Hoist the sails – if you feel like it: a barge break on the Thames

There's a pirate ship on Margate beach - although instead of a skull and crossbones it sports the flags of Britain's four nations. Bathers crowd around, snapping photos of the city's unusual visitor.

A hundred years ago, no one would have batted an eyelid. The boat, named Snark after the fictional animal in Lewis Carroll's poem, would have been one of twelve such vessels in the bay. It's not really a pirate ship, of course, but a swashbuckling barge on the Thames. These six-sailed barges were once a common sight on the Kent coast and beyond, ferrying goods to and from London. At the turn of the 20th century, there were more than 2,000. Today, there are only about 30 left.