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BCN day boat thread.


Darrenroberts

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Hi all is there a thread specifically for BCN day boats/ joeys/ unknown but defiantly old Boats?  I see a lot of the history threads discussing and celebrating the gauged, photograph and generally well documented motors and buttys out there ( and rightly so) but is there a specific place dedicated to the old gals still out there on the network.....in what ever form?? 

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Have a rummage around the BCN Society's web pages, but there's not much about the boats specific to the BCN.

In truth, you are in the best place here on the CWDF historic & heritage pages - questions asked can usually be answered by someone on here.

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3 minutes ago, Derek R. said:

Have a rummage around the BCN Society's web pages, but there's not much about the boats specific to the BCN.

In truth, you are in the best place here on the CWDF historic & heritage pages - questions asked can usually be answered by someone on here.

Cheers Derek, yeh I didn’t find the BCN society website very useful. And the small day boat section of hnbc is pretty much the only photographic reference I’ve come across in one place.  There has been  verious discussions come up on here about specific BCN boats, but I thought it may be useful if eaither owners or other interested party’s began a discusssion in one place just like the historic boats for sale thread. There are loads out there but they seam to get over looked some what (Maybe due to lack of ID)  but from my own experience I always get questions asked by passing boats almost in a daily basis and I don’t really have anything else to say other than, yeh she’s old ? 

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The BCN website does have a list of the first gaugings made of many BCN craft, day boats or cabin craft. The term often applied to a day boat was either open iron or open wood. These craft may operate along the BCN or adjacent waterways. They were used to carry a variety if cargoes, but coal was a common example, although there could also be limestone, ironstone, slag, stone, rubbish and waste. The term day boat was used as those that worked it, lived on land and worked the boat with a horse, a pair of donkeys or maybe a mule. It was a trade established with the making of the canal, when the BCN was originally unconnected to other waterways and long before either the indexing system was set up and even longer before the first gauging tables were compiled.

 

Open iron or open wood boats were not unique to the BCN, but there were a lot of them there employed on the short journeys they regularly made.

 

Those made of wood had a finite life as the hardships of daily working took a toll on the boat structure and boat yards made a living repairing them or making them. The iron boats had a longer existence and some were reconstructed for boaters use. This site regularly comments on the fate of such boats once they have been cut into two for leisure use, However once that has been done, I personally believe that is the end of their history.

 

So when a boat passes on the canal the hull may be part of a former BCN day boat, an ice breaker, a butty  or a former motor boat and without a gauging plate, it is often difficult to work out origins, And, again there are people on this site who can. It is also still possible to find complete day boats around at places like the Black Country Museum, used as river landing stages  or buried in some filled in arm   

 

It is a complex subject.

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2 hours ago, Heartland said:

The BCN website does have a list of the first gaugings made of many BCN craft, day boats or cabin craft. The term often applied to a day boat was either open iron or open wood. These craft may operate along the BCN or adjacent waterways. They were used to carry a variety if cargoes, but coal was a common example, although there could also be limestone, ironstone, slag, stone, rubbish and waste. The term day boat was used as those that worked it, lived on land and worked the boat with a horse, a pair of donkeys or maybe a mule. It was a trade established with the making of the canal, when the BCN was originally unconnected to other waterways and long before either the indexing system was set up and even longer before the first gauging tables were compiled.

 

Open iron or open wood boats were not unique to the BCN, but there were a lot of them there employed on the short journeys they regularly made.

 

Those made of wood had a finite life as the hardships of daily working took a toll on the boat structure and boat yards made a living repairing them or making them. The iron boats had a longer existence and some were reconstructed for boaters use. This site regularly comments on the fate of such boats once they have been cut into two for leisure use, However once that has been done, I personally believe that is the end of their history.

 

So when a boat passes on the canal the hull may be part of a former BCN day boat, an ice breaker, a butty  or a former motor boat and without a gauging plate, it is often difficult to work out origins, And, again there are people on this site who can. It is also still possible to find complete day boats around at places like the Black Country Museum, used as river landing stages  or buried in some filled in arm   

 

It is a complex subject.

I wonder what use to support the patio (its now sunk) at the top of Tardebigge on the off side by the yard

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On 27/08/2020 at 20:29, Darrenroberts said:

Hi all is there a thread specifically for BCN day boats/ joeys/ unknown but defiantly old Boats?  I see a lot of the history threads discussing and celebrating the gauged, photograph and generally well documented motors and buttys out there ( and rightly so) but is there a specific place dedicated to the old gals still out there on the network.....in what ever form?? 

