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Born in Titchfield in 1894 and educated in
the village, Francis Barter joined the Royal
Navy as a boy in 1909. After being
invalided out of the Service in 1914 due to
poor eyesight, Barter worked in the local
dockyard during the Great War and served
briefly as a merchant seaman in the early
1920s. Towards the end of 1922, the
first record appears of Barter operating a
Ford motor bus between Gosport Hard and
Hardway - he was fined 5s and later 10s for
failing to illuminate his vehicle's rear
registration plate.
The size of Barter's fleet increased during
the mid-1920s as he and his competitor on
the Hardway and Elson route, Hezekiah Mason,
consolidated their positions following Hants
& Dorset's decision to withdraw from the
route in 1925. Around this time,
Barter adopted the trading name
'Perseverance' and his garage in Elson Road,
believed to be adjacent to his home at
Bellona Villa, used the same title.
Following Barter's untimely death at the age
of 34 in June 1928, his wife Margaret
continued to operate a motor bus service to
Hardway, Elson and Brockhurst but, by the
end of the decade, the Perseverance name had
transferred to George Alfred Cross in nearby
Priory Road and an express service had been
initiated between Gosport and London via the
Meon Valley. Although Cross sold his
express service to Southdown in 1934, he
continued to operate local services in
Gosport until they were sold to Provincial
Traction in 1949, the remainder of his
business (i.e. coach hire) being acquired by
Hutfield Coaches (Gosport) Ltd in 1955. |
