Steve Priest

I've just come across this topic, and being a professional rivet counter I thought I might contribute. I think Reading/Redshank had a welded replacement cabin at Stockton a few years ago, and as regards butties, I would agree that Corvus was the last of the little boats with an original cabin. As far as I know Leonids still had its original cabin the last time I saw it, but I haven't seen it for some time. If it still has, that must be the last of the butties with one During my career I have riveted replacement cabins on Triagulum, Tarporley and Tipton whilst working for the WFBCo, Antlia and Sextans whilst working for myself at Stockton, and Towcester, Rufford and Scorpio as part of Brinklow Boat Services, and I know that Ian Kemp has done Sculptor, Regulus, Leo, and Malus. When they were built Northwich cabins were lined with 1/2 inch fibre board which was attached with brass countersunk machine screws which were drilled and tapped through the cabin side and roof - if anyone has stripped the paint off an original cabin and wondered what the brass discs on the surface are- that's it. The fibre board was fitted flush with the 1/2 inch steel framing which was left exposed, most of the angle frames were capped, but there was still a lot of steel left exposed which would have run with condensation, they must have been horrible to live in. Both Sculptor and Scorpio have been restored like this. BW decided that the best remedy was to cut the cabin off and replace it in wood, although a few boats retained their steel cabins which were relined with tongue and groove in a more conventional manner which I would have thought was a better option. When I worked for the B'ham and Midland and had the Yeoford the cabin was original and was fitted out like this, but as regards rusting internally, after a 'robust' days boating you could guarantee that the bed would be full of scale! On all of the little boats and the middle boats originally the engine would come out through the bulkhead, which was bolted on. The cabin/engine roof on both little and middle Northwich boats was riveted on in one piece, whilst in the big boats (both Northwich and Woolwich ) the engine would come out through the roof, which was consequently separate and bolted on, and the bulkhead was riveted. Whilst most little Woolwiches were altered to a bolt on roof ( the only ones left with a riveted roof flange are Caillisto, and Corolla - which has a bolt on roof inside the handrail line, and when restoring Aquila I decided to rivet the roof on as per original ) none of the little Northwiches were altered. As regards composite boats, the Sculptor is still composite and was rebottomed at Brinklow boat Services two years ago after a campaign to keep it so - there was a move to replace it in steel but the right decision was made in the end - and I am sure that Bellatrix is composite also. I believe that it is correct that Ash is still composite, but Carina lost it's wooden bottom a couple of years ago

Our take on this is as follows. My understanding is that , as has been said, it is described as an early Steve Hudson boat. The steelwork is by Paul Barber, fitted out and marketed by Steve Hudson, and for the record, it has no rivet washers, and polystyrene insulation. The current owners have owned the boat for ten years or so, and have cruised very extensively over that time, in their retirement. Talking to them, there aren't many places they haven't been, but the now decided that it is time for them to move back into a house and sell the boat. They are really nice people, and the boat is extremely well kept. They put the boat on brokerage last year and agreed a deal with a prospective purchaser subject to survey. During a previous docking they had been told that the boat appeared to have nothing wrong with it, and although it was not a formal survey, they did not anticipate any problems. However, the surveyor found evidence of significant pitting on the hull sides and said that remedial work was required, the scope of the work was to be established by thoroughly cleaning the hull sides under the waterline, which was not possible at the time of the survey. The sale fell through, and the owner decided that the b to have the work done himself before putting the boat back on brokerage, hence he spoke to me. I spoke to the surveyor, and established that it was likely that the straight sides would need overplating, the bottom, fore end and swim were ok. When we craned the boat out my initial response was that it looked to be in pretty good order and that we could probably weld up the worst pits, however, after rotary wire brushing it was obvious that the pitting was too widespread and deep for this to be practical, especially considering the polystyrene insulation. We have a method which we use when overplating boats with polystyrene insulation that greatly reduces the risk of fire, we have done several over the years and never had a problem, however this is easy enough when the welding is confined to a straight run at the top of the new plate, but much more difficult when welding widespread pitting up over the whole surface of the plate. The polystyrene will melt away over a couple of inches behind the weld leaving bare steel, but if the option is to strip out what may be, and in this case was, a sound and tidy fit out then it is probably worth the compromise. So, we overplated the boat on the straight portion of the sides up to the waterline, leaving the fore end, swim and bottom as they proved to be ok, the survey report was transferred to the owner, and the surveyor passed our work off before relaunching. I do not believe for one moment that either ABNB our the owner would try to hide the fact that it had been done, and considering that most buyers would have a survey done anyway it would be discovered in any case, but I am not sure that you would expect it to be disclosed in the initial advert, more likely during a subsequent discussion

