It’s eight o’clock on a Friday morning and just before we start work, I ask the boat builders what is new on Fair Chancellor. They are quite proud of the ‘binirons’. Despite being a Norfolk boy myself, and having worked in the Broads tourism industry for a few years now, this one has left me baffled. I ask how to spell it (thinking this may shed a little light on the situation) but this doesn’t really help too much at the moment.
‘Come on the boat and look for the shiny bits’ they say; so that’s what I do. It turns out that the ‘bin iron’ is a long piece of stainless steel which runs along the edge of the ‘rubbing strip’ (or ‘rubbing strake’ on wooden boats) to help protect the boat, and of course look pretty in the process. But why is it called ‘bin iron’? Considering on Fair Chancellor they’ve used stainless steel, we have to delve a bit deeper. I use my knowledge of the Norfolk accent when I ask Ted ‘is it because it’s ‘bin’ (been) iron at some point in its life?’. Ted chuckles deeply. He recommends asking Brian, who might have a better idea. Brian isn’t sure but would like to know when I find out. Hooley and Steve aren’t sure either and when Albert alludes to having the answer, he says I should look it up on Google.
Something tells me this is a piece of information that Google would struggle to elucidate. I push for an answer; it is much more fun teasing an explanation from these chaps, some of which have been working on boats since before I was born. ‘It’s because it’s the old scraps of iron from the bin that were used’ explains Albert. I am not satisfied, that seems too easy an answer. I catch sight of Patrick, a mine of information and I go over to steal part of his brain. ‘It’s ‘binn’, double ‘n’’. Now we’re getting somewhere.
Patrick illuminates a little further; apparently the Wherries when full, were known as being ‘loaded to the binns’. The ‘binns’ are the edges of the gunwale as it turns off the deck and down the side of the boat. See the photos adjacent of the binns on the Wherry Yacht Charter Trust’s White Mothand Hathor. These needed to be protected from bumps and scrapes, and the easiest way to do that was to put a bit of iron along the edge, specially made for this purpose. You will see on different boats this is done in different ways. Many of our Broads hire cruisers have plastic or rubber over the ‘rubbing strake’ to protect from the occasional glancing blow. In order to make her really stand out, you can see on Fair Chancellor the stainless steel that has been used instead of iron.
Interestingly, in a Google search ‘What is bin iron?’, Google Images turned up pictures of rubbish bins (as you would expect) and Bin Laden (possibly a bit tenuous, but you can see the vague logic). You can purchase ‘Brass Bin Iron’ from Norfolk Marine at £20.92 per 3 metre length (1/2” width) and the only other relevant Google reference was on the Norfolk Broads Forum asking where to buy ‘bin iron’ (see previous). Of course, with the correct spelling put in the search engine, the useful information on wherryalbion.com cleared things up.