Pluto

I have just got back from China where I was advising on their World Heritage application for the Grand Canal. I took some information regarding the Liverpool Link to show how new development can take place on a World Heritage Site, but I don't think it will be my heritage conservation friends in China who will be investing in Liverpool.

More likely to be the other way around, as several Lancaster trip boats, converted from carrying boats, were originally off the L&LC.

It is now live at http://www.wow4water.net/grownups/resources/category/waterways-at-war

To find out more, you should read The Old Tram Road by Steve Barritt, published in 2000, ISBN 1-85936-058-0 which has a full description of the history and many photos of what survives.

Sorry, for the first I should have used a couple of commas to make it more easily understood, for the second, they need a large pin. I leave it to you as to where it should be inserted.

The problem of how BW control - or fail to control effectively - the water supply and how they deal with their customers remains. I have been told that enquiries for hire boats for next season are down already on previous years. As I said on the programme, it needs BW not just to manage the water better, but to be more pro-active in getting the message out about what they are actually doing and how that will affect canal users. The L&LC Society still has not received any official information about the stoppage, nor did BW ask us to pass on information about what was happening. We did have Kennet open to the public on quite a few occasions this year, which would have provided a useful way to get the message out to the public.

The WoW website http://www.wow4water.net should have something soon, but they don't seem to have it linked correctly yet. I also wrote an article about wartime canals in general for Vol 5 of Waterways Journal, available from The Boat Museum Society.

If you visit Niederfinow, try to see the waterway museum at Oderberg as well, where they have a paddle steamer on the bank, or the local museum at Oranienburg, north of Berlin, which has a good waterway section. In the centre of Berlin is the historic habour, where there are several barges and tugs. They organise a sailing barge match on the Müggelsee. Near to Niederfinow, there are also the locks at Hohensaaten, where the Oder-Havel waterway meets the Oder. These have lift-and-twist gates, I think built in circa 1970, which lift until out of the water and then twist through 90 degrees so that boats can pass underneath. The location did not have solid foundations, and the system was designed to reduce the overall height of the lock gate mechanism.

The lack of official information has been one of the major problems for those using the canal. The L&L Canal Society has not yet had any official notice of the canal's closure, even though there has been a closure for several months. It hardly bodes well for the conversion of BW into some form of non-government or charitable business if they can't keep voluntary bodies associated with the canal up-to-date, let alone other users.

This Saturday at 6am, repeated Thursday 3pm, Open Country is about the L&LC and the effect of the water shortage. I was interviewed on heritage short boat Kennet about the canal's history, but I hope that what I said about the management of the current water shortage will be more likely to be included. I'm not sure who else was interviewed.

The traditional Leeds & Liverpool motor short boat stern makes excellent use of the space. In effect, there is no counter and it is possible to reach the prop from the stern deck, so no weed hatch either. The engine can be as far back as possible, leaving the maximum room for accommodation. The rounded bow also gives maximum space, and one boat of this design has the bed under the deck immediately behind the bow.

The level seemed to be down by three to four inches when we took Kennet from Skipton to Bradley and back yesterday - we were part of Bradley Fun Day and had over 140 visitors in three hours. We didn't have too much in the way of problems, rubbing over stuff on the bottom three or four times, not much different from normal, though it was noticeably more difficult to get in to the side, and somewhat slower in order to keep wash to a minimum.

The bow and stern decks of short boats on the L&LC had similar patterns, a curved shape between the two inside timber heads/bollards and the stem or stern post. I have always thought it was to break up what would have been a large area of red lead.

It's a pity that BW's engineers continue to use Megalitres. The old canal company always talked of lock fulls of 80,000 gallons which would have been a continuous reminder to them of what the water control was all about. Now it is just a mathematical equation, with little to suggest that they are dealing with a canal that creates income for small businesses and leisure for many boat owners.

Boatel Cruises were operating from Botany in the 1980s, I think using the wooden short boat Mary. I don't think the same company/boat was there in the 1960s, but there were often trips offered in the area. The Holidays at Home scheme during the Second WW had boat trips from the top of Wigan Locks to Johnsons Hillock where Whittle Brewery was located, together with pleasure gardens with swings etc. and coal carrying companies on the L&LC often cleaned out a boat in the summer to offer boat trips.

