Pluto

Shropshire Union narrow boats did not have roses and castles, and were usually just finished in good quality scumble, much as was done on other northern canal boats. There was some form of geometrical pattern or scroll work on the doors, best seen in the well-known photo of Irene at Chester.

Whatever the problems, they will not be as great as for boat owners in eastern Germany and Poland. There they have special winter harbours where boats could be moored whilst frozen in, and most boatmen would have a special saw for cutting the ice around the boat to ensure it was nor crushed. The thaw also causes problems. On the Vistula there are three sizes of icebreaker. The largest breaks a channel through the ice, middle sized ones then break the ice on either side of the channel, and these are followed up by small ones which ensure that the ice does not become trapped against structures, such as bridges. A German book, published in the 1870s IIRC, gives full details of how ice should be controlled and broken, including information on how to blow up ice when dams up a river. If this is not done, there can be widespread flooding. Just be glad your boat is in the comparative warmth of Britain.

I don't think that would have any influence on the old boatmen I knew. If there was enough water and the cut was wide enough, then onwards.....

You would need someone who understands industrial heritage and the historic importance of canals and how they operated. The main function of anyone maintaining our waterways infrastructure is to ensure that the historic structures are conserved in the best possible way, and to ensure that they can continue to be used without radical alteration. What many/most people find attractive about canals is that you can see the history of two hundred years of use in the structures which form the canal environment, recreating to some extent a more leisurely time. Too much modern development has ignored the finer historical features, making for blandness, even after buildings etc. have been restored. Whoever looks after canals needs to appreciate this, certainly for the smaller waterways, as this forms the basis for all the other aspects of modern canal usage. Larger waterways are possibly more suitable for development for freight, and these could be improved to modern standards, thus creating new aspects for waterway history.

A bit of a sweeping statement as I am sure the GU would have had wide boats built had they succeeded in completing their improvements to Birmingham. Most successful canals had schemes to increase the size of boat using the waterway without undertaking vastly expensive reconstruction. The L&LC did have a scheme circa 1900 to enlarge the canal to 100 ton standard by adding a foot to the depth and increasing lock length to 74 feet which would have cost £30,000 at the time. Perhaps nothing was done so they could keep narrowboats off the canal.

Canal water was not the problem, it was the quality of the water supplying the canal, with human effluent and chemicals from the textile trades being the major culprits. On the Bridgewater, a stop lock was erected at Hulme Locks to stop the Medlock waters, which feed into the canal at Castlefields, from contaminating the rest of the canal, with a tunnel from the Rochdale Canal to the far side of the stop lock providing clean water for the canal westwards from Manchester. The Bradford Canal was closed circa 1860 because of pollution caused by the poor quality of the feed from Bradford Beck. Bradford suffered a typhoid epidemic which was blamed on the comparatively stagnant waters of the canal. When reopened in the 1870s, water was not taken from Bradford Beck, but was back pumped from the L&LC at Shipley. Bradford Beck is now considered clean enough to supply the canal if it is reopened/rebuilt. In the 1850s there was concern over the Liverpool terminus of the L&LC, particularly as there was no current to carry away dirty water. Excess water ran to waste down the Stanley Dock branch, about a mile from the terminus basin. There were several manure and nightsoil wharfs here from which effluent ran into the canal. The then canal manager, who lived alongside the canal at the basin, claimed that there was no significant pollution, though he moved his family away a few years later. hat said, there were also numerous coal wharfs around the terminus, and it is thought that the coal dust countered the effluent in much the same way as charcoal put onto a midden reduces the smell.

Back in the early seventies, I was involved with a BBC2 programme called Black Safari, which was about four Africans coming the find the centre of England. Actually, there was only one African, the others being West Indian. The boat used was L&LC short boat WYE, suitably converted to feature grass huts and a tame stuffed lion. There was a mast and sail for the opening shots up the River Douglas. Unfortunately WYE's engine failed above Wigan, and I had to tow them the rest of the way to Bingley with PLUTO, quite an eventful trip as I don't think a pair of short boats had worked together for many years, particularly over the summit and down to Skipton. Approaching a bridge below Greenberfield Locks, we had to make an emergency stop to film the three bagpipe players who just happened to be crossing the bridge. They used to practice whilst marching around the countryside there to avoid annoying neighbours.

