After leaving school at 17, he eventually became a journalist at the Orpington Gazette, before moving to work as a sports reporter for the Daily Mail on Fleet Street.
Apart from a short stint as a sub-editor at the East Anglian Daily Times in the late forties, Roberts would work on eight barges over the next 35 years, initially as a mate and on his final five boats, as skipper.
Working on barges also affected Roberts literary output, because even as a skipper his wages didn’t support his family, which included two daughters.
[5] As Thames Barges became increasingly economically unfeasible, Everards offered to sell Roberts the Cambria, which he ran as owner-skipper between 1966 and 1970, when it was finally sold to the Maritime Trust.
He then bought a replacement, a small motor coaster called the Vectis Isle, in which he carried various cargoes (china clay from Cornwall, coke, soya beans, grain, scrap metal, etc.)