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Derek R.

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Posts posted by Derek R.

  1. Would it be the christmas gathering at stockton? Boats are elizabeth far back colonel centre and posssibly roger wakehams ash second boat back on the right

    Pic's now dissapeared though

     

    Correct Sir! (Pic's back now - I've done playing)

     

    Well I would but I'm strugging to remember back that far!!! :lol:

     

    Is John and Sues there?

     

    Careful - Don't forget I've got a picture of you in your romper suit somewhere . . .

     

    Can't remember if John and Sue were there, might well have been, but not in that shot.

  2. Well I can't see the pciture but i'll have a guess and see if I get any right

     

    Baltic or Belgium

    Yarmouth

    Creeping Jenny

    Lupin

    Swan

     

    Did I get any?

     

    Cheek! Yes. - now do it properly!

     

    Sorry chaps - I was messing about with the edit mode in photobucket. Let's try again:

     

    Barges0017Medium.jpg

     

    Would it be the christmas gathering at stockton? Boats are elizabeth far back colonel centre and posssibly roger wakehams ash second boat back on the right

    Pic's now dissapeared though

     

    Stockton Yes. Well done for spotting the 'Old Man's' Ash! Ash and Jenny were welded together back then.

  3. Swingletree must have been the local one for it Alan, I remember seeing a full set of boat horse harness hanging in my grandads shed years ago, he lent it to someone for a museum iirc and it has since disappeared.

     

    I've heard such a spreader bar being referred to as a swingletree in the UK, and note that 'whiffletree' is a word used in the N.E. United States.

    Why swingletree? Probably evolved from the use of a stout branch off a tree which pivoted - swung.

     

    Naturally regional variations would arise with local accents, and a widespread lack of spelling knowledge hundreds of years ago being a large part of that variation - 'sounds like' etc.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whippletree_(mechanism)

  4. Can anyone help me with information about the horse harness used on the canals. All the pictures I can find in Google show the head end of the horse and a regular horse collar. The unusual aspects of canal horse harness are at the other end of the animal; traces, britchin, crupper etc.are very different from those used in any other horse trade and not well documented. Does anyone have pictures of the aft end of the horse or know of a book with a good description or a museum display with a knowledgeable curator? As I write this another thought occurs, was there one single harness style or were there distinct regional variations?

     

    As a child I used to watch horses working on the Lea Navigation near my home in Tottenham. Unfortunately I was only seven or eight at the time and I can't remember the details.

     

    I can remember setting back from the canal edge as a horse drew a lighter through along by Ferry Lane.

     

    Have a look here: http://www.canaljunction.com/craft/horsedrawn.htm There's a few pages.

     

    Derek

  5. (snip)

     

    Hi Derek,

     

    The boats on the Glamorgan Canal and the Neath Canal were not strictly speaking narrow boats, being rather shorter and fatter (about 64 feet by 8 feet 6)

     

    Cordells work is largely accurate but I have doubts about an unpowered boat making a passage from Cardiff to Neath: the boat would have fitted both canals though, so he got that bit right. A glamorgan Canal boat or a Neath Canal boat would not have fitted on the Mon and Brec or the Swansea Canal.

     

    FWIW I thought the middle of the three, The Hosts of Rebecca, was the best novel.

     

    Thanks for that, I haven't read either of the others by Cordell, and I do remember seeing a photo somewhere of an eight foot something wide boat on a Welsh canal - Ah! just found: 'Britain's Lost Waterways' Vol.2.; Glamorganshire Canal boat 60' x 8'6" carrying 20t on a draught of 2' 9"; Neath & Tennant Canal boat 60' x 9', 24t on 2'9". Apparently most with cabins, straight stemmed and with little or no decoration.

    And from Wikipedia:

    'Swansea Canal' - "The boats were 65 feet long, 7 feet 6 inches wide and carried 22 tons of cargo when fully laden. The last narrowboat built on this canal was 'Grace Darling' in 1918 at the Godre'r Graig boat yard."

    'Monmouthshire Canal' - "Because the canal was isolated from other similar undertakings, Dadford was free to set the size of the locks, and they were designed to take boats with a maximum width of 9 feet 2 inches (2.8m), a length of 63 feet (19 m) and a draught of three feet (0.9m)."

    As Dadford also engineered the Brecon Canal, it should be the same dimension for craft, but Waterscape state in their pdf "55' x 8' 6" " Playing safe maybe. 'Canal Junction' description of the Mon & Brec is of being a 'narrow' canal at 8'. Jim Shead's site states:- "Length 64 foot 9 inches, beam 9 foot 2 inches. Navigation is restricted to boats of length 50 foot, beam 8 foot 6 inchs because of a bridge on a sharp bend."