You need to come up north to Greenberfield. Although most of the L&LC is iced up around East Lancs and Skipton, it is clear at the top of Greenberfield Locks, thanks to warmer water entering via the pipeline feed from Winterburn Reservoir.

You must be joshing - the term used in its normal way to mean making a joke.

Cath Turpin and I were talking about this very subject in the pub yesterday as there may be an article about tar boats in the next Waterways Journal - she's the editor and I do the dtp. There were many other tar carriers besides TC(O)Ltd, such as the boats of Yorkshire Tar Distillers at Knottingley. I have also come across the traffic on the L&LC, and there is still the pipework for unloading alongside the towpath, next to one of the chemical works in Church. As a byproduct of the gas industry, there must have been a lot of tar carried by canal at one time. The gasworks next to the Thames were often supplied by sea, with a large percentage of the coal shipped by tom puddings down the A&CN ending up in southern English gasworks.

For cruising in the winter, I would recommend the Saimaa Canal in Finland. The lock gates are centrally heated so that they can be used for an extra couple of months in winter. The lock sides become like a skating rink, so safety lines have to be used by anyone working there, and ice on the sides of the chambers has to be chipped off to maintain full width. The main traffic is timber, the canal crossing the border into Russia before vessels can access the Baltic.

LEO was a specially built tug, originally with forward steering, while SULZER had formerly been used in Yorkshire before coming over to Liverpool. If you go to http://www.mikeclarke.myzen.co.uk/C&G%20Index.html, you can find links to an article about the latter days of Parkes fleet in the Leeds & Liverpool Canal Society's newsletters, 13 and 14. Much detailed information about Parkes' boats is there.

Parkes motor boats taken over by BW were ARGO, ANGELO, and CARLO, with tugs LEO and SULZER. MURILLO was definitely a bank boat as I remember her being used as such in the early 1970s.

Economically, the significant parts of the canal system were the wide waterways of the north of England and, perhaps, the BCN, though the average length of trip on the BCN radically reduced its importance. On tonnage carried per mile of waterway and average length of trip, the River Weaver was the most significant waterway in Britain. The most important industry in economic terms was the cotton textile trade, so canals serving them were the most significant waterways in Britain.

MURILLO was the last wooden wide boat in the BW on the L&LC, and must have been taken out of service in the early 1970s. She was certainly till around when first had PLUTO. The only other wooden boat surviving in BW ownership around then was the RUFFORD, one of the L&LC's square-sterned bank boats. They were about ten feet wide and 50 feet long, with a raised cabin at the stern. Some had a square bow as well, so they could be used for working on quoins whilst gates were still in place.

It looks like the SARTO, from the John Parkes and Son fleet of coal boats. I have it as a long dumb boat registered at Liverpool, no 1736 in 1951, though that does not mean it was built then. SARTO was not one of the boats which passed to BW in 1961, so may have been bought by BW earlier for use on maintenance. They certainly bought the long motor boat MURILLO prior to 1961 for this purpose. The photo could be at Ring O'Bells, showing the first couple of boatmen's houses in the row alongside the canal. If you have a look around the back, there are still several of the stables for the boat horses. I don't know about JACK, but Mayors, the boatbuilders at Tarleton, often bought old boats, and it could be sunk near the top of the Rufford branch waiting to go on dock there. SCORPIO looks like she is being towed by MONARCH which would have been owned by Andy Millward then.

Well, us wide boaters have to put up with all them not-barges what usually feature.

After about twenty years of lack of maintenance she was broken up when the car park was <improved>.

It must have been around 1980 when Roland was lifted out for display in the car park for the Wigan Pier complex, virtually at the end of the short arm serving Trencherfield Mill.

I should have mentioned that there are in fact L&LC Byelaws from several different dates on my downloads page, 1823, 1876, 1908 and 1932.