History?

[Richard 73]

Just brought these two lovely boats and would love to know there history?

[ditchcrawler]

a picture of them

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Postcard-Transport-Canals-Narrowboats-Tsarina-and-Tsarevna-unposted-/114207236354 

 

Edited September 17, 2020 by ditchcrawler

[matty40s]

Pair of hotel boats.

[Richard 73]

Thanks for the photos 

[Athy]

From the postcard, we may infer that they were hotel boats in 1983.

I wonder if photographer C. Newman was their owner.

[Rob-M]

56 minutes ago, Richard 73 said:

Thanks for the photos 

Have you seen this old thread, 

 

You may also want to have an exploded through the shack machine to view the old website, start at https://web.archive.org/web/19991114191216/http://internex.net.au/~ttboats/TnThome.html

[Movin' on]

11 hours ago, Richard 73 said:

Just brought these two lovely boats and would love to know there history?

Well done you .....I can remember them when they were in commercial (use as hotel boats) in the late 60"s in the Braunston/Hillmorton area with another matching pair called snipe and ??? (I think) one of which was sold off the barby straight about 5 years ago? and is now generally seen around the Nuneaton area.

[Grebe]

...Snipe and Taurus

[john2443]

After they were dry docked in about 2002, I moved them from the boatyard at Burton on Trent to their marina, maybe Barton Turn?

 

They were owned by my friend's cousin's friends - one was the chef and the other knew about boats but because he was busy they asked around to find people who could move them - we were happy to go and do it, we'd both been boating for years but had never driven a pair so jumped at the chance! 

One or both of the owners were opera singers, IIRC they were planning to run them as hotel boats and do a bit of singing for the passengers as well.

 

I think one of the owners was Chris, so might be the C Newman who took the photo - I only met him once and that was 18 years ago so my memory is a bit vague! I'll see if via the tenuous connection I can get in touch with him. 

[Rose Narrowboats]

Tsarina was built by John Pinder and originally powered by a steam plant which only lasted lasted one season before being replaced by a Lister SR3.

 

Tsarevna was built by Hancock & Lane and due to the original choice of engine  for Tsarina they traded as the Steam Charter Co.

 

The chap who had them built had worked for IWHC on Snipe and Taurus, hence the similarities between the pairs.

 

Andy and Christine Newman bought them in 1982/3, took the SR out and replaced it with a 2-cylinder H series (HA or HB) and ran them in their company (Charter Cruising Co) until sometime in the mid-late 90s.

 

They didn't stay in trade for long after that (I seem to recall the new owners offered a vegan only menu which was a very quick way of getting rid of the established customer base!) but IIRC they spent some years moored at the top of Hatton after they ceased trading.

 

Edit to add: The postcard in Matty40s post shows them still with the name of the first owner, Steve Rees-Jones, on the butty back cabin.

 

Edited September 23, 2020 by Rose Narrowboats

[zenataomm]

Strewth!

That's an interesting business model.  I imagine the Business Plan opened with the objective to : -

 

Supply a floating hotel service for vegans wanting to be sang at by opera.

[Rose Narrowboats]

39 minutes ago, zenataomm said:

Strewth!

That's an interesting business model.  I imagine the Business Plan opened with the objective to : -

 

Supply a floating hotel service for vegans wanting to be sang at by opera.

It raised a few eyebrows at the time amongst other operators, but then the whole hotel boat industry pretty well imploded around that time anyway with most of the pairs stopping and the old hands moving away or giving up.

 

Sad really - it was the last commercial activity keeping proper pair boating skills alive and it just faded away almost without comment.

[Xanthus]

Only just spotted this thread - been off the cut too long!

I worked Tsarina & Tsarevna for a season when Steve Rees-Jones owned them. That would be, I think, 1978. My family had just set up a charter business on the Oxford, running Xanthus, but didn't have many bookings. I'd met Steve the previous year, when I was steering Goldcrest for English County Cruises, and out of the blue had a panic phone call from Steve to say his crew had jumped ship. They'd been moored up overnight on the Shroppie, not far from Hurleston, with a full complement of passengers. In the middle of the night, the "Captain" and his wife just left! Apparently, she'd found the towpath rough going in her high heels ... or something like that. Steve asked me to skipper the boat, and Neil Greenhalgh (whose parents had the shop at the top of Audlem locks) came along to help crew. What I thought would be a week or two ended up being the rest of a full season.

The pair was bought a few years later by Andy and Chris Newman. It was Chris who took the photo on the postcard ... and I published it. CMC Graphics, is still going, but today we design books. They'd previously had a charter boat, based at Napton, called Vixen. By then they'd relocated to the Willow Wren yard in Rugby, at that time owned by Balliol Fowden. For their first season we managed all the T&T bookings for them, as they were still doing the steering and cooking themselves, while I focused on Xanthus. The following year they expanded the business and took on a full crew.

So pleased to know that they're still going. I wonder what happened to Xanthus though ...

[Ronaldo47]

I guess they could have been the hotel boats we met going the other way on a bendy section of the Southern Oxford in the late 1970's. I have a short clip of our encounter on 8mm cine, which I don't recall  caused any problems, but it's years since I last projected it.