There is a Facebook group:

 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/582108329129265/?ref=share

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1 minute ago, ditchcrawler said:

I wonder what use to support the patio (its now sunk) at the top of Tardebigge on the off side by the yard

Yeah, I noticed that the other day when we summited (shortly before you did the same I guess).  I'd not noticed it was a boat before, but it and it's scaffold plank top are well heeled over now.

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24 minutes ago, Sea Dog said:

Yeah, I noticed that the other day when we summited (shortly before you did the same I guess).  I'd not noticed it was a boat before, but it and it's scaffold plank top are well heeled over now.

I think it was floating last time I came that way

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I think that was once the local brick laying  gang tunnel working platform.

Now no doubt superseded by the Kier contract involving dedicated scaffolding, multiple lighting rigs and a method statement drafted by Tolstoy.

 

N

 

 

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A point to make is that not all open boats were day boats on the BCN. Canal Companies had their own work boats for maintenance, some of which were open. To complicate matters such craft might have had working lives elsewhere.

 

As to landing stage- there was one was at  Stourport, north of the bridge, whether the boat was a boatage service craft, day boat or maintenance craft is something perhaps somebody can answer.

 

840565.jpg

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On 31/08/2020 at 17:57, Heartland said:

The BCN website does have a list of the first gaugings made of many BCN craft, day boats or cabin craft. The term often applied to a day boat was either open iron or open wood. These craft may operate along the BCN or adjacent waterways. They were used to carry a variety if cargoes, but coal was a common example, although there could also be limestone, ironstone, slag, stone, rubbish and waste. The term day boat was used as those that worked it, lived on land and worked the boat with a horse, a pair of donkeys or maybe a mule. It was a trade established with the making of the canal, when the BCN was originally unconnected to other waterways and long before either the indexing system was set up and even longer before the first gauging tables were compiled.

 

Open iron or open wood boats were not unique to the BCN, but there were a lot of them there employed on the short journeys they regularly made.

 

Those made of wood had a finite life as the hardships of daily working took a toll on the boat structure and boat yards made a living repairing them or making them. The iron boats had a longer existence and some were reconstructed for boaters use. This site regularly comments on the fate of such boats once they have been cut into two for leisure use, However once that has been done, I personally believe that is the end of their history.

 

So when a boat passes on the canal the hull may be part of a former BCN day boat, an ice breaker, a butty  or a former motor boat and without a gauging plate, it is often difficult to work out origins, And, again there are people on this site who can. It is also still possible to find complete day boats around at places like the Black Country Museum, used as river landing stages  or buried in some filled in arm   

 

It is a complex subject.

 Is the mark the visual pastiche of what it used to look like? I don’t see how altering or reducing a Boats length would mean it’s history has now ended, as it still exists. What happens to those vessels that get cut in half, made into two then get put back together or lengthend again using sympathetic techniques....dose said boat come back to life in terms of the history books? ??‍♂️...... or maybe i have a chip as I don’t know where the back of my boat is ?

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40 minutes ago, Darrenroberts said:

 Is the mark the visual pastiche of what it used to look like? I don’t see how altering or reducing a Boats length would mean it’s history has now ended, as it still exists. What happens to those vessels that get cut in half, made into two then get put back together or lengthend again using sympathetic techniques....dose said boat come back to life in terms of the history books? ??‍♂️...... or maybe i have a chip as I don’t know where the back of my boat is ?

Bream comes to mined

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5 hours ago, Derek R. said:

Don't think the cut was ever mined . . . .

 

Many of the bridges were during WW2, when all the pillboxes and gun emplacements were built.

 

I was looking at some remnant defences structures on the Lancaster Canal recently - they haven't all been built over up here, so some of the obstructions and vehicle traps still exist on farm bridges that are no longer used.

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6 hours ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Many of the bridges were during WW2, when all the pillboxes and gun emplacements were built.

 

I was looking at some remnant defences structures on the Lancaster Canal recently - they haven't all been built over up here, so some of the obstructions and vehicle traps still exist on farm bridges that are no longer used.

In Norfolk all the bridges were mined.

As a just out of my time sparky I worked in the house of an elderly gentleman .Interesting old boy, ex engineers, had a Suffolk Colt lawn mower running on calor gas. Anyway as well as his very small revolver he also should me a book on growing roses, except when you read it it was the instructions for placing explosives ready to blow bridges if the invasion had ever happened. 

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Regarding day boat use, sometimes they were used for trips out.

 

The attached is a day boat at Rabone Lane Bridge, Smethwick, which would be pre 1924, as that was the year the bridge was reconstructed. Looking at the image, I wonder what the human capacity of a day boat was. It is a scene one could expect as a challenge for the Guinness Book of Records. Except this was pre Guinness and the only Guinness in boats was in barrels as was common on certain Irish Waterways.

 

     

625221.jpg

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