I've just read of the death of Chris Daniels. It was Chris who was on Bingley whilst the canal children was being filmed. I am afraid I made him homeless when I bought Bingley from Kim McGavin, something he jokingly reminded me of some years later. He was also a good friend of 'Ernie' Earnshaw who owned my other boat Aquila, and I think I remember him telling me that they had done a trip with both boats at some stage. I didn't know him well, but we chatted several times. Sad news, RIP Chris

Pete, I mentioned the Birmingham and Midland because I remember that Graham was involved, though I can't remember whether he supplied a boat for the filming or not. I have now found the Tardebigge scene, and the boat with the extended cabin on the towpath side is Bingley, what I can't put a name to is the boat on the front of the wharf, although the colours might suggest it is Doug Greaves' boat which would have been Bodmin at that time. I remember some of the boats were filmed with more than one name, and pre printed fablon name panels were used so that they could be changed quickly. I think Bingley was renamed Daffodil for part of it

Hello Pete, The location I would guess to be Curdworth, the lock above the Dog, the big Woolwich is Bingley, I didn't notice the little butty but would guess that it is a B'ham and Midland boat,

The story of the Tardebigge is an interesting one. back in the early nineties I was approached by a prospective customer ( who wishes not to be identified) who talked to me about building a little Northwich copy. Sometime later he took me to see the Tardebigge as it then was, the stern end of the Antlia with the ice breaker fore end, with a view to using the stern end and building a new little Northwich copy fore end onto it. On the way home we discussed the history of the boat and where the fore end was, he chased it up and found that it was for sale, and after another day out he decided to buy it. The job therefore developed into re-uniting the two ends of the Antlia, that had been separated some forty years previously. We had fifty feet of the original boat, so we added a new 10' section ( rivetted, with reclaimed knees) to make 60', then rivetted a new engine room and cabin, rebottomed the whole boat, and fitted the Lister HB2 from the fore end section in the new engine room. As a result of this work I ended up with the fore end of the Tardebigge and the back end of the Kitty, ex Water Vixen, ex fore end of Antlia. Originally the water vixen had, as far as I know a transom stern over a fairly basic swim, but this had been altered in the late seventies by Braunston canal services to a Northwich style counter stern. I used these ends to make a new boat with if I remember 16' of new sides using the name Tardebigge. By this time the middle Northwich Sextans had arrived with me for a rebuild, which was at the time much as it had been when it was a Wyvern Shipping hire boat, with a Lister SR2 under a long back deck. Sextans was lengthened, had a new riveted back cabin and engine room, and a 20' conversion, and was fitted with a Lister HR2 (ex josher Camel) and the redundant SR2 went into Tardebigge I think worked out that the rebuilt Antlia had been fitted with no less than seven sets of engine beds in it's history Probably a good job I don't work on cars, isn't it

Yes, they were wrought iron, but so were iron joey boats, the first batch of little Woolwich boats, little Northwich boats and most joshers. The difference is that they were, I believe, made of B grade iron plate, which does not weld well. The oak was the most difficult boat I have ever done welding work on, and I think that if they had ever been used as hard as the big Grand Union boats were they would have fallen to bits

I think this might have been me, we can get Aquila up lock no.9 without any problems but we get stuck coming down. We got stuck there on Easter Sunday last year when the flight was quite busy, we tried flushing but that wasn't working so we waited until it quietened down and got through relatively easily with a chain puller. I think Aquila is 7' 3/8'' at the widest point, and lock 9 is the only one we stick in

Sorry chaps, it's not Gambia, It's France

Yes, it was a wire works. I worked for Caggy for part of one winter back in the mid seventies, he called it 'the united wire' but I don't know if that was the actual name at the time. I do remember that it had a very good canteen, we used to have breakfast there on a Wednesday morning ( we took an empty boat down every Wednesday). At the time, he would take two boats of rubbish a week, one from the united wire and one from Raleigh bikes on the engine arm. We would change the one at the Raleigh on a Friday, take it back to Bromford and unload it into the united wire boat, and then take that boat to Moxley tip. Caggy would get to Ocker Hill on the Monday, then Ocker Hill to Moxley tip, unload, and back to the top of the thirteen with the empty boat on Tuesday, ready to take it down to the united wire on the Wednesday. I remember the Comet, it was indeed a lovely boat and certainly seemed to be in very good condition at the time, I often wondered what became of it. The other boat that I remember using was a station boat that he called Brenda, there was a lot of paint scraped off the back bends on the Brenda revealing the letters 'NAP', I later understood that this was originally the Naples. Caggy always referred to this boat as a Stour lifter. Once whilst taking the Brenda down the thirteen empty we noticed a trickle of water coming from behind one of the knees, Caggy managed to stuff it full of wet newspaper and stop it leaking before we got to the wireworks, it was still afloat when we went back the following week. Those were the days!

