By an amazing coincidence, my latest Galway Hooker witterings struck a chord with the fact that I was re-reading Robert Simper’s excellent book, The Cambria Story (Robert Simper, ISBN 978-0-9563299-2-9, pub Creekside Publishing, 2012; available through our shop pages). In the section on the end of trading days (page 29) Robert says that “She had no rivals for her place in history since it was several years since the last Ipswich barge had carried a cargo under sail; only a few hookers on the west coast of Ireland were carrying turf”. So there you go Cambria – you might be last ‘sailorman’ in UK, but maybe not in Western Europe as a whole.