Pluto

I have added a few images and an mp4 video file of the underground canal at Zabrze in Poland. http://www.mikeclarke.myzen.co.uk/Stollen.htm The system was based on that at Worsley. The first half of the film was recorded circa 1950, and shows 'heroic' miners going down into the canal tunnel in much the same way as the NCB filmed miners at Worsley around the same time. The second half is of a recent visit to the tunnel. The local mining museum is connected to the canal tunnel, and there is a possibility of reopening it for tourism. A similar tunnel canal, also in Poland, was restored about six years ago with the intention of reopening it, but continued subsidence has stopped these plans.

Goy it now, its Shipley with Hebble before conversion and possibly Apollo in the background. It might not have sliding doors, but you may be interested in the latest pic on http://www.mikeclarke.myzen.co.uk/images.html It even has a waterway connection!

Not sure of the top pic, though its probably on the Calder & Hebble, but the bottom one is of Wye at Barnoldswick, with Dee in the background. Taken around 1990-5? They are just creating a marina here at the moment after about twenty years of planning. Today, the only traditional boat in the area is Kennet, moored just above Greenberfield Locks. The L&LC Society is negotiating with BW at the moment to take her over.

Further my post about Mendip's cabin rebuild, I have put a photo of Charlie on board just after his cabin was rebuilt. It's at http://www.mikeclarke.myzen.co.uk/images.html

Sorry, tifs work OK on a Mac. I have changed them to jpgs now.

If you go to my downloads page at http://www.mikeclarke.myzen.co.uk/Downloads.html you can find a colour pdf about traditional boat painting on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal under the L&LC Society section. You could also look at http://www.mikeclarke.myzen.co.uk/brightwork.htm to see more details and aslo if you want to subscribe to a book on the subject which I will be publishing at the end of May. The tradition is completely different to that found on the narrow canals of the Midlands, but equally colourful.

A couple more similar photos are at http://www.mikeclarke.myzen.co.uk/images.html

Nice to see Leeds Magnetic. I did one trip fetching sand to York with Chris Oatway in the mid-1970s. He overloaded by a few tons and we stuck everywhere - well it seemed like it at the time! I even had to escape by life raft to get a drink on my birthday.

I have just put a couple of pieces of video which may be of interest at http://www.mikeclarke.myzen.co.uk/video.htm One is of a graveller at Knottingley c1993, and the second is of a sailing barge match on the Muggelsee, near Berlin, in 1994 There is a 'historic harbour' in Berlin where a group has a number of historic craft,including steam and paddle tugs, as well as barges. They organize the sailing barge match, with crews coming from some of the working carrying companies, both in Germany and Poland, as well as amateurs.

Not quite the same site as this is the original canal basin at Wigan, with the cotton warehouses on the right. The earliest warehouse dating from the 1770s is on the photographers right, with the straddle warehouse, built c1820, behind him. This section of the canal was actually built by as the terminus of the Douglas Navigation in 1740, originally with a lock into the river in the far distance. The original boat yard here was on the ground beyond the warehouses. When the canal from Liverpool opened in 1774, boats travelled on the main line to Parbold and then took the branch to Dean where they entered the old Douglas Navigation for passage to Wigan. The deep lock at Appley Bridge dates from this time as there was no problem with water supply as it came directly from the river at Dean. The river was bypassed in 1781 when the canal was extended from Dean to the basin at Wigan, hence the right angled bend beyond the boats in the distance. The converted lifeboat on the left is just turning into the 'branch' canal to Leeds and Leigh which opened in 1816. The rise in the towpath in the distance is what is now known as Wigan Pier. However, the real pier was the viaduct built by the East Lancashire Railway which crosses the canal as the railway leaves Wallgate Station. The East Lancashire built on the cheap and had several wood-framed viaducts which looked much like seaside piers. Wigan Pier dates from a song by George Formby Senior in which he talks about going to the seaside from Wigan North Western Station and looking down on Wigan's Pier as the train left the station. Mentioning the deep lock at Appley, this was built for circa 72 feet long boats, 'inside' Mersey flats at the time normally being under 69 feet long. Yorkshire locks were built 62 feet long to suit keels. When the extension from Dean to Wigan was built, this was done under the canal's Liverpool committee with locks 72 feet long, while the Rufford branch was built under the Bradford committee with 62 feet locks. The Leigh branch was built under the Bradford committee and also had 62 feet long locks, rapidly lengthened to allow narrow boats access to Liverpool. The two shallow locks at Appley were built as traffic to Liverpool increased and the water supply became more difficult to control with the 12 feet deep lock at Appley being supplied by eight feet deep locks further up the canal.