     

    So today, Jim Shead's seems the most logical advice, whilst in their working days, it would have been the length that prevented the Swansea, and Mon & Brecon from being used on the Neath & Tennant Canals.

     

    There's a Cordell Museum too - must browse for 'The Hosts of Rebecca'. I see the title is taken from the Rebecca Riots - sounds right up my street!

  6. It may not count for much, but I am re-reading 'Song of The Earth' by Alexander Cordell 1969. The novel describes life for the Mostyn family of South Wales as bargees during the mid nineteenth century, and the word narrow does not appear at any point - but, it is a novel, and I do not know what research Cordell may have done in determining descriptions of the boats, though in every other social aspect of the age all seems accurate.

     

    The area worked is real enough;- from Merthyr, an adventurous trip in the Bristol Channel from Swansea to Neath under a Junk rig, and a coal contract on the Neath canal using their two mules; Old Jed & Nell. There is little description of the boat save the pride in keeping the Rams Head rope-work spotlessly white with the help of pipe clay, and complete with the white tail from Mostyn's first stallion. There is mention of a cabin, and tarpaulins over 'hoops', and as they would have negotiated the Neath through Aberdulais and beyond, it would have been a 'narrow' boat, but 'barge' and 'bargee' are the words used throughout.

     

    Derek

  7. I think the white p6 is a series 2 by the black rear quarters indicating 1970 at the earliest.

     

    A wharf car park, an unlikely place to park brand new cars. Most would be a few or more years old like the VW Transporter.

    Quite a nice Humber too. Most likely '73 on.

     

    I must object - this is digression from serious toilet talk! Who's on the throne, must be someone important?

  8. With regard to hatches, I recently had a reply from a Rodney Clapson. I asked if I could paste his comments here, but have not yet received a reply, but do so anyway and ask if he reads this to accept my apologies for being an impatient bugger!

     

    "Dear Sir, Your e-mail about the design of hatches on keels and sloops has done the rounds and finally

    landed on my computer. I had 60 years working in and then running a shipyard at Barton on Humber

    where sloops and keels were built (before me) and where we carried out repairs.

     

    There were, as you say, two types of hatches. The rounded ones, called "carlin hatches" had wood,

    then later, metal T-bar carlins bent to shape and covered with wood boards. These were very often,

    but not always,used on sloops. I expect that they were stronger than flat hatches when sailing at sea,

    though having said that I think that all Thames barges had flat hatches. When carlin hatches were

    fitted it meant that the area of opened hatchway could be varied depending on the cargo and the weather.

     

    The flat hatches, called "lighter hatches" were flat boards laid from the coaming to a strong wood beam

    called a fore-and-after. Again, these hatches could be partly removed easily to open up that hatchway.

    The for-and-afters (usually about 3 in number, but obviously depending on the length of the hold) sat in

    turn on loose beams across the hatchway, and these were removed to give full access to the hold.

    The lighter hatches got their name as they were always used on lighters (vessels with the same design

    hull as sloops and keels, but without mast and sails, towed with a motor vessel - steam tug or packet)

     

    There was no hard and fast rule about which hatch was used on sloops or keels. For example I have many

    photographs of sloops (including new launches) where a sloop has lighter hatches and of keels which

    have carlin hatches. Generally though, looking through my photographs there were many more sloops and

    keels with carlin hatches than with lighter hatches. The only thing that you can definitely say is that

    lighter hatches were always used on lighters.

     

    Daybreak now has a steel top over the hatchway, but the shape of the headledges at the fore and aft

    end of the hold show that she had carlin hatches originally. She was built as a keel for Hanleys of Doncaster

    and was never rigged as anything other than a keel. I have been down to Daybreak often, sailing with

    Tony and Sally, I've been upstream as far as Oxford and downstream as far as Faversham. It's good sailing

    down there, without the fast-running tides that we get up here on the Humber, although my own boat

    (a 25ft Dutch-built steel sloop - 1961 vintage) stays over in Holland on the Veersemeer so I have no

    worry with tides there!

     

    I find it very interesting finding many ex-Humber vessels on the Thames,converted into houseboats although

    nowadays as you will know, there are many more Tjalks and Klippers on the Thames than Humber keels and sloops.

     

    I hope this has answered your questions, if anything else crops up,

    don't hesitate to get back to me."

     

    Rodney Clapson

  9. Town Class boats dwarf nearly everything, except Royalty.

     

    Some had a wooden chine plank, as well as bottoms.

     

    Like Usk it's not what height they should be but what height looks best. By copying another 5 planker, I think I got it right.

