Identifying a boat from the registration number

[David Schweizer]

I have long possesed a book with a photo of a Willow Wren Butty on the front cover, The name is not visible but the registration number is - Registered at Rickmansworth No 203. I cannot find this registration number in any of the refereneces I have. Can anyone help please.

 

I am actually more interested in identifying the boatwoman, who I think may be Dolly Dakin, but when I knew her in the 1960's, she was on Aynho, one of a pair of BW maintenance boats.

Edited December 15, 2007 by David Schweizer

[carlt]

It was Greenshank, formerly Bawtry.

 

Worked by Alec and Lily Purcell, paired with Redshank.

 

I've also got pictures of the pair in 1955 at the IWA rally in Banbury, crewed by jack and Rose Skinner.

Edited December 15, 2007 by carlt

[Supermalc]

Carl, you really should write a book, or at least document all this wealth of knowledge on a website, blog whatever.

 

It would be a shame if it was all lost now, wouldn't it.

[carlt]

Carl, you really should write a book, or at least document all this wealth of knowledge on a website, blog whatever.

 

It would be a shame if it was all lost now, wouldn't it.

I just refer to my extensive library, Malc. A lot of it is stuck in the memory but I do need to look it up from time to time. I didn't recall that

Greenshank was paired, later, with Badsey, for example.

 

There are people, on this forum, David being one, with as much, if not more, knowledge on the subject, than me.

[David Schweizer]

It was Greenshank, formerly Bawtry.

 

Worked by Alec and Lily Purcell, paired with Redshank.

 

I've also got pictures of the pair in 1955 at the IWA rally in Banbury, crewed by jack and Rose Skinner.

 

That is interesting, the list I have states that Bawtry was registered at Brentford No. 591. Were the boats re-registered by Willow Wren?

 

Either way the Boatwoman is definitely neither Lily Purcell or Rose Skinner, who were both quite slim. The boatwoman it the picture I have is very plump and black haired, also her cans and chimney are very scruffy, wheras those owned by Rose and Lily were always kept in good condition.

Edited December 16, 2007 by David Schweizer

[saltysplash]

I just refer to my extensive library, Malc. A lot of it is stuck in the memory but I do need to look it up from time to time. I didn't recall that

Greenshank was paired, later, with Badsey, for example.

 

There are people, on this forum, David being one, with as much, if not more, knowledge on the subject, than me.

 

 

Even so, you have the canal bug in your blood...dont let it go shipmate......saltwater is ok but theres nowt like still water on a remote hillside with a bbq smouldering and you looking along the lines of your vessel with a keen eye while sipping a rather smooth shiraz from the new world vinyards. Kids tucked up in bed and a special person by your side sharing the moment

[AMModels]

That is interesting, the list I have states that Bawtry was registered at Brentford No. 591. Were the boats re-registered by Willow Wren?

 

Either way the Boatwoman is definitely neither Lily Purcell or Rose Skinner, who were both quite slim. The boatwoman it the picture I have is very plump and black haired, also her cans and chimney are very scruffy, wheras those owned by Rose and Lily were always kept in good condition.

I believe the early boats in the willow wren fleet were but when they just hired the boats from BW they kept the guaging details already on the boats.

[carlt]

The list I have states that Bawtry was registered at Brentford No. 591, and the Boatwoman is definitely not either Lily Purcell or Rose Skinner. Is the registration number on your photo clear?

I took the information from "Willow Wren" by Alan Faulkner.

[Paul H]

I have long possesed a book with a photo of a Willow Wren Butty on the front cover, The name is not visible but the registration number is - Registered at Rickmansworth No 203. I cannot find this registration number in any of the refereneces I have. Can anyone help please.

 

I am actually more interested in identifying the boatwoman, who I think may be Dolly Dakin, but when I knew her in the 1960's, she was on Aynho, one of a pair of BW maintenance boats.

 

Which book is this David? I presume Dolly was the wife of Ken Dakin who finished his boating career on the zoo waterbuses.

 

Redshank and Greenshank were reputed to be Leslie Morton's favourite pair and I am surprised that he ever let the Dakins get hold of Bawtry. They never ran the tidiest pair of boats to say the least (see pictures of Sudbury and Baildon in Robert Wilson's booklet "Epilogue") but on the other hand Greenshank was not in the operational fleet by 1969 so perhaps had gone rather downhill.

 

Aynho and Ayr IIRC were not strictly maintenance boats but carrying boats which BW used to deliver concrete piles manufactured at Marsworth. There was another boatman on this run later (whose name escapes me) who had a huge number of kids including one "brown" one. It was said in those not so PC days that his wife "got out" in Birmingham.

