I often used to pop into Arthur Beale’s chandler’s shop on Shaftesbury Avenue.  Rarely bought anything.  Perhaps that is why they closed.  Sadly.

Arthur Beale’s seemed like a shop out of place.  It should have existed in Falmouth, or Cowes, not in central London.  That was why I liked it so much.  Because I was a London sailor.  Not a Falmouth sailor, or a Cowes sailor, who had webbed feet and spent most of their time on the briny, but a London sailor who held a RYA Day Skipper qualification, could scarcely interpret one end of a nautical chart from another, who only knew the shipping forecast zones in order to answer questions on University Challenge, and who preferred to sip cocktails on someone else’s yacht rather than crew one of his own.

But, in Arthur Beale’s, I could pretend to be a proper sailor.  I could handle gear; imagine that I could tie complicated knots; look as though I knew my spinnaker from my jib; and talk about exotic maritime voyages I hoped that I would complete in the safe knowledge that I never would.

But then Arthur Beale’s closed.  An institution, which had its roots in John Buckingham’s shop dating from 1500, was gone.  The company still exists online but, somehow, it is not the same.  For me, the pretence has died.

Whenever I walk along Shaftesbury Avenue, I still look out for Arthur Beale’s shop.  Nothing has replaced it.  The lot remains vacant.  Graffiti and bill stickers adorn the windows.  Still just visible, the old egg-shell blue fascia and the red lettering of the Arthur Beale sign can be made out, a ghost of its former self.  It is the Mary Celeste of Shaftesbury Avenue.

I doubt that I am the only one that mourns its passing.  London sailors, we are legion; it is part of our national identity, even if an increasingly smaller part of our daily lives.

© Bradley Dunbar

Bradley Dunbar scans the horizon for other London sailors.

Bradley Dunbar is author of Biggles and I.