     

    This one looks terrible and woud be better as a cabin conversion, considering it's tiny gunwale height..

     

    You mean size matters?

     

    Aldgate0142Pict0024Medium.jpg

     

    'Rooster' - looks like something's sitting high on a fence. The workmanship might be good, but a designer 'slot' to live in? Rather be in a shoe box than a letter box. Sorry if it hurts someone, but there are some folk who should just stay away from boats. Imaginative? Creative? How about stupid waste of time and skill.

  10. The legging or the double posting? :lol:

     

    The legging, we decided Gosty Hill was an ideal opportunity to try legging without delaying or otherwise incurring the wroth of other users/officialdom. What other narrow tunnels are that and infrequented? I'll add them to my list of things to do on a wet afternoon..... :lol:

     

    The double post cold have been sleep deprivation, look at the time it/they were posted..... :lol:

     

    I did notice the time! Hope you had a good evening, and the required amount of beverage! :lol:

  11. IIRC I heard the same. I seem to remember you can tell the brickwork is newer in the high bit.

     

    Last visit we legged Union Canal Carriers 'Great Britain' through for the hell of it..... :lol:

     

     

     

     

    IIRC I heard the same. I seem to remember you can tell the brickwork is newer in the high bit.

     

    Last visit we legged Union Canal Carriers 'Great Britain' through for the hell of it..... :lol:

     

    Was that one glass or two Neil?

  12. Did you know croda hydrocarbons in Knottingley? Not far from John Harkers. When I was little, whenever Harkers launched a boat, my primary school would be taken to watch the launch from the opposite bank. We'd invariably get soaked through.

     

    Sounds like a fifties education program - sadism. Did the teachers stand back on higher ground? Mine would have.

  13. Our son, Tim Hutchinson, is a children's book illustrator. This is Sam the Narrowboatman attempting to start a Seffle. You'll note that Sam has adapted his blowlamp to run on gas. Also he finds it easier if he has help from a second pair of hands/paws to squirt diesel into the engine as the flywheel is being kicked over.

     

    Excellent! Almost Simpson like - do tell us the book title(s).

  14. Here's a sweet one: http://tinyurl.com/9qvb8b

     

    I recognise the boatyard in the Oudehaven in Rotterdam in the video of removing an old engine on that url too.

     

    What were you using to preheat the Blowlamp on that Seffle? It doesn't look like a meths flame, much too cool for a good preheat so no wonder it was difficult. I think most people remove the gas blowlamp at inspection time, but I never had the luxury of any gas on board so always had to use paraffin to warm up the Bolinder. Usually started OK, but almost never on first kick! It was possible to get it too hot though.

     

    Lots of interesting engines on You Tube. Typical of the Dutch to heave out the old for something new, though almost contrarily, they have some excellent old vehicle/engine/boat meets. I don't know Koukouvagia (and he's not in Wikipedia :lol: ) but lighting Tilleys and Primuses (Primii ?) which I frequently do, I have no trouble if a correct sequence is followed. In an engine 'ole with both doors open (obviously for max light) draught is the enemy, along with some excess paraffin in the wrong place at the wrong time. Make good flame throwers do blow lamps.

     

    Most of the video clips seen lighting big continental semi-diesel engines in boats use gas. One Norwegian Rubb is pre-heated from a cylinder lain on the deck - reached through an open port to turn on. Needless to say, one has to be particular about fittings and working practices for safety. Also the names of fuels in different countries. Petrole in France and elsewhere in Europe is our Paraffin, elsewhere it's Kerosene. There's a good website with fuel names World wide here: http://fuel.papo-art.com/ The editors notes are worth reading. Now I'm rambling again . . . reaches for tablets . .

  15. I've just worked out how to transfer all my old videos to a digital format. This one was taken in 1997 before I fitted the Kelvin. The commentary, BTW, in the background is by LEO.

    I'd forgotten just how much smoke it emitted. At the end of a day's boating there'd be white rings on my face where my glasses had been :lol:

    Also I used to find lighting the blowlamp much more difficult than firing up the engine.

     

    http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GSlpxmlWkV0

     

    Here's a sweet one: http://tinyurl.com/9qvb8b

     

    [/b]I Believe Parry II used to be Seffle powered.

  16. I've always been a bit puzzled by that one. What do you need large amounts of coal for at a sewage treatment works ? I can't remember other sewage treatment works having coal stockpiles, so was there something special about that one ?

     

    Pumping power. Possibly by steam, or maybe they had a converter to produce coal gas for gas engines, but likely either power to operate pumps directly or produce their own electricity to do same. Haven't found anything definitive on the 'net so far. Interesting subject in itself.

     

    Edit: There may be more value in Leo's reply.

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