DandV

Just a couple of days ago in 2013. 11th? when we took delivery of our boat isolated by a badly broken lock from the rest of the canal system. About a week later much of the Aylesbury Basin, 22 boats were evacuated by road to Willowbridge. The rest of the Canal Society boats moved themselves up to the new Circus Field Basin about 4 months later

In shipping, any enclosed space, regardless of shape, dedicated for the storage of liquids was designated as a tank. So big oil tankers had both fore and aft, and transverse bulkheads to divide the below deck space into a number of tanks.

The remaining boats, and the photographs of them are undoubted very valuable, and hopefully durable relics, but are only one dimension. This thread has been valuable to me in adding a lot to, of another dimension, one not so durable, that of the context. Why and what? And even some about about that third dimension, the dimension that is increasingly uncomfortably for many of us, not so durable. The people involved, and their lives. The who. So thanks everbody who has contributed in making this thread so interesting to me.

And what bought this thread about In 2015 on the Lower Peak Canal we came across Spey sprawled across the canal, whilst her crew attempted a delicate salvage operation. A "very nasty branch" had snatched the steerer's very expensive spectacles off his nose and into the canal. In spite of valiant efforts by her crew, there they probably remain.

Thanks for all of the replies. It is interesting that this trade, and the boats, and that horsepower survived as late as they did. Presumably the fuel oil carried was light fuel oil, used as boiler fuel, where any residual contamination from previous coal tar carriage would be irrelevant, whereas internal combustion engines might be a little more fussy. Were there any other narrowboats built for special cargoes? Other then the two powered pontoon like boats used in Stoke on Trent for carting partly fired pottery between kilns? I saw one of them being loaded whilst on a canal side walk there in the mid 1970's and was disappointed in that it looked nothing like the picturesque working boats I had seen in all the romantic pictures that had made it around to this side of the world.