Early Hire Boat experiences

[davidwheeler]

Good morning I am new to this site and do not know my way around it. If this subject has already been explored, and no doubt it has, then apologies and no doubt someone will put me right. Because I couldn't find anything.

What I wonder is whether anyone remembers the various companies and in particular the different types of boat for hire in the 1950s. Holt Abbot of Canal Pleasurecraft of Stourport built his own, of marine ply I think. They made full use of their very limited space but I found to my cost that they blew about like swan's down in any sort of breeze. Or perhaps that was just my excuse. There was also a company at Stone which hired out cut-down ex working boats, with big engines. Ours in CPL's were Stuart Turner petrol engines quite pretty to look at but lacking grunt. Or again that may be another excuse. Also not that reliable. In one boat we broke down on the Shropshire Union, miles from anywhere - no convenient mobile phone. No convenient phone at all save for a friendly publican's - and remained stuck for a couple of days despite help from a Ford Dagenham canal enthusiast. It took two attempts by CPL's engineer - Ashley his name was I think and a decent bloke - to take the thing to pieces, put  bits back in and reassemble. We would have been stuck a lot longer had he not still been in the same pub the second time the engine failed. We were asked to get back to base if possible for the next hirers but if we couldn't we couldn't. Well we did by going flat out, which was pretty slow, for all the daylight hours. Good fun really and nobody complained. Is it like that now? What do other people remember of those days, when a stout shovel was essential kit to bury the contents of the Elsan? I doubt many mourn the passing of those. Also, on the Leeds and Liverpool we had a sack of sawdust and a sheet of plywood, to hold back the water in the leaky Wigan flight long enough to fill the lock. I doubt they do that now. Sawdust, I mean. I wouldn't know about the locks I haven't been there for more than thirty years.

Anyway, there we are, If you have heard it all before, then, again, my apologies.

 

 

 

 

[Hudds Lad]

I think the main worry now with modern hiring is the canal infrastructure breaking down, not the boats  

I do wonder how many fail to return to base due to the new practice of padlocking flights and booking systems for certain places, or being caught behind failures.

Remembering how green we were when first hiring in 2015, we had no clue about checking the CRT site for stoppages etc. We did buy a Nicholsons for the L&L though so at least locks, swing bridges and the light system at Foulridge came as no surprise  

[Heartland]

I believe @Joseph has made a study of early hire craft. It would be on interest to see any input of his part

The first hire boat I used was a Bijou Line of Penkridge in 1978.

[IanD]

12 minutes ago, Heartland said:

I believe @Joseph has made a study of early hire craft. It would be on interest to see any input of his part

The first hire boat I used was a Bijou Line of Penkridge in 1978.

Similar time for me, except it was the memorably poor Gregory's Canal Cruisers of Wolverhampton. I found this in the photo album, that brings back some memories...

 

Edited May 16, 2023 by IanD

[Pluto]

This gives a national overview of providers circa 1980.

1980c hire boats.pdf

[Pie Eater]

Our first hire boat holiday was from L & L Cruisers at Adlington. It would have been during the 1970s.

[BEngo]

John Thorpe in "Windlass In My  Belt",  details some of his experiences hire boating in the late 50's.  The boats range from a 70ft wooden conversion to  ply cruisers

 

Our initiation  was with  Willow Wren's ex-Josher 'Tern' in September 74.  We went, with much  difficulty on the Garrison flight, round the Warwickshire Ring  with a  diversion to Norton Junction to tick off Braunston Tunnel.

 

N

[Ange]

Our first hire holiday was in 1985, when I was in my teens. Clubline Cruisers if I remember correctly, their base was on the Coventry arm, just before you get to the basin. Now a private marina.

 

A bunch of teenagers, lots of beer, flying the Jolly Roger - we thought we were so original 🤣🤣🤣

Edited May 16, 2023 by Ange

[Ken X]

We used Clubline in '82. Definitely on the Coventry Arm.  I remember they used to meet you at Sutton Stop to explain how a lock worked.  Must have been a surprise for any first timers when they got to Hillmorton locks. 