 

Paul H

[David Schweizer]

I believe the early boats in the willow wren fleet were but when they just hired the boats from BW they kept the guaging details already on the boats.

Yes I hadn't thought of that, the last boat I have registered at Rickmansworth was No.201 which was allocated to Hale, the last G.U.C.C. butty to leave Walkers in November 1938 and registratered on 25th March 1939 There would not have been any new registrations during the War, so the re-allocation of a Rickmansworth regstration Number after the War could have happened. Warbler was Willow Wren's first aquisition closely followed by Bawtry, both were docked in 1954 at Walkers for repairs inn 1954 so maybe that was hen it was re-registered.

 

Slightly tyo one side, I remember when I first met Leslie Morton he made the comment "I had to buy my own boats back" and at the time did not understand what he meant. It was only later when our captain explained his role with the G.U.C.C. before the war that I understood what he was saying.

Edited December 16, 2007 by David Schweizer

[David Schweizer]

Which book is this David? I presume Dolly was the wife of Ken Dakin who finished his boating career on the zoo waterbuses.

 

Redshank and Greenshank were reputed to be Leslie Morton's favourite pair and I am surprised that he ever let the Dakins get hold of Bawtry. They never ran the tidiest pair of boats to say the least (see pictures of Sudbury and Baildon in Robert Wilson's booklet "Epilogue") but on the other hand Greenshank was not in the operational fleet by 1969 so perhaps had gone rather downhill.

 

Aynho and Ayr IIRC were not strictly maintenance boats but carrying boats which BW used to deliver concrete piles manufactured at Marsworth. There was another boatman on this run later (whose name escapes me) who had a huge number of kids including one "brown" one. It was said in those not so PC days that his wife "got out" in Birmingham.

 

Paul H

 

The book is called "Canal people" by Anthony J Pierce published in 1978, as on of A & C Black's Junior Reference Books for School Children. As far as I know it is long out of print, but copies do still come up in second hand book shops from timer to time.

 

I have never been able to establish whether Dolly Dakin was Ken Dakin's wife, Sister or Sister in Law, but I think she was Ken Dakin's wife. Either way she is the same Dolly who I knew as Dolly Brown working the piling boats Aynho and Ayr with Billy Brown in the 1960's. I only discovered her correct name many years later when I got into conversation with one of her sons (still working for BW) at Cowley Lock. I had been asking of the wherabout of the boat I used to work on and he insisted that if I had worked on Pisces in the 1960's, I must have known his mother. He then showed me his BW I.D. card which said John Dakin, asking if I remembered him. It was only when he said her name was Dolly and she worked Aynho that I realised who he was talking about, but I spared him the embarassment of asking about the Surname issue.

 

The boat you recall with a huge number of Kids is the same pair, Aynho and Ayr, captained by Billy Brown with Dolly Dakin and her thirteen children, and not only do I remember the brown one, I can also remember the first time we saw him when our captian shouted (much to our embarrassment) "where did that one come from?" and she shouted back "I must have drunk too much coffee."

 

You are correct about the state of Ken Dakin's boats, and the cans and un-banded chimney are very similar to those illustrated in "Epilogue" I am suprised that the Dakins were ever let loose on Greenshank, but the boat is in Willow Wren C.T.S. Ltd livery so it would have been in the later years, perhaps just before thay were sold.

 

Will any of this ever appear in an official hiostory?

Edited December 16, 2007 by David Schweizer

[carlt]

Will any of this ever appear in an official hiostory?

Depends what you mean by 'official'. I already mentioned "Willow Wren" by Alan Faulkner. Not a huge volume but pretty loaded with information (I can find no other reference to Taplow's role in the WW story, for example) and written by a respected authority.

[David Schweizer]

Depends what you mean by 'official'. I already mentioned "Willow Wren" by Alan Faulkner. Not a huge volume but pretty loaded with information (I can find no other reference to Taplow's role in the WW story, for example) and written by a respected authority.

And no doubt more will appear in time in the quarterly magazine "Narrowboat". What I was referring to was the anecdotal recollections about the people involved in the canals during the late 1960's when mainstream commercial carrying was nearing it's demise.

[Paul H]

The book is called "Canal people" by Anthony J Pierce published in 1978, as on of A & C Black's Junior Reference Books for School Children. As far as I know it is long out of print, but copies do still come up in second hand book shops from timer to time.

