Chart of the Tarrow Reach

Josiah Rennard spent the dry season of 1889 in a rowing boat with a lead line, sounding the river from the town bridge to the Orwick bend. He wrote every depth in red ink, in feet, and drew the sandbars in pale yellow.

He named hazards after the people who found them. “Kitto’s Snag” is a sunken tree that caught a rope barge in 1887. “Mrs Oakes’s Shallows” is where the Sunday ferry grounded with 30 people aboard. The chart is kept flat and in the dark to stop the watercolour fading. Book a reading-room visit and we will bring it out.