 

One memory was that the two boats we hired that time had roof sliding centre sections.  Several feet slid open, great on a very hot day until we got to Shrewley Tunnel.  Lots of mopping ensued and it was my fault apparently.😄

[Guest]

My first hire was the Broads, well my dad paid I was about ten or eleven, late 60's early 70's Jenners of Thorpe. many happy broads holidays followed. 

 

Our first canal hire was from Snaygill Boats on the Leeds & Liverpool in Sept. Oct. 2003.

 

 

[Ronaldo47]

In 1976 a party of 14 of us hired Black Prince's original fleet of two new  Harborough Marine-built boats from their base at Cosgrove wharf. One had Elsan loos and came with a spade (which we did have to use mid-week) , the other had sea-type loos that discharged into the cut from the bottom of the boat. That year's water shortages meant that planning the week had to be done with military precision due to restricted lock opening times that coincided with mid-day pub opening times.   No still photos as my camera was broken, but I did record the week on 8mm cine film.

Edited May 16, 2023 by Ronaldo47
typos

[davidwheeler]

John Thorpe wrote, in Waterways World November 2000, of his recollections of a maiden voyage in late September 1956 on Canal Pleasurecraft's Bredon Hill. I think his was for one week. Earlier that same Summer our family had the same boat, but for a fortnight. His description of what was still then an unusual holiday is quite idyllic. My recollection is not quite that. I was, I think, a bit younger and less confidant. I managed to bash a small hole in the side of the boat, while trying to avoid a Thos Clayton pair. Had he had the occasion to look, he would have seen, low down of the port side, a neat square wood plug, inserted by the boatyard. Not that Mr Holt Abbot, CPL's owner was unpleasant about it, quite the contrary. He laughed. Maybe he sensed that I, aged 11, was really sorry. More probably it was because of the engine trouble we had had, which kept us stationary for two days, but still got back to base in time for the next hirers. Nevertheless what both John Thorpe I clearly shared was the adventure.  In those days the canals were an adventure into a world which really was quite different.

[Jerra]

My first hire boat experience was in the late 60s/early 70s (not sure exactly when) on the Llangollen.   The boat was from Just Boats at Wrenbury they were building boats there as well a man called John Wilson.  Not as far as I know The Jonathon Wilson the one I knew was a native Cumbrian from near my home.

 

Incidentally, the water was so clear you could watch fish swimming away ahead of the boat.

[Chris Lowe]

My first hire was in th early 70's from Jannel at Shobnal marina, a centre steered boat called Cayuga, this wasn't my first time on the cut though as I had in the late 60's been for a 2 week cruise on my Dad's friends boat.

[davidwheeler]

I am going to try to keep this subject going - there must be more early experiences out there.

We had twice used Canal Pleasurecraft's boats in the mid 1950s. We had another go in the late 1960s, this time in the two berth Water Rat. This was not the 22' Water Rat, the first boat built by Hot Abbot for a private owner in 1951. I wonder if that boat still exists. Do any Holt Abbot boats still exist? - in 1978 every one of them was still afloat. Has anyone  still got one? His boats were instantly recognisable.

The late 1960s Water Rat was a nice looking boat with curvy lines and a fine sheer. 24 feet long it was described as a luxury cruiser. It had a gas cooker with two rings , grill and oven, hot and cold water to the sink, and a refrigerator. The toilet - still Elsan - had hot and cold water to the basin. And an electric shaver point. There was electric light and a built in radio. The Stuart Turner engine was under the cockpit floor. What more could one possibly want? We learned later - a heater.

We took this fine little boat for a bit of a run. Up the Staffs and Worcs, into the Shropshire Union, up the Welsh Cut to Ruabon ( the last little bit to Llangollen had been closed the week before we arrived), down the Welsh Cut, across the Middlewich Branch, and up the Trent & Mersey. It was earl October and we had thick mist in the mornings until after midday when the sun came out. We were lucky with the weather, it was beautiful. 

