She was bought from McLearon's by Fred Horlock of Mistley, who gave her a spritsail rig suitable for sailing in the smooth waters of the Thames estuary.

[1] On 10 November 1908, she was caught in a severe storm between Sunderland and the Thames and, three days later, was towed into Lowestoft with a broken main gaff and a split sail.

A couple of months later, on 15 January 1909, under way in the Thames's Blackwall reach, and loaded with maize, Thalatta was in collision with a steamer, which did considerable damage to her starboard side.

[1] In 1917 the barge was bought by the Wynnfield Shipping Company of Grimsby, who installed a 70 hp (52 kW) two-cycle vertical oil engine, built by Plenty & Sons of Newbury.

[1] At the end of the war, Herbert John Body of Southend took over as skipper and Thalatta had a regular run into war-torn Flanders with materials for postwar rebuilding.

She was converted back to a spritsail rig and continued carrying cargoes between the north of England and the Channel, as well as to mainland Europe.

[1] The barge was later taken over by the East Coast Sail Trust and continued to work as a schoolship skippered by John Kemp with Jane Benham as the mate.

[5] It was decided that the old barge should be rebuilt and East Coast Sail Trust began to raise funds to carry out this very expensive job.

A possible explanation of this apparent case of synchronicity is the fact that Mrs Baillie Reynolds published a highly popular novel named Thalassa in the same year.

Roman mosaics also depict her as a woman rising from the sea, with crab-claw like horns, clothed in seaweed and holding a ship's oar.

Now generally used to mean “The sea” Thalassa represents the word in the Ionian form of Greek, the classical version of the language, the one in which the early Christian Gospels would have been written.

The barge's former cargo space was converted into communal living quarters where young people sleep in hammocks and keep their belongings in big wooden sea chests.

[8] Thalatta's educational cruises offer the opportunity for a varied programme of environmental studies and give a glimpse into the vanished age of working timber sailing ships.

They combine adventure with formal learning, covering such topics as estuary ecology, pollution, fisheries, waterside communities, sea defences, and rescue services.