That suggests that Merak and Hebble would have been there.

Not sure of the boats - all narrow boats look the same to me :-) - but the location is Wigan, with the covered sideslips in the background. The brick building was the engineering workshops where the steam engines and boilers were maintained and the chain testing machine located. The yard was set up circa 1880 when the L&LC were developing their carrying fleet and introducing their successful steam boats. The engines, often V-twins, were built by William Wilkinson whose tram engine and colliery equipment business was based at Wigan, close to Pagefield Lock. The old lock gate workshop and forge were behind the photographer, as was the store for sheets and other materials used by the carrying fleet.

I am just about to publish a book on the traditional boat painting on the L&LC - have a look at http://www.mikeclarke.myzen.co.uk/brightwork.htm for more details - and I suspect that the style has its origins in Celtic traditions, so a little older than 200 years.

When Charlie was living aboard, the whole of the outer skin of the cabin was replaced, the underneath layer being found pretty solid; quite a surprise considering what the outside looked like and a great recommendation for the mixture of putty and red lead covering the intermediate canvas layer. Charlie moved on to Gifford whilst the cabin was rebuilt by Tony Lewery, myself and others. Previous users of Gifford had complained about the stove, but Charlie thought it very good and that 'you could get your chops bouncing in the pan!' We certainly repainted the cabin as, when asked if he had any white paint, Charlie said he had some of that Durex paint.

The Chinese may have built the first chamber lock, but there is more to a canal than locks. The significance of the Canal du Midi is that it had everything needed for a canal, the most important feature being the reservoir and water supply system. Such an extensive system capable of feeding a canal throughout the year independently of rivers had not been built previously.

What people think of as starvationers today are really comparatively modern maintenance boats. Around 1790 there were six different sizes of mine boat carrying varying numbers of containers. The largest were 69 feet long, the same length as early narrowboats - which might have been narrow boats then. Of the six different types, each had an old and new variant carrying different amounts. The size of the boat dictated how far into the mine it could work. Later in the mid-nineteenth century there were just three different sizes. An article I wrote about the history of the mine canals has been published, but unfortunately only in Polish and German :-( You're forgetting all the French canals built over a century previous to the Bridgewater, details of which were widely published in England. The Duke even visited them circa 1753. The Canal du Midi of 1681 (IIRC) is regarded as the world's first proper canal, though the Canal de Briare of 1640 runs it close. The only major difference was that the Canal du Midi had an extensive reservoir and feeder system, though its locks were less well designed than those of the Briare.

A friend whom served his time building wide boats on the L&LC told me that a barge has a moulded breadth greater than 14 feet. On the L&LC, wooden boats have a moulded breadth of 13 feet 9 inches; this is the width across the outside of the frames and allows for a three inch thick plank on either side to make a boat narrow enough to fit a 14 feet six inch wide lock. However, the iron and steel boats had a moulded breadth of 14 feet 1 inch as their plating and rubbing strake only amounted to a total of two inches of thickness, and thus they could be termed barges. On the L&LC, boat builders and boatmen called them all boats, the term barge only being applied to unpowered boats working in docks.

Quite a long way for me to come to speak for an hour as I live in Barlic, the no-mans land between Lancashire and Yorkshire. However, I may be able to put together a short article as I had to research the development of lock gates and the location of lock gate drawings for BW recently as they were looking to return to individual canal identities where possible.