I was going to give a more detailed response but i have loads to do before I go to Braunston, so just a couple of quick points:- I am not convinced that you can see that the top of the stem bar is higher than the cants, the top line of the cants is not at all clear but you can make it out further back, and following the line parallel with the top bend it seems to come out level with the top of the stem. When the photo is enlarged, however, I believe that just to the left of the stem you can make out the front edge of the top bend plate and the rivets that hold it to the stempost flange. Also, when you enlarge the cabin area, it is apparent that the chimney side handrail is right on the edge of the cabin, whilst on the porthole side the inside edge of the handrail is in shade and appears solid. Those points certainly suggest Woolwich to me! Regards, Steve

An interesting set of photographs, and several that I have not seen before. I don't know anything about the plates that appear on the Aboyne's cabin side, I've not heard of them, or seen any, and I haven't noticed any in photographs. As regards identifying boats, the motorboat in the picture is not Taygeta, it's a big Woolwich. If you enlarge the picture there seems to be a Y in the name on the top bend, so Aynho would be my guess. As far as I know, the big Woolwiches were the only boats to have offset headlamps

I've had this piece of film bookmarked for a while, I think it is a great snapshot of Grand Union boats working in their early days. I don't recall seeing any other photographs of boats painted in that style though. Laurence is right that all Woolwich boats had panelling from new, it ran forwards along the engine room and stopped a few inches behind the rear engine room door, the hinges of which were welded to the engine room side, the thickness of the hinge allowed the door to open flat across the top of the panelling. The position of the panelling is clear on boats with original engine rooms from the pattern of small rivets which were used to fill up the fixing holes when the panelling was removed. Big Woolwich motors were built with a bolt on engine room roof so that the engine and tanks could be removed, and you can see from the still that the panelling covered the roof flange bolts along the top of the sides, and as the roof could not be taken off without first removing the panelling, it's not suprising that it didn't last very long. All of the Woolwich and Northwich motors were supplied with one dolly and a hook, the hook was fine when towing with a long line via the butty mast and running blocks to a t stud at the front of the butty slide hole, the motor steerer would just put the line on the hook, and the butty steerer would run the line out off the t stud to take up the tow, but a lot of people came to prefer to pay the line out from the motor boat, and two dollies made that a lot easier to do, hence most boats were altered. This is the reason that more often than not the dollies on G. U. motors don't match, the new ones were made of straight bar with the end heated up and mushroomed over. I am not sure when this happened, I believe that it was in early Waterways days. Another feature of big Woolwiches in their earlier days that is shown is the offset headlights, and I don't think that lasted long either! great piece of film, Steve

Laurence, The rudder you describe is the Harland and Wolff type, and was fitted to both big and little Woolwiches. I'm afraid that the rudders on Northwich boats, wether they were little, middle or big boats, were not like this. Best of luck with the ongoing work, regards, Steve.

Yes,I believe so, but I haven't seen him for a while

Are you getting me mixed up with Roger Farrington, I work at Brinklow!

I've no idea about the boats on the Worcs & Bham, but I can shed some light on the ones at Kingswood.The Stratford canal workshops were based at Kingswood, and were closed down I think in 1953/54, when the work was tranferred to Tardebigge. My Grandad had been the carpenter on the Stratford canal since 1927, having moved there from the Kennet and Avon. He retired shortly after the depot closed. He told me they had three full length boats on maintenance, one assigned to the carpenter, one to the bricklayer, and one to the blacksmith. When the depot closed the boats were of no further use and were sunk behind the lock in the bottom reservoir. I think they had been long distance boats, and at least one had a cabin. My Grandad's mate was Jack Edwards, who became lock keeper when the depot closed, and lived in the cottage by the split bridge at the top of the thick. Jack told me that before the boats were abandoned he had all the loose timber out of them for his chicken coups, and that there were also several shorter boats sunk over to the far side of the reservoir that had previously been used for dredging work. One of these he said was called the Dundee. As to the iron boat, I can't remember that particular one, but I do remember that when Brian Duvall rented space at the depot from the National Trust he had several boats there. One of these was a wooden flyboat which was left for a long while in about the position of Laurence's photo, and eventually broken up, another was a Bantock which he converted into a tug which he named Emerald.