We had no idea, when we spent an uneasy night just above the lock at Middlewich, what we faced the next day. There was as I recall now, a ferocious female lock keeper there. The water in the built up area, particularly around the Cerebos Salt Factory was filthy, and we picked up polythene bags, lumps of wood andother nasty stuff in our propeller. Once out of that we met the Wheelock paired locks. A lot of them were dysfunctional, without paddle gear or in some other way inoperable. The only way to tell which one worked was to climb up and look. Even then some times mistakes were made, the boat went in the lock, it didn't work, so out again and into the one alongside. Things got a bit fraught. And the we met the steel lock. Does anyone remember this wonder of the waterways, the Thurlwood Steel Lock? No doubt a masterpiece of engineering. We gave it a go. It was indeed an experience. It was described in Waterways World January 1988. Built in the mid 1950s, it was designed to overcome subsidence problems which had destroyed its conventional predecessor. It lasted until the early 1970s I think before it was closed and then demolished in 1987. It was a unique experience. My comment, noted in my BW Cruising Booklet 13: 'bloody useless.'

We did 32 locks that day. We spent the night just outside the Harecastle Tunnel. We had met not one single boat all day. We had no idea what tunnel arrangements there were. There were no notices. No information at all. We were a long way from our Stourport base. We did worry but needlessly because the next morning, there was a tap on the cabin side and the BW tunnel master told us we were clear to go through. 

The Harecastle in the late 1960s was a challenge. Once inside you couldn't see a thing apart from the dull gleam of our inadequate little tunnel light. The further we went the lower the ceiling. There had been a towpath, and the remains of the railings were still there, jagged and rusty bits of iron sticking up out of the water. Which was brick red. So was the ceiling. It got lower and lower until we could no longer see over the top of the cabin, but only from the sides of the boat. Somewhere in the middle of this pitch black gloom we lost control, the boat careering from side to side, bashing the tunnel walls and knocking off bits of the cabin handrails. We stopped. And started again. It was difficult to work out which way was ahead. It was just black. We moved forward slowly - it was a very slow boat at the best of times - one each side of the boat feeling for the tunnel walls. That way we got the boat straight and eventually reached the end of the tunnel, the boat and us covered with red ferrous oxide or whatever it was. The tunnel keeper was sympathetic. Very few boats had passed through that month. The tunnel itself was closed shortly afterward. As it is now, the tunnel is, as some say, a piece of cake. But in those days it was an adventure.

We got back to base. And once again I had to explain to Mr Abbot that I had damaged his boat. It cost us £22 per week. And we weren't charged for the damage, either.

[Alstonite]

I know I have contributed to a similar thread.

Ah yes, here 

 

[ditchcrawler]

In 1963 I had a Saturday job leaning the outside of hire boats at Acle Bridge on the broads. Hiring on the broads had been going for years by then, long before the canals.

 

[davidwheeler]

Am I going over old ground? All it needs is for a moderator to tell me and I will shut up.

But what I am looking for is not so much the early hire fleets but the early boat hirer. What stands out in his or her memory. What did they do it for. What did they get out of it? As to those early pioneer hire companies, I am not sure that Michael Streat's article in WW 1978 Oct. can be much bettered - he had 45 years' memory advantage.

Was Holt Abbot justified in his opinion?  assuming that these days you can express an opinion without being shouted down by those who don't share it.

[Chris Lowe]

I'll try and find my early hire photos

[IanD]

3 hours ago, davidwheeler said:

Am I going over old ground? All it needs is for a moderator to tell me and I will shut up.

But what I am looking for is not so much the early hire fleets but the early boat hirer. What stands out in his or her memory. What did they do it for. What did they get out of it? As to those early pioneer hire companies, I am not sure that Michael Streat's article in WW 1978 Oct. can be much bettered - he had 45 years' memory advantage.

Was Holt Abbot justified in his opinion?  assuming that these days you can express an opinion without being shouted down by those who don't share it.

What opinion was that?

