Features / floating harbour
The village within our city
Nestled within Bathurst Basin, surrounded by vessels, floating homes and smaller boats, is a 140-year-old ship.
Every Thursday evening, its lights turn on, machines and engines start whirring and music starts to gently filter out of the porthole windows.
The John Sebastian Lightship has been the home of the Cabot Cruising Club since 1954 and, every week, its members meet over pints, laughter and music, bonding not just over their shared love of boats but everything in between.
I first visited the lightship in December last year, speaking to members of the club about the increases in mooring tariffs that were set to rock the stability of boaters’ lives at the beginning of the new tax year.
The John Sebastian is over 140 years old – photo: Cabot Cruising Club
Over tea with Cabot Cruisers’ commodore and volunteer Ben Arrowsmith-Ewing and his wife Phoebe, the pair told me how their fees had increased by seven per cent, with an increase of nearly 200 per cent the year before. These charges, they said, were making it significantly harder for many boaters to preserve their way of life.
“It’s become a much more unstable time for a lot of us,” Phoebe told me then. “The rises in fees have affected my family and will continue too. It’s a struggle for everyone.”
“Most people don’t understand what the harbour’s all about,” continued Ben, “and so it’s harder for them to empathise with or be considerate of how we live. There’s a whole hidden village within the waterways of the city that most aren’t really aware of, and that isn’t being celebrated enough.”
“I think for a lot of people the harbour is mainly a tourist attraction,” he added. “While it is very beautiful and we of course want people to come and interact with the water, it means so much more than that to a lot of us.”
The hidden village of boaters residing in and around Bristol’s harbour has become increasingly noticeable and important to me ever since. Returning to the John Sebastian on a Thursday evening in February, the familiar faces and echoes of conversations greeted me like old friends.
The John Sebastian lights up every Thursday for the club’s social night – photo: Susie Long
The hull of the ship, hosting a well-stocked bar and enough fairy lights to rival any Christmas tree, rings out with laughs and calls for drinks refills as I step aboard and climb down the stairs.
Instantly, I am greeted by local resident John and his ‘unusual object of the week’ – last time an intricate form of watch and this time a pound coin holder from the 1980s. Next, Steve and Ben, comparing their mooring fees and debating whose turn it was to buy the round.
It is, as you would expect in any village, the pub, community centre and advice bureau all rolled into one. But, unlike the village pubs and locals living on dry land, these regulars are entering into another period of uncertainty.
As Ben pours me a pint of appropriately ship-themed beer, he tells me that, “thankfully”, there is not set to be yet another fee increase for boaters in April 2026. However, he said, many live-aboard residents are being hit with large council tax bills in arrears: “some of them
even say they’ll be taken to court over it.”
As he finishes this sentence, a fellow Cabot Cruising Club and Bristol Boaters Community Association member Tom Quirke reveals that he is going through this exact process.
In a harbour committee meeting in January, several public statements questioned the “lack of clarity” surrounding Bristol City Council’s policies on taxing live-aboard boaters, suggesting that there wasn’t a clear system that reflected how they were being charged.
In an officer response to these queries on behalf of the council, it was explained that “council tax is a national tax levied by councils on all domestic dwellings listed by the Valuation Office
Agency.
“A boat on a mooring will count as a domestic dwelling if it is being lived in as a person’s sole or main residence.
“If the boat moves to another mooring, permanently or temporarily, council tax would be due on that mooring.”
In another response, it was shared that “all boats subject to council tax in Bristol Harbour are currently banded as Band A, ensuring consistency across the boating community.”
There is a whole community that rely on the lightship – photo: Cabot Cruising Club
However, Tom said that the bill he had received “simply didn’t add up”, and that the fee of £3,500 did not reflect how long he had been living on his boat in the Bristol harbour.
Tom, who lived within the council’s tax area before moving to the Marina, said that his interactions with the council had been “absolutely atrocious.”
“I paid £760 a month living within the harbour and had no hot water for four years,” he said. “And now it’s £780 but I get so much more out of it.”
Despite saving money on utilities and mooring, Tom said that the increase in council tax “means that living on a boat isn’t really the cost-effective option it seemed on the tin!
“In fact, for a lot of people it’s more expensive to live on the boat than to live in the houses next to them.”
Tom shared that he had also recently needed to spend a six-figure sum on upkeep, maintenance and repairs on his boat, laughing that “finally I don’t have to roll out of bed frozen and sit by the fire until I defrost every morning.”
When asked about the uncertainty boaters voiced surrounding their fees, chair of the council’s Harbour Authority and Liberal Democrat councillor for Hengrove and Whitchurch Park, Andrew Brown, said: “Bristol Harbour’s moorings play an important role in providing sites for the city’s boating community who wish to live aboard their boat and have access to essential amenities that support day‑to‑day living.
“Anyone whose sole or main residence is a boat with a mooring is liable for Council Tax, based on the banding decision of the government’s valuation office.
“Unlike Mooring Fees, which provide boaters with a licence to occupy their boat and access to amenities, Council Tax is a contribution towards the provision of a wide range of services across the city.
“Support is available to any resident who may require assistance, including guidance on the Council Tax Reduction Scheme and help to apply for any discounts or exemptions they may be entitled to.
“If a person disagrees with a decision, they can follow the information provided to them about how to make an appeal.”
In 2024, Phoebe had told me that “for a lot of people, their life savings are in their boats. Some of them can’t afford the fees or to sell their boat: they’re just stuck and none of us know what the future holds.”
It seems, at least for now, that this is still the case for many of the boaters that live on Bristol’s waters.
Main photo: Susie Long
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