After all the excitement of the Tall Ships festival, West India Dock has had very few visitors but today welcomes a Thames Sailing Barge that is a familiar sight to many Thames watchers.
The Thames Sailing Barge Will is usually based at St Katherine’s Dock where she has been available for charter .
The ship has an interesting history, Built of steel in 1925 by Fellowes at Great Yarmouth, for Everards ,a family firm who ordered four of the ships and named them after the partners of the business. They were named Alf Everard, Ethel Everard, Will Everard and Fred Everard. cost around £500 each to build, with dimensions 97.6 x 23.1 x 9.6 feet.
The Will Everard worked by sail alone until 1950, and spent a great deal of her working life transferring coal between Margate and the Humber.
In more recent times she was renovated and was once the private floating dining room of the directors of P&O.
Isle of Dogs Life 
Reblogged this on Upyourstreet's Blog.
Lovely to see – there’s more about Will on http://www.topsailevents.co.uk and also her Wikipedia page too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_%28Thames_barge%29 . I had my 40th birthday party on her, going throuigh Tow Bridge was unforgettable, such a beautiful ship.
Hi Guy,
Thanks for the comment and further information, you are right she is a beautiful ship and must have been wonderful to go through tower bridge.
regards