DREDGING THE HARBOUR - 2009

Its a bit different than the dredger I remember as a child in the 50s and 60s. It was the sound of that, together with the fog horn and the gulls that stick in my mind, they were the sounds of Newhaven.

Is the little workboat 'ploughing' up the bottom mud so that the dredger can then suction it up?

This dredger picture has reminded me that in the late 1950's the son of Tideways school caretaker drowned in the mud in the harbour. Perhaps somebody has a clearer memory of this terrible accident but I think he was swimming in the 'mud hole' somewhere down near the recreation ground end?

I was about the same age as him & remember the sad event - I think he got trapped under a sleeper, a lot of us used to swim in the Mud Hole !!(now the Marina)

I remember that awful drowning at the mud hole as we were there that afternoon/evening. It may have been on a school sports day as I recall? We were always told not to swim there as so many thick wire ropes and unseen hazards. I didn't realise it was the caretakers son, a memory that is so sad for our wonderful childhood in Newhaven.

I remember him, Terry Turnball, think he lived on the north side of the junction of Gibbon Road and Western Road, previous to that he lived in Lawes Avenue. We all used to swim in the mud hole until his drowning, it was not so far to go.