 

I have never been able to establish whether Dolly Dakin was Ken Dakin's wife, Sister or Sister in Law, but I think she was Ken Dakin's wife. Either way she is the same Dolly who I knew as Dolly Brown working the piling boats Aynho and Ayr with Billy Brown in the 1960's. I only discovered her correct name many years later when I got into conversation with one of her sons (still working for BW) at Cowley Lock. I had been asking of the wherabout of the boat I used to work on and he insisted that if I had worked on Pisces in the 1960's, I must have known his mother. He then showed me his BW I.D. card which said John Dakin, asking if I remembered him. It was only when he said her name was Dolly and she worked Aynho that I realised who he was talking about, but I spared him the embarassment of asking about the Surname issue.

 

The boat you recall with a huge number of Kids is the same pair, Aynho and Ayr, captained by Billy Brown with Dolly Dakin and her thirteen children, and not only do I remember the brown one, I can also remember the first time we saw him when our captian shouted (much to our embarrassment) "where did that one come from?" and she shouted back "I must have drunk too much coffee."

 

You are correct about the state of Ken Dakin's boats, and the cans and un-banded chimney are very similar to those illustrated in "Epilogue" I am suprised that the Dakins were ever let loose on Greenshank, but the boat is in Willow Wren C.T.S. Ltd livery so it would have been in the later years, perhaps just before thay were sold.

 

Will any of this ever appear in an official hiostory?

I asked a friend who used to work on the London trip boats and he contributed the folllowing: I remember the rather large lady that Ken used to live with but I can't recall her name, I suppose she was Dolly. She used to make those knitted patchwork bedcovers when they lived at 16 South Wharf Road, Paddington. From there they moved to a lock-side cottage down the Hanwell flight where Ken had a stroke and became rather incapaciated. I don't honestly know if she was Ken's wife or sister.

 

The sons were John and Kenny, the former worked for BW, the latter worked on Beauchamp Lodge's Erica. It is very easy these days to think all boatmen were aristocrats of the cut like the Blue Line crews but many of the others were ordinary working men, some rougher than others with varying degress of pride in their boats. If you've ever boated for 14 hours it takes a certain obsessive-compulsive disorder to polish all the brasses and coil your ropes in to perfect spirals when you just want to go to the pub and then get your head down so I do have some sympathy.

 

Have you thought of contacting Lorna Yorke who has a laerge amount of information about boat families?

 

Paul

 

Edited December 18, 2007 by Paul H

[David Schweizer]

I asked a friend who used to work on the London trip boats and he contributed the folllowing: I remember the rather large lady that Ken used to live with but I can't recall her name, I suppose she was Dolly. She used to make those knitted patchwork bedcovers when they lived at 16 South Wharf Road, Paddington. From there they moved to a lock-side cottage down the Hanwell flight where Ken had a stroke and became rather incapaciated. I don't honestly know if she was Ken's wife or sister. Knowing that lot though she might have been both!

 

The sons were John and Kenny, the former worked for BW, the latter worked on Beauchamp Lodge's Erica. It is very easy these days to think all boatmen were aristocrats of the cut like the Blue Line crews but many of the others were ordinary working men, some rougher than others with varying degress of pride in their boats. If you've ever boated for 14 hours it takes a certain obsessive-compulsive disorder to polish all the brasses and coil your ropes in to perfect spirals when you just want to go to the pub and then get your head down so I do have some sympathy.

 

Have you thought of contacting Lorna Yorke who has a laerge amount of information about boat families?

 

Paul

 

I know that John was lock keeper on the Hanwell flight for a while, but he got moved because of a complaint from a member of public about his language. He also had a reputaion for being a bit handy with his fists, hence his nickname "Knuckles". Last time I heard he was working for one of the mobile maintenance teams.

Edited December 18, 2007 by David Schweizer

[Paul H]

I was looking through some box files last night looking for something else. (What did I do with those 2 CDs labelled "Revenue and Customs"?)

 

I came across this cutting from Canal and Riverboat August 1982.

 

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Same large woolwich butty, same large woman?

 

It is captioned George Phipps and family. If this is also Dolly she had as many husbands as other contributers to this forum seem to have had wives! It is dated 1965.

 

Paul

[alan_fincher]

The piling boats Aynho & Ayr were crewed by Sam and Gladys Horne from 1963 to 1966 approximately. (Sam became the lengthman for Berkhamsted after that, moving in to Berkhamsted Lock Cottage, where he and Gladys still live.)

 

I'm guessing Billy Brown took over the Aynho & Ayr after that point. My brothers, who knew Billy, always referred to his "missus" as Dolly Deakin, never Dolly Brown, so whether they were actually married, I don't know.

 

Whenever the proverbial "how do you fit them all in" conversation comes up, I always think of that extended family, where it was once reckoned that 11 were sharing 2 cabins. They couldn't have been of course, some must have stayed land based when the boats moved, (which they didn't much, as demand for concrete piling dwindled).

