Pluto

Waterways Journal Vol 12, 2010, has an article about the various trades through Chester in the early 19th century.

I worked on the original fitting out of Adele for Peter Shrubsall, one of the most memorable of canal people. He became interested after having a few holidays on Peter Froud's boats, hence his Runcorn base.

One of the types used in the Worsley mine was known as a 'Pudding Dick'. Those that are today known as narrow boats were identified just by their carrying capacity - 25 tons, though there were some smaller than that, 12 tons or 18 tons, with Pudding Dicks probably 10 tons based on the number of baskets of coal carried.

As I mentioned today in another thread, the term N.Boat was used in the C&HN Boat Register as early as 1819. Boat, or something more specific, such as keel or sloop, was used for other boats. A boatbuilder on the L&LC suggested to me that a barge had a moulded breadth over 14 feet, that being the breadth over the frames, rather than overall. That meant that the L&LC had boats when made from wood, and barges when made of iron/steel. Historically, there was no need for the term 'wideboat', as all commercial 'boats', except narrowboats, were wide.

Te C&HN Boat Register uses N. Boat in 1819: built at Worksop and owned by Edward Sawden of Clayworth.

Northern narrowboat painting was influenced by the painting on boats from the Mersey area, so had scrolls and high-quality scumble-work not found in the south. The scumble-work in my short boat cabin, painted in the early 1950s, was very similar to that on SUC narrowboats, judging by photos.

Whitebirk Power Station tried boxes for coal from Wigan ion the 1930s, but gave it up as the boxes reduced the weight of coal which could be carried.

Bob Watson, who set up the Sobriety Trust and the Yorkshire Waterways Museum, sadly died earlier this week. A Memorial Service will be held at Goole Parish Church at 11-30 on the 5th March. He used waterways to address problems in society generally, from education, providing boat-person's training for women, and waterway heritage projects, to getting prisoners back into work.

The upper gates in 1977.

Lydgate, between Burnley and Todmorden, forty years ago.

It is proposed to build an incline at Slapy. Downstream, at Štěchovice, the lock at the hydro-electric station, with conventional mitre gates, overcomes 19.10 metres. Although not the deepest in The Netherlands, this lock at Berkel en Rodenrijs must be one of the deepest small locks in the country. The shallow mitre angle probably developed from locks used for flood relief and tidal barriers. The Bolléne Lock on the Rhone used to be Europe's deepest at 22m. The lock at Carrapatelo on the Douro is now the deepest, at 35m.

The L&LC had much more effective wooden strips, called strikers, fenders or bumpers. They had the added advantage of keeping boats away from the hollow quoin and thus reduce the risk of leakage.

The article didn't mention the Thwaite & Hawley system being tried on the L&LC in Wigan.

As the towpath side is where most leaks take place, it is useful to have a footpath along which inspection can take place, though it is probably done less frequently compared to the days of the section inspector, who was expected to walk his length once a week. He would also check boat licences and identify those overstaying.

Because of subsidence, Wigan Top Lock got to 15 feet 9 inches before the company started equalising the fall of locks on the flight to reduce water usage. You can still see where they had to add three rows of stone.

Conversely, L&LC wooden boats used the two wooden cross beam to hold the sides out, and the rear one could also be removed for large loads.

I had, and that's why I posted the image.

Not sure if this is well known by many, but it came from a 1951 'Dock and Harbour Authority', where a paper on inland waterways given at the PIANC meeting was published. The top drawing is for a wide GU-type motor boat, with the standard narrow boat being illustrated below.

The problem you will have is encapsulated in your next to last paragraph. Most canal engineering was undertaken by craftsmen, whose expertise was handed down by example and word of mouth. You will find little relevant in publications as they were not needed by craftsmen trained using older methods. The craftsman was central to the development of the industrial revolution, and there were few of what we would call professional engineers before the latter half of the 19th century. Even Smeaton, regarded as the first civil engineer, was craftsman trained. In Britain, engineering as an academic subject was years behind what happened on the continent, where academic engineers were desperate for English craftsmen. The reason I translated Maillard's book on canal engineering was that there is nothing so detailed in English. Unfortunately, today in the UK the craftsman is not so appreciated by society, which is why there is a shortage of skilled workers. It is a pity Parliament has so little understanding of the problem - at least 13 Acts or reports on the subject over the last 20 years and still there are drastic shortages across many industries and services. We need a better balance in educating by university against traditional on-the-job training. Both have a role in creating industries that can solve problems and then use them in practice. For my background, I left school at 15 to become a craft apprentice, going on through ONC and HND to a masters course at Birmingham, where I became involved with canals from 1970. Too many days at Gas Street led to working for Peter Froud at Preston Brook, and whilst living on an L&L short boat in the 1970s, became involved with industrial engineering conservation, ending up as engineer at the Helmshore Textile Museums. Health problems ended this type of work in the late 1980s and my working as a self-employed industrial historian. This funded extensive research of canals across Europe, particularly into former communist countries, and eventually into China. There is a lock named after me on the L&L in recognition of my heritage work related to that canal. I am currently working on a translation of Hogrewe's 1780 book on English canals.

The floors and bench seats in short boat cabins were often covered with lino, pinched off the tip at the lino works at Appley Bridge.

On the L&LC everyone available near the Yorkshire locks above the Skipton Pool would be hard at work passing ice downwards by the lock full. At river crossings, such at over the Aire at the top of Gargrave Locks, wooden slideways were erected in early October, and the ice which had been passed down the locks would be raked out and slid down into the river. It got rid of the ice permanently -- until the next hard frost.