I had been watching this can on ebay, I thought for a while it was 'under the radar' but the price started to go up rapidly yesterday. I think the can may be a Bulls Bridge one, the painting is very good knobstick style but not Bill Hodgson, I think it is probably by Reg Barnett. A nice can in seemingly good condition, very well painted, but still out of my price range. Imo the can on the front of the waterways booklet isn't Bill Hodgson, but I don't think it is Reg Barnett's work either

How interesting, The only part of my post that I can personally confirm beyond doubt is that I did see the boat sporting the name AYR at Gayton during that Summer (1978), and that, I think, has to be the boat now called Berkhampstead. I'll have a chat with Andy Boucher when I next see him and see what he remembers. I hope Tam Murrell reads this, I'd like to hear what he has to say. The only other anomaly is the overall condition of the boat when I worked on it at Stockton. It had at some stage been rebottomed, and while it was (when it left BW) very thin around the cabin footings and the lower fore end, it was in overall very good condition, not in the state that you might expect it to be scrapped (mind you, that wouldn't have stopped them, would it?)

I've just noticed this point and I'm not sure that I do agree. The tale that was told at the time (1977/8?) went like this :- Waterways had both Ayr and Berkhampstead at Bull's Bridge, and made a decision to assess the condition of both boats, to refurbish the better of the two and scrap the other. It was found that the Ayr was in better condition, and so it would be Berkhampstead that was to be scrapped. However, someone got it wrong and cut the Ayr up instead. To cover up the mistake they then cleaned the name off the back bends of the Berkhampstead, repainted them in white, and had them signwritten with the name Ayr in the then standard pale blue. They then roaded the boat to Gayton arm end to get it out of the way.I remember seeing it there in what must have been the summer of 1978, looking rather strange with a worn out plywood cabin in faded darker blue, and the stark white of the freshly painted stern. I can't say myself that this is true, but it was certainly was a widely believed rumour at the time. Shortly after, it was offered for tender, and ended up in the hands of Roger White, who had by then owned Bainton for four or five years. At some stage in the early 1980's when I worked for the Warks. Flyboat Co. I did some work on the hull, I can't remember what, but I do remember that I was impressed with the overall condition of the boat, far better than that of many other big Woolwich butties. Roger stuck with the name Berkhampstead, in line with the popular belief that that was what it was.

The rivetted plates on the bottoms are the remains of angle brackets which have had their flanges cut off. These flanges were on the inner edges, and were vertical. The flanges had a hole in the centre through which the wooden bearer, which I think was approx 5'' square, was bolted. The bearer had rebates on its top side which supported the floors, there was nothing else to act as a keelson. I owned Zodiac for about nine months, and believed that that boat was Tucana when I bought it (it was carrying the name Deimos at the time) I had heard a story that Zodiac, being no.100, once carried brass numbers on the cabin side, and I noticed, whilst going up Tardebigge on my way home that I could see the number 100 pitted into the cabin side. It was late afternoon at the time, and the low sun shining on the cabin picked it out really clearly. Best of luck with Tucana Steve

Caggy Stevens used to refer to the thick oval cast iron plate used to protect the top cill in a lot of narrow locks as being the 'babby', he said that it was known as such in the black country because its shape resembled a 'babby in swaddling', but I've not heard the term used outside the black country, or to refer to the cill timbers.

Yes, I can. If my memory serves me well I think that the last owner would have been sold the boat on to anyone prepared to spend money and restore it properly, but didn't want to see it deteriorate any further. As no -one was forthcoming, he decided to break it up. He took it to Union Canal Carriers where Jono Hewitt took the engine and anything else of value out prior to it going on to the WFBCo for breaking up. As I was passing through Braunston with the Greenock at the time, Jono asked me to tow it down to Stockton, so I took it on it's last trip, I think that it must have been Spring 1985 Whilst going down Stockton locks me met a family out for a walk, the man chatted with me and commented on what a good looking boat it was, I told him it was going to be broken up, he turned to his wife and said that it would be a shame, and she said 'which boat, the big one?' I had a fair bit to do to the Greenock at the time, but didn;t think it looked that bad! When we put it on the dock at WFBCo we decided to pull it as far up the ramp as we could before emptying the dock, in the hope that gravity would give us a start, but with the dock empty it sat balanced on the toe of it's stempost and skeg, unsupported in between, but still straight as a die. It wasn't going to give up without a fight. I don't think that the straight sides were that bad, but the fore end and stern end needed a lot doing, and I did manage to poke my finger clean through a soft looking spot on the bottom, which was well worn all along. We now have the stem iron at Brinklow, which we intend to use in a boat that we are about to start, based on one of the GJC tunnel tugs, and fitted with steam plant. Didn't know it was Matty's Susan, though. Steve

Harland and Wolff would paint reference marks on plates as they were cut and prepared, so that the platers would know which plate went where as they plated the boats up. They quite often come to light when boats are stripped back to bare metal, and are normally quite easy to read, but I've not seen any cause pitting like that before. I would think that MS + P means plate M, starboard and port

Really sorry to hear your news. I lost my son, Edd, six years ago this year, he would have been 22 now, I know how you must feel, Once again, I'm really sorry, my best wishes to you both, Regards, Steve Priest