High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Thalatta was a Thames sailing barge, built in Harwich, Essex, in 1906. She was 90 feet long and 26 feet across the widest part of the deck. Like all Thames barges, she was flat-bottomed and had leeboards instead of a keel. She spent some of her life ketch-rigged and some of it spritsail-rigged. When she was spritsail rigged, she had a mainmast and topmast that, together, were about 90 feet high, and a mizzen mast. The Thalatta had two periods with an auxiliary engine and two without. She carried cargo for sixty years and was then converted for use as a sail training ship in 1966. She is currently being rebuilt at St Osyth with assistance from lottery funds.