Its name today takes on connotations that make you wonder what its purpose is – but the inscription over the windows of this rather grand Victorian building on the waterfront at Ramsgate, in Kent, means something very different. Smack today is best known as a drug; but in the 19th century, the smacks that were well known in this seaside town were small boats, designed for fishing – and the building that remembers the boys who once worked on them was designed to give them a home where they could rest and be fed between exhausting shifts at sea. It also helped boys, who were usually drawn from workhouses, to be apprenticed to these smack boats.

The Home for Smack Boys, the building for which still survives as something of a tourist attraction in Ramsgate, was the brainchild of Canon Eustace Brenan, vicar of Christ Church in Ramsgate. He wanted to offer those working on the sailing smacks some practical as well as spiritual help. The men and boys who fished out of Ramsgate on these boats undertook dangerous work; it was hard work, long hours, and could result in injury or even drowning. The apprentices on these boats were known as the ‘smack boys’. In 1878, Canon Brenan built the Sailors’ Church and Harbour Mission, and when the apprentices were onshore they could relax or sleep in rooms above the church. Two years later, work started on designing a new building, next door to the church, that could offer purpose-built accommodation for the smack boys.

By 1881, the home, overlooking the Royal Harbour on Military Road, had been finished. It was built of brick with red brick dressings and a slate roof: three storeys high and rather grand – if not forbidding. Most of the crew of each smack would have been just boys – usually, there would be one skipper and then four boys on each boat. The boys could be as young as ten, although they were often nearer 14 or 15 years old, the age at which most boys were looking for ‘adult’ jobs. The Ramsgate home was opened in September 1881 by the Marchioness Conyngham, with the Bishop of Dover and various other clergymen and local people attending. It was stated that the home aimed to provide boys putting into port with proper board and lodging, ‘and to supply them with such instruction and innocent recreation as may help to counteract the habit of idle loitering about the streets and thoroughfares, which is an objectionable feature very common in seaport towns’.

The Ramsgate establishment was not the first of its kind, however. In Norfolk, the coastal town of Great Yarmouth was home to around 500 smack boats, and at least one boy sailed in each. The boats would sail for around six weeks at a time, and then stay in port for a week to refit and take on supplies. It was calculated that there were some 60 or 70 boys on shore each week throughout the year; most were not from the area, and so were left ‘virtually homeless’ when on shore. As was common in the Victorian era, the primary concern was that these lads would be ‘exposed to temptation’ and a bad way of life if they did not have decent accommodation, food and wholesome entertainment.

Therefore, in 1873, a small home had been opened in Great Yarmouth by the Beach and Harbour Mission Committee, providing cheap board and lodging to the smack boys, as well as the use of a library and reading room. This home quickly proved too popular, and the need for a larger building became apparent. The town’s corporation donated a site on the Old Ballast Quay, and in July 1875, building work started on the Walrond Memorial Home for Smack Boys. This was a Gothic-style building that would accommodated 30 smack boys, and include dormitories, bathrooms, dining and reading rooms, and an office and living accommodation for a manager. The cost was estimated at £23,000, and it was hoped it would be ready by October. However, in November, the vicar of Great Yarmouth, George Venables, had to make a public appeal for more funds. Although the building was almost finished, by the time it was furnished, around £400 of debts would have accumulated. And more money was still needed – a library of ‘useful and entertaining’ books, and other forms of relaxation and amusement were still needed. Therefore, Reverend Venables had to make another public appeal to raise more money, stating that he hoped his appeal to the generosity of the public ‘on behalf of the smack boys of this busy fishing port will not be made in vain’. In March 1876, when money was still required to finish the interior, The Graphic stressed the importance of the project:

The boys’ life while at sea is full of danger and hardship, and when they land, if they have no friends to go to, they are liable to be led into immoral and vicious habits, and plundered of their hard-earned wages. It would be difficult to suggest a more effective method of saving them from such evil influences than that which has been adopted by the originators of the Smack Boys Home.