 

Certainly the most memorable hire we ever had was the steamer "Firefly" from Keith Jones at Foxton in the early 1980s -- the office was a converted guards van, see photo. Lovely bloke, built the boat as a labour of love -- small 2-cylinder oscillating engine (think Mamod, but much bigger) under the rear step, massive rectangular gas-fired watertube boiler off to one side just inside the cabin to keep the steerer warm, skin tank condenser and feed tank under it, huge (85 gallon) LPG tank in the bow plus a couple of 47kg cylinders in case you ran out, all filled from a big bulk tank behind the van.

 

Made maybe 3hp flat out on a good day, lovely hull which just slipped through the water but forget about stopping in a hurry. We hired it for 2 weeks and took it all the  way up to Windmill End where there happened to be a boat rally, at which we got pride of place since President failed to make it.

 

Lovely boat but completely impractical today, must have burned about 30kg per day of gas, was converted to diesel a few years later. Travelling along in near silence with just a rumble from the boiler and a gentle tick-tick from the engine was glorious... 🙂

Edited May 17, 2023 by IanD

[Richard Carter]

1 hour ago, davidwheeler said:

But what I am looking for is not so much the early hire fleets but the early boat hirer. What stands out in his or her memory. What did they do it for. What did they get out of it?

 

Like many who have contributed here, my first hire was in the 70s (Sep 1977 from Skipton, to be precise), and there wasn't the same feeling of pioneering as I guess there was 20 years before, when the management and infrastructure were still basically freight oriented.

 

But there must be quite a few people still around who were on hireboats as teenagers with their familes in the 50s to gather material from before it's too late!

[magpie patrick]

I have several memories of hire boats as a child - I just about remember us taking "Joanna" from Tingay's Anker Valley Cruiser (based at Shackerstone) down the river Nene (1971) and along the Severn, up Stourport Locks and up the Stourbridge Canal (1970) - I would have been 4 and 5 on these holidays and the memories are snapshots. I have more detailed memories of holidays on the L&L from Haskayne (1972/3), on the GU from somewhere near Hanwell Locks (1975?) and in the great drought from Fenny Compton in 1976. 

 

Dad, the late Magpie the Elder, used to take school groups with Willow Wren, converted narrow boats with wooden cabins. On more than one occasion the front end didn't go through a bridge and took the corner off the wooden cabin. On the Llangollen Canal one of the crew was a sixth form woodwork pupil and he repaired the cabin so well the repair was still in place the following year, a couple of years later the front end of Guillemot failed to go through bridge 50 on the northern Oxford - the incident was immortalied in a parody of messing about on the river 

 

Ar Bridge number 50 met our Waterloo

the front end of guillemot refused to go through

and the crew could be seen a queer shade of green 

as we smashed up our boat on the river

 

The school lost their breakage deposit, although the proprietor commented that there was more paint on bridge 50 than on some of his boats!

[Jess--]

With the mention of willow wren above here's a photo from 74(ish) of a couple of their boats having fun turning in Coventry basin (I don't know if the windows survived)

Edited May 17, 2023 by Jess--
I'm a numpty that forgot to attach the picture

[PeterScott]

On 16/05/2023 at 11:56, IanD said:

.... the memorably poor Gregory's Canal Cruisers of Wolverhampton...

 

 

 

 

 

I've mentioned in Tonic the new Gregory's boat Aquarius (1972) sinking at Oxley Marine, I wandered into the yard for the second photo, and they weren't wholly welcoming ... The straps were very close together and the bows were turned / blown at the last moment and were lowered onto the wharf edge, the back went down and the engineroom filled with water

 

 

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7 hours ago, davidwheeler said:

There had been a [Harecastle] towpath, and the remains of the railings were still there, jagged and rusty bits of iron sticking up out of the water. Which was brick red

 

 

also the same trip in 1972

Edited May 17, 2023 by PeterScott
date

[Pluto]

A busy day at Stoke Bruerne, possibly 1963 or 1967. The photo was taken by Roger Lorenz, the boat on the left being Anker. Geoff Wheat was also involved, and I have several of his showing Joanna from the same era.