If anyone could be described as a “character”, it was James ‘Jim or Jimmy’ Lawrence, who has died in hospital after a short illness.

As much a part of Brightlingsea as Bateman’s Tower and the Old Church, Jim – never without his distinctive red neckerchief – was one of those people with whom a chance meeting never failed to brighten your day.

One of the last Thames barge skippers working under sail – and the youngest barge master at just 18 – he had plenty of tales to tell, many of them delivered with perfect comic timing in his unforgettable soft Essex drawl. 

Unlike many who had been there and done that, he was kind and generous when it came to dispensing pearls of wisdom – and he had a treasure chest full of those. That was never more true when it came to helping young people ‘learn the ropes’, something he evidently took great pleasure in.

Born in the early 1930s, Jim grew up in Colchester and from an early age wanted nothing more than to go on the barges that sailed up the Colne to the Hythe and on to East Mill. In his highly readable autobiography, London Light, he said of his gang of friends: “We were determined not to let school interfere with our education and we were always down on the Hythe with the sailing barges.”

On leaving school at 15 he started as third hand on the barge Gladys and by the early 1950s, after working as mate on several barges, he was skipper of the Mirosa. That meant he was the ‘old man’ of the two-man crew – though his tender years meant he was sometimes mistaken for the ‘boy’. 

There followed years of skippering several barges and plenty of adventures, but by the 1960s work for sailing barges was drying up. Jim took to chartering, contrasting the solitary life of the trading skipper with the opportunity to share his knowledge and skills with those taking trips and holidays on board the Marjorie.

But in 1971, the barge was unavailable, so Jim had to find something else to support his family. He’d carried out sail repairs for himself and others from a small fisherman’s store, and, with plenty of orders, set up a sail loft in a former baby clothes shop in Brightlingsea’s James Street. A government loan helped, but £700 came from the sale of his sailing smack Rosena.

As his reputation and orders grew, Jim took on the old Foresters’ Hall round the corner in Tower Street. Besides making sails for barges, smacks, bawleys and more, James Lawrence Sailmakers  turned out the canvas for square-riggers including the Søren Larsen, made famous in TV drama The Onedin Line and the four-masted Sea Cloud, with 30 sails covering 32,000 square feet. 

Jim was a founder member of the Sailing Barge Society, which helped to keep many barges from being abandoned or broken up. He skippered several in the annual barge matches or races held in Kent and Essex, including the Marjorie, which he helped to restore.

He owned the bawleys Helen & Violet and Saxonia (pictured), racing the former and building up a charter business with the latter. In later life he took to something smaller, sailing the 17ft Native up the rivers and creeks that he knew so well from his days in trade. Often he was accompanied by wife Pauline, whom he described as “the best mate in the world”. 

The couple had three daughters, and Pauline died in December 2018.

Jim was also an accomplished musician, accompanying himself singing country and western classics with accordion or ukelele for local concerts – or just playing in his front garden for neighbours in Tower Street. Richard Harvey’s video of him singing ‘Cool Water’ can be seen at the bottom of this article.

In music, like sailing, he loved to see young people performing – such as at WinterFest’s Music in the Library event in 2023, where he sat (pictured below in the left foreground), full of appreciation, for most of the afternoon.

Like many in the town, I can’t say I knew Jim well, but whenever we met he would greet me by name like a long-lost friend. Once I started crewing on the sailing smack Maria, we had something in common, and I learned a lot from our chats.

It’s no cliché to say that we won’t see the like of Jim again. The days of working sail that shaped him are long gone, but thanks to his stories, his book, his sailmaking, boat restoring and teaching, his legacy will live on. Brightlingsea is a smaller place without him.

• The date of Jim’s funeral has yet to be announced