There is a picture of me on my boat at 7-20, and possibly I am leaning out from by the kitchen at 5-58 when I was working on Lapwing with Charlie Atkins.

Much certainly has been lost. The only English description of canal building is the article in Rees Cyclopedia, published in 1805, and that is comparatively brief. This lack of technical publications in English is probably because craftsmen-taught English canal builders did not need anything beyond that passed down to them, plus what their intelligence could develop. This lack of contemporary published technical works is why I translated Maillard's book, which was based on his visit to English narrow canals in 1795. As you have suggested, clay was too heavy to carry any distance, and its availability locally depended on the local geology. I have been going through the Engineer's Reports sent to the Canal Committee during the construction of the northern section of the Lancaster Canal. There Sammel is sometimes referred to as being cut through during construction, and noting that it could be used elsewhere nearby for lining the canal.The description in the Reports is very similar to thatb given by Maillard in his canal engineering book. I have found reference to similar material in the L&LC Engineer's Reports, particularly for the length above Johnsons Hillock, which had a reputation for leaking. Not all people needed to pay a toll. A land owner through which a canal passed could be given the right to a pleasure boat, but not to pass through locks, while owners of farmland could have manure delivered without payment. In the 1920s, the L&LC did investigate what comprised manure, and what was being carried under that title. Isn't canal history complicated.😀

The following was taken, I think, from the 1973 MSC/Bridgewater guide. Not sure what £190,000 is in modern terms. BRIDGEWATER CANAL Note on collapsed embankment crossing the River Rollin near Altrincham, August 2nd 1971, andthe major reconstruction of the canal to restore navigation. On 2nd August 1971 at about 07.20 hours the Altrincham Police received a report from two eleven year old boys thatthere was a leak from the Bridgewater Canal near the BoIlin Aqueduct. At 07.50 hours the first stop logs were inserted atAgden and by 11.30 hours stop log dams on each side of the breach had been installed and the remainder of the canalwas safe. The canal in Manchester had dropped 14 inches which was made good with water from the River Medlock by3rd August. The canal crosses the River Bollin at the site of the breach on the largest Bridgewater Canal embankment; thedifference in height between the canal and river level being thirty-four feet. The canal had washed a hole in the embankment 90 feet wide and some 20,000 cubic yards of material had been deposited in the river bed. The cause ofthe disaster will never definitely be established, but detailed discussions with the Engineering Staff of BritishWaterways Board and circumstantial evidence, leads us to believe that the cause was a complicated leachingprocess of fine sand particles from the bed of the canal which had continued over the two hundred year life of theembankment. There have been several other very similar failures of high canal embankment where the canals hadcrossed rivers. The failure no doubt resulted from slight seepage at canal bed level and special precautions have been taken to seal the canal bed of the new embankment and also to check the canal bed where the Bridgewater crosses the River Mersey. The design and reconstruction of the aqueduct and canal embankment was under the direction of Mr. Blyth the ChiefEngineer. A detailed survey and cross sections were immediately taken to establish the magnitude of the task. Indealing with an old structure it is always a problem to decide where to draw the line between repair and renewal anddifficult decisions had to be made. The Company are as yet however bearing the full cost of repairing the breach which together with the associatedcost of rebuilding Woodhouse Lane aqueduct is likely to amount to nearly £190,000. The Inland Waterways Association representing the pleasure boat owners, and other amenity interests, were veryactive in organising support for the restoration. They held a rally of seven hundred boats at Lymm in August 1972,which in spite of atrocious weather was very well attended. They hope to be able to contribute to the restorationwork. The contractors were Messrs. Harry Fairclough & Co. Ltd., of Warrington, for the main restoration and WoodhouseLane aqueduct, and Messrs. A. Monk & Co. Ltd., of Warrington rebuilt the wing wall of the Bollin aqueduct. The canal will be reopened in September, and the Company would like to place on record their appreciation of theefforts made by the contractors and the understanding shown by the canal users.

This is a load of b*****ks. There were several Bridgewater Canal Acts authorising its construction in the 1760s and 1770s whose terms are basically still in position, though perhaps slightly amended by the MSC Acts. On the method of construction, although one of the earliest canal embankments - there are earlier ones on the Bridgewater - it did remain sound for 250 years, something which I suspect few modern structures will achieve. Brindley, and other contemporary canal builders, learnt their skills from older craftsmen, with knowledge being handed down verbally. This would have included the assessment of different types of earth, and their stability.Those craftsmen who rose to the top of their trade, such as Brindley and the other canal builders, were not stupid, and probably had higher levels of intelligence than most at university today. We have lost much of that information which was passed down from one generation of craftsmen to the next. For example, where canals needed to be lined to make them watertight, they did not use clay as we know it today. Sources of this are limited and it was too heavy to carry any distance by road. Instead they used a mixture of suitable earth and small stone, known as 'Sammel'. The name probably comes from the German, meaning 'collection'. This type of earth could be found naturally in many places, and it seems to have turned up during construction. Any excess was then used elsewhere close at hand for lining the canal bed, and is why puddle was usually at least four feet thick. This is just one of the many facets of canal engineering that have been virtually forgotten because craft skills are no long passed down by word of mouth 'on the job'. Training in a college or pseudo university just doesn't cut it for producing really good skilled workers.