Early evening stroll down Maldon prom. It’s not unusual to see the barges coming & going but we’ve never seen this one, Ironsides. All the more interesting for us as Mrs K’s maiden name is Ironside. She claimed the boat was her birthright. 

Ironsides
Out of the 2000 Thames Sailing Barges that were registered in 1900, there are now only 28 in regular use. Unique in being handled by two or three people, often the skippers wives would be part of the crew, these flat-bottomed barges were ideal for the narrow shallow creeks of the East Coast. They also voyaged all over Europe and even to South America. Cargoes included: grain, coal, sand, mud, beer, pineapples, stone, timber, straw, munitions, animal foodstuffs, fertiliser and cement. Ironsides earned her living as a cargo carrying ship and had many lucky escapes, she has been run down by coasters and sunk, left at anchor of Dungeness in a gale where the crew were taken of by the life-boat and bombed in the London blitz.
Ironsides is now a charter boat. 

Ironsides : lit :
1. a person with great stamina or resistance
2. an ironclad ship
3. In the English Civil War, the cavalry regiment trained and commanded by Oliver Cromwell or Cromwell's entire army