When BW was formed there were quite a few ex-army personnel in the offices. They appear to have itemised everything and produced books for recording the details. Charlie Atkins gave me one for Mendip - which had not been filled in - but it did list everything that was supposed to be supplied by the company. The book should be in the archive at Ellesmere Port. Here, at home, I have copies of paperwork giving items supplied to Canal Transport boats on the L&LC, including details of the various different ropes used, as well as cabin items. I can probably dig them out if anyone is interested in short boats.

I certainly agree with that, having worked with Tony Conder on putting together a national collection list for inland waterway boats almost ten years ago. Pity the Waterways Trust sacked him just when the definitive list was coming together, and he was almost ready for seeking large-scale funding. Regarding wooden Yorkshire keels, I did photograph the one on which so much money was spent in Sheffield. Pity they didn't record it properly before they started work. By the time I got over to photograph her, work had ceased and the hull was no longer really viable for restoration. I think the most interesting Yorkshire remains, if they are still there, are on the Ouse, on the opposite bank and just upstream of Goole Docks When I photographed them fifteen years or so ago, there were at least two clinker hulls there, though only the bottoms remained. You could still see the clinker construction though. The other interesting clinker boat I found was on Hayling Island, around thirty years ago. It looked very much like a Norfolk Wherry, and several had made their way down there in the nineteenth century. I went back to photograph it again a few years later, and found that it had just been burnt.

On my 1927 Lancia Lambda, I have used coir matting of the sort which has a thick rubber backing. It can be cut into any floor shape, will clean your shoes and can be removed easily for washing and drying.

Sufficient long-term funding is the big problem. Funding decisions are always political - and when did you last see a politician making a decision based on what is best for society as a whole - so they tend to want things which offer some return, and thus they are able to justify financially their decisions to their voters. To get round this, it is necessary to write to local and national politicians to complain, as sufficient funding will only be put in place when politicians feel it will reduce their post bag. The same result is required to increase the funding for waterways in general, so don't just post here, write to those who make the decisions. Carl, you are knowledgeable about wooden boats, so what would your list be? Mine would probably have Mossdale at the top, closely followed by George and Gwendoline, as this would go some way to preserving the origins of inland craft from the coastal sailing boats of the Mersey and the Humber. Mossdale and George are full carvel construction, while Gwendoline, though carvel, exhibits features of clinker construction originally found on the East Coast. With the need to train boat builders for the long term, a couple of wooden narrowboats would be handy, given their relative simplicity in construction.

Have you written to the Museum or to your MP to complain? It is very simple to argue here, and that's what the forum is for, but it is a bit of a pointless exercise - and I've done a lot of that over the years - but if you really feel outraged, then you need to start sending your criticism to the right people. It can be a bit soul-destroying, but is far more effective than any complaint here.

Historically, I think lemon juice was considered best.

Canal engineers weren't daft, eccentric at times, but not stupid. Mind you, I think that water overtopping a gate would bu unlikely to sink a commercial boat, though a modern pleasure boat would be at risk. The ground paddle, introduced on the Brussels Canal circa 1600, was promoted for the same reason, that water filling the lock would not fill a boat in the lock.

I have been photographing the remains of wooden wide river and canal boats for almost forty years, comparing methods of construction across Britain and Europe. Today there are very few which can provide significant details of construction without extremely expensive excavation work. All have deteriorated rapidly in the time I have been looking at them. Whether their condition is satisfactory or not, the wooden wide boats in the museum would have disappeared years ago had they not been moved to Ellesmere Port. At least there is still the possibility of recording them at a reasonable cost, even if funding is not available for their restoration. Recording is one important, but often forgotten, aspect of a museum. Politicians certainly don't like it as you can't put a monetary value on it, hence finance for the recording side of many museums has been severely curtailed over the last twenty years or so. The Boat Museum has always suffered from lack of money, and the government will not acknowledge it as a national museum as that requires them to provide funding. People would do better writing to complain about this lack of funding to their MP than making easy criticism on the forum. As one US president said - I ask not what your canal museum has done for you, but what have you done for your canal museum. Support them or loose them.

On the first, if they were both the same height there would be no need for the air hole. On the second, how locks were to be left did feature in some canal acts, and their legal status may not have been altered by subsequent Acts, so they could still be in force. I am not sure if post-nationalisation acts have some form of clause to amend such clauses in earlier individual canal acts.