end and there being so little other work being available in Worthing, he signed on as an ordinary seaman aboard the collier brig Ebenezer, a ship that is well recorded in Littlehampton’s nautical history.
     The Ebenezer’s skipper at the time was George Grevett, who was already over 80 and had been at sea since he was 12.
     “We sailed for Sunderland,” Richard remembered ruefully, “and I found the brig was short of everything except work.

“The food was rank, but I soon learned that it was all right if you could only get it past your nose and down your throat.
     “On the return trip, with 305 tons of coal, the helmsman fell asleep off Beachy Head. The wind took her back and shattered our donkey sail.

“When we finally reached Littlehampton, I promptly went back to jumping!”

Richard Bacon was the great-grandson of John Harris, the Worthing beadle who, in 1838, was officially reprimanded by the Worthing Commissioners for being too lenient with vagrants using the yard of the Anchor Inn, in Worthing High Street, as a doss house.
     He suffered this stern condemnation from the authorities because, instead of arresting them, “he walked the vagrants out of town and warned them never to return”.
     By doing this, he insisted he had the best interests of the town at heart.

If he had arrested the vagrants, he would have been obliged, as town beadle, to give each of them two-pennyworth of bread and lodgings in the cells beneath the Town Hall – and that would have been wrong, with Worthing’s finances in such a parlous state.

THE story about the Littlehampton-based brig, Ebenezer, delivering coal to Worthing beach, sparked fond memories for the two grandsons of Alfred Steel, who spent part of his career as its captain. This artist’s impression shows the Ebenezer under full sail.