It certainly looks like the boat yard at Rodley. The curved engine room top suggests that it is wooden, so not one of the last four BW boats which had steel cabin tops, and this is reinforced by the shape of rudder and tiller. It also looks like it had wooden timber heads, which suggests a Yorkshire boat, perhaps one the three or four motor boats which carried coal from the Wakefield area to the Aire Valley towns until the early 1960s. The lack of sheer suggests she is an old boat succumbing to hogging. Regarding the Albert Blundell boat, I don't have a full fleet list but Martha isn't included in those I have. However, Albert's daughter has a boat and I'll ask around to see if she has more information.

There are probably three ex ACN short iron boats surviving, nos 27 of 1868, 68 of 1876 and 85 of 1878. They became June, subsequently converted to sailing by Chris Topp, Pauline, now at Leigh and used as a houseboat by Paul Lorenz, and Fair Maiden, which was at Leeds but I think might have come over the L&LC to Manchester. I am not sure which is which, but they carried 70, 65 and 75 tons respectively in numerical order. Fair Maiden was probably 85. In that case, I am not sure about the foreground boat as Darlington was still lived on with a decent conversion in the 70s. Just had another look and the boat in the foreground looks to be one of Albert Blundell's, though I'm not sure which. Darlington is behind as she had a steel engine room, and Topsy is beyond. Serenity was the last conversion to moor in this group, so may not have been there in the 1960s.

Darlington is sunk in the foreground, Topsy is in the middle, and Serenity is behind. I used to moor Pluto just beyond Serenity back in the mid-1970s.

More likely to be the second set as figures for the age of lock gates from circa 1900 suggest that gates then would last forty to fifty years. They knew a bit more about what was decent timber then, and could still find it. Iron plating is not such a daft idea, particularly where the canal was not used extensively. Wood framing would allow the gate to distort and create a good seal, something which can be a problem with steel gates which can be too stiff for old lock chambers where there has been subsidence. The iron plates would not shrink, as wood planking did, if gates were not used regularly, and would thus save water where traffic was not heavy. On the continent, iron and steel has replaced wood for lock gates to such an extent that there is only one canal in France which used wood framing.

The main feature of wooden keel construction was that they developed from clinker boats, which is where the Norse connection comes in. If you look at the framing of west-country keels, the spikes holding the planking are driven through the frames and then clenched over, a left over from clinker construction. The stem and stern post was also rebated for the plank ends, some of which were too narrow to be spiked into the apron behind the post. To overcome this, the hooks strengthening the bow and stern were in three sections, one fitting right across the bow. An added advantage of this was that it made the bow much fuller. This type of construction can be found all round the North Sea. On the Irish Sea coast, the boat construction followed carvel technology, the spikes fixing the planks being shorter and not clenched. The shape of the bow was also much finer as the hooks were in two pieces, connected by a knee behind the bow/stern post. Clinker keels disappeared around 1900, but I did find some remains in the River Ouse, just upstream of Goole, where they had been sunk as bank protection. As they are the last remains of boats typical of North Sea coasters, the remains are of particular importance, though they would be difficult to conserve. It is probably more than fifteen years since I recorded them, and don't know their current situation. The remains of several other clinker keels were found at the St Aidans opencast site when the River Aire broke through into the workings, draining the river. They were recorded by the local archaeological group at Castleford, with some of the finds now on display at the Yorkshire Waterways Museum, Goole. Serenity used to be a house boat at Rodley, just to the north of Leeds, together with two L&LC wooden boats, the Topsy and Darlington IIRC. That would be in the mid-1970s. Around that time, a friend of mine, Chris Topp, lived on Frugality in Leeds basin after fitting her with a steam engine. He later had June, and ex A&CN iron dumb boat, which he rigged at a sailing keel on which we had some interesting trips on the Humber.

Dorothy Pax was lifted out for restoration just before Sheffield basin. Some work was done, but very badly. When Tony Conder was in charge at the Gloucester Waterways Museum, he asked me to have a look as the boat was to be broken up. There was very little worth keeping, except for some of the cabin fittings which went to the Yorkshire Waterways Museum at Goole. I did make a photographic record, but the boat was too far gone for the lines to be taken accurately. As I mentioned in an earlier posting, I helped in moving Gwendoline to Ellesmere Port a few years ago, and she should still be there.