knobsticks

I do hope you advised the old couple to call Stone police. These things need reporting. Stone is a lovely town and its residents value their canal.

Fair point but Stone's got quite a tight knit boating community and person I spoke to would have heard about it at some point.

Hi, thanks very much for the explanation. It does sound plausible. I did speak to one of the people who moors opposite Joules Crown Wharf pub and he knew nothing about it. The plot thickens! I will ask a few more people to see if I can get an update.

I have to say I was disturbed to read this topic but am now also rather intrigued. Can I ask the OP where they heard the information from? A few things are odd...how did the "monkey dance" man manage a bike, a full cassette and several bottles of urine? Also, if he moors in the location described why did he walk/cycle a full cassette past the sanitary station and walk it up to bridge 96? I have asked locally and no one locally has heard of the incident, including CRT staff. Also, there is no evidence of loo paper in the pound referred to. Perhaps someone was trying to put the OP off mooring in Stone by telling them this odd tale? All very strange. May I ask if the OP heard the tale directly from the poor abused boaters? Certainly the local rag has picked up the story, but poor jounalism means they just saw it on here and repeated verbatim, didn't do any further investigation.

Forgive me, I don't often contribute to the forum so had commented on the wrong bit of the thread - I anticipated my comment would be associated with the comment from the person who currently owns a Braithwaite and Kirk butty. Hence the term I used 'sister boat' - as in a vessel of the same ilk, like one would say 'sister ship', note I didn't use a Capital 'S' in 'sister'. It was just an expression of speech, like you would say 'sister ship', although perhaps that isn't the best way for me to convey it use! From my memory, the first motor boat built for FMC was the Linda, built in 1912. At that time motor boats were being built at Saltley, so sheer lack of space probably contributed to FMC ordering a batch of butties from West Bromwich. Thank you for mentioning the photo, I am a great fan of Google and I'll probably go back to reading the forum rather than commenting. Incidentally I have always said 'big' woolwich and 'small woolwich', although I expect the boatmen would have referred to them as just 'boats'.

I have always understood the sister boat, Ilford, to have been built as a butty, pre dating most motors but built as one of the batch from Braithwaite and Kirk, in 1912, for FMC. Steamers had butties! Always understood it to be a butty from the Alan Faulkner FMC book in the Robert Wilson series.. Would like to know if records exist of the Braithwaite and Kirk boats being towed by horses (acknowledging this may have taken place at certain Lock flights too).

This is my first ever post, so apologies if I've not followed correct procedure - I've been looking at this thread over the past couple of days and would like to add a few comments....I'm pretty certain that the first person to build a modern planked 'josher' fore-end was in fact Roger Fuller in 1985/6.....before David Harris built Duteous. It's very true that what a lot of boatbuilders call 'joshers' are no where near what the originals looked like. Having said that, the shapes of the original joshers (ie FMC) varied considerably too, according to where they were built.......for instance Yarwoods were different from Saltley joshers and different again from Harris of Netherton. Even Roger Fuller's boats vary according to what the customer wants....some owners have insisted on less that 6ft fore-end, to get more internal space - a mistake in my opinion....and yes lots of his boats are washer joshers....but each to their own. It is so nice to own a replica boat and be asked when it was built. This wouldn't occur without dummy rivets. The idea though, surely, isn't to fool, but to pay homage to what were (in the main) lovely looking craft. I couldn't agree more with the comment about graining back cabins, there's no difference between that and adding dummy rivets. They don't suit everyone, but then isn't it nice to have that choice? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.