The Great Yarmouth home duly opened, and was followed five years later by the Ramsgate establishment. An 1895 advert for a new master and matron for the Ramsgate home made clear that they should be a good influence on the boys:

In October 1895, the Thanet Advertiser included a job advert for the home:

WANTED
For the Ramsgate Smack Boys’ Home, a MASTER and MATRON (without encumbrance), age under 45. Must be accustomed to boys, must understand the fishing interest, be of unexceptionable Christian character. Matron must practically understand mending and working, and be thoroughly domesticated. Total abstainers.

There was clearly a need for such places, as working in the fishing industry was a way of employing boys from hard backgrounds, including from the workhouse. Workhouses were usually keen to see teenage inmates off into work or apprenticeships. However, not all workhouses and staff were as keen as others. The Canterbury Board of Guardians were asked in April 1891 whether there were any boys currently in the Minster workhouse, near Ramsgate, who would like to go to sea. One of the guardians suddenly realised that they had never asked if there were any boys there who would like to – despite it being so close to the home. However, two other guardians, Mr Fowler and Mr Wood, both stated that they were opposed to sending any boys, with Mr Wood adding ‘they would have to lead a hard life’ – and the guardians agreed, deciding to drop the matter, and not ask Minster if there were any boys who would like this ‘opportunity’.

That it was a hard life was evidenced in an 1883 case, when a boy named Ayres, an inmate of the Kingston workhouse in Surrey, had volunteered to leave and engage himself to a smack owner in Ramsgate. He didn’t last long before running away and returning to the workhouse, which he felt was preferable to work as a smack boy. While in Ramsgate, he had stayed at the Home for Smack Boys, and when the workhouse master got in touch with the home’s manager, he ‘gave Ayres a very bad character, and refused to have anything to do with him’. There was little sympathy for Ayres, with the Board of Guardians ordering him to be put to oakum-picking, and telling him he deserved a whipping.

It was not just a hard life – it could also be a fatal one. At the end of November, 1903, a smack named Wanderer arrived in the harbour at Lowestoft with its flag at half-mast. The week before it had arrived, there had been a heavy sea 60 miles out of the harbour, and a 17-year-old smack boy, William Glover, who was a resident at the fairly new Lowestoft Smack Boys’ Home, had been washed overboard and drowned. William was a Londoner who had been a smack boy since he was 14. He was a very capable swimmer, and had managed to swim alongside the smack for a while, but after being submerged several times by the wind and water, he finally sank.

By 1896, the home was managed by a Mr Austen, with his wife Mrs Austen acting as matron. However, they moved on within five years, and the 1901 census records Thomas and Ada Bolingbroke as the master and matron. Thomas was from a seaside community himself, having been born in Great Yarmouth in 1846; Ada, 20 years his junior, was from Newcastle on Tyne. On the night the census was conducted, there were seven smack boys staying at the home, aged between 16 and 20, with five of them being from Kent.

Within the decade, Thomas Bolingbroke had died and his widow, Ada, had returned to her native north-east. Alfred and Sarah Latham took over the operation of the Ramsgate Smack Boys’ Home. In 1911, there were just three boys staying at the home on census night – 15-year-old Alfred Fuller, Clarence Gibbert, 21, and Edward Ward, 17. Alfred Latham was not from a seafaring area, but as a former seaman himself, having previously been in the Royal Navy, he did have some experience of what the boys might face at sea. His predecessor, Thomas Bolingbroke, was from a different background; as a former scripture reader, he may have been more interested in the spiritual development of the boys.

During World War One, the Smack Boys’ Home in Ramsgate closed down, a victim to the steam trawlers that had replaced the old smacks; the Great Yarmouth home had become the St James’ Institute by 1925 (the building was destroyed by a bomb during the next war). In 1940, it was noted that the Smack Boys’ Home ‘was the recognised shore abode of the many apprentices who learned their seamanship in the tough but thorough school of practical experience’. For those who had become weary of their town being home to up to 30 boys undertaking ‘noisy processions in the streets during the evening’ when they were not at sea, they might not have mourned its closure; but it helped numerous boys find security and a home during what was otherwise a tough life at sea.