 

It was certainly true that one of the children aboard was highly unlikely to have been fathered by either Billy Brown or Ken Deakin

 

I remember meeting John Deakin when he was crewing aboard someone's luxury boat - that's one way of not getting a sanitised "roses and castles" view of the canals

 

Again it seems odd, that one of that pair of boats, being amongst the last 8 carrying for BW, has not survived.

 

Alan

[AMModels]

Aynho was shortened by BW in the maintenance fleet and there is rumour aplenty that Ayr survived but was renamed Berkhamstead and Berko being the boat cut up for scrap.

Whichever boat was cut up Berkhamstead (as is) is paired with Bainton on the southern GU somewhere looking a bit dilapidated.

[alan_fincher]

Aynho was shortened by BW in the maintenance fleet and there is rumour aplenty that Ayr survived but was renamed Berkhamstead and Berko being the boat cut up for scrap.

Whichever boat was cut up Berkhamstead (as is) is paired with Bainton on the southern GU somewhere looking a bit dilapidated.

Hi Andy,

 

Haven't heard that story before now.

 

I've seen Berkhamsted on my travels, and it wouldn't have occurred to me to think it might not be Berkhamsted.

 

Why would the identities have been swapped ? (It sounds like the railway thing where the presevationists thought they had Albert Hall, but it actually proved to be Rood Aston Hall....)

 

I know they made a right bloody mess of Aynho, though.

 

I always thought it strange that in the dying age of BW operating working boats, that Aynho & Ayr managed to be an original pairing.

[Hairy-Neil]

Berkhamstead (as is) is paired with Bainton on the southern GU somewhere looking a bit dilapidated.

 

Last time I went through Braunston tunnel the boats were gone, having been there for the previous 10 - 15 years at least and looking down at heel and unused all of that time.

[AMModels]

It happened quite a lot with BW if you look into it, the Middle Northwiches were messed about as well along with a few of the josher motors when they were cut down for cruisers. If they had the cabins off and sat for a while the names would be forgotten and it would be down to the chinese whispers and boatmens memories to id the boats.

 

More luck than judgement of course as BW had paired Ayr with Darley in the very early days when they were showing off the new yellow and blue livery and GUCC never stuck with original parings for the whole period of their existance.

[Hairy-Neil]

There was another boat on the pile traffic in the early 60's, I believe steered by Ron Withey. I understand this was the Saltaire. Were there two (or more?) pairs on the traffic, or was Saltaire replaced by Aynho?

[alan_fincher]

There was another boat on the pile traffic in the early 60's, I believe steered by Ron Withey. I understand this was the Saltaire. Were there two (or more?) pairs on the traffic, or was Saltaire replaced by Aynho?

I believe there may have been more than one pair at one stage, but by the time I knew anything about it, there was just the one.

 

Saltaire could make a lot of sense, as that was a maintenance boat on the stretch down from Bulbourne to about Berko by the time I got involved in canals. So it may well have been on the piling traffic first. The other regular full length motor used on that patch as a maintenance boat was Cambourne. Other than that it was the two tugs Renton and Sickle, (the latter perhaps operating further south, maybe out of Apsley depot). Certainly Renton, and I think Sickle both had their massive icebreaker fronts at that stage - not something you would want to get rammed by!

 

Alan.

[alan_fincher]

More information regarding the piling boats at Marsworth in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

The reminiscences of Sam and Gladys Horne in the book "Tales from the Old Inland Waterways" acknowledges that there were two pairs on the piling traffic initially, later reducing to just one.

 

However the family on the other pair, (boats not named), is identified as Sam Brooks. The book says the Horne and Brookes children used to play together at Marsworth, so would seem to be accurate.

 

No mention of Ron Withey. (Am I right in thinking he is still active on the canals with a very nice looking boat ?).

 

Here is a rather poor picture of Aynho & Ayr at the Marsworth piling depot. By the date this was taken Billy Brown was in charge, and the boats moved only very rarely.

 

 

The book shows that Sam and Gladys had operated the Aynho and Ayr on conventional carrying from at least the late 1950s, and several pictures of this are included.

 

I put some misinformation in a previous post.

 

I thought the two tugs, Sickle and Renton that were operating on this patch back then still sported their icebreaker noses. An old picture reveals that Sickle had lost hers before then. I'm confident that Renton did have one, however, despite no picture to prove it.

[Tim Lewis]

Aynho was shortened by BW in the maintenance fleet and there is rumour aplenty that Ayr survived but was renamed Berkhamstead and Berko being the boat cut up for scrap.

Whichever boat was cut up Berkhamstead (as is) is paired with Bainton on the southern GU somewhere looking a bit dilapidated.

 

 

Aynho is currently 'working' as the service boat in Limehouse Marina.

 

Tim