A few boats for hire in the 1970s

[davidwheeler]

What I am going to try to do is to give an idea of the sort of boats you could have hired in the 1970s: their specification, an illustration if possible, and the cost. But mainly to try to show the variety available, and the facilities each offered. I think things have changed a bit over the years. I will probably do it in bits because I am unhandy with scanning and such, and it may get boring. And it does I will stop. You, of course can decide for yourselves. My choice will not be yours. At least I hope not because one or two were pretty grim. I will start with Canal Pleasurecraft's Water Rat. It is 1969. To my mind this was a beautiful boat. If she had two faults it was perhaps she was a bit light and wind-taken. And she was slow. Powered by a Stuart Turner petrol engine, on a measured mile she made 2 1/2 mph flat out. But a fine boat and we were deeply apologetic to Mr Abbot for bashing her about in the old Harecastle Tunnel. Right in the middle where the roof of the tunnel sank right down, and bits of iron railing stuck out of the gloom, you could only see round the sides and it was easy to lose control and we did. Not the first time I think because when eventually we got out, the tunnel keeper lent us a mop and helped us wash off the coating of red oxide which covered the boat. He told us that we were the only boat scheduled to pass through that day. £22 per week at end of season. Great boat.

Next, you could hire Redstart on the Brecon canal. £20 per week in 1970. A lovely canal, and in those days the lift bridge which was operated by turning a handle several hundred times was challenging. But we felt that the boat lacked character. It was cold at the end of the season. Heating was basic: a circular gas fire on a tube stuck onto a gas outlet. Also the propeller was so worn that it was barely effectual. If you chose this boat you might have been a bit disappointed, notwithstanding the beauty of the surroundings

I am making a right mess of this. Anyway next is the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, and Wirral Dawn, part of Canal Boat Ltd's fleet.  1971. This company was operated by an elderly gentleman of military bearing, and formidable mien. We caused him pretty immediate concern when, after our first day, being unfamiliar with diesels, we turned the fuel off. Started the engine and drained the system. We were part way down the Wigan flight. We walked down the hill to a brick factory and explained our problem to the foreman. " I'll send a fitter up, don't you worry." Sure enough not one but three fitters climbed on board and examined the engine. But something got dropped in the bilges and after spending more than an hour they said they were sorry but they just had to get back. But someone rang up the base for us and and the owner arrived with Pip his fitter. He looked at us very sternly. By then we had found the missing bit and handed it to him. He said to Pip " We will have to do a cold start, do you think we need to do a cold start?". Dreadful clatters and black smoke and the engine started. The owner and Pip departed.  But at bridge 43 when backing to the swing bridge we snapped the tiller off. We towed the boat back to Appley Lock. It was a Sunday afternoon. The owner arrived, took the rudder and tiller away, and returned with it in two hours, welded back together. We said we were sorry for all the trouble. He said to us " Well, I'd grumble a bit  if you had done it on purpose. Can you honestly say you did it on purpose?" " Well, no." " Well there you are then." A boat of great character, very noisy air cooled engine and a remarkable list.  £57 for the two weeks, plus £10 deposit refunded less fuel and a broken pyrex lid. An unforgettable experience on a great boat on a great canal with the very last vestiges of commercial carrying to Wigan Power Station. Right I am going to stop here. There is a long way to go and I am getting stuck. I will see what it looks like and then decide whether to go on. 

[Arthur Marshall]

Keep going, I'm enjoying this...

[magpie patrick]

1 hour ago, Arthur Marshall said:

Keep going, I'm enjoying this...

 Me too! It's good to see this

 

We had Wirral Dawn and then Willow Mist (I think in that order) in 1972 and 1973 - I was 6 and 7, crew was Mum, Dad, Aunty Vera, @1st ade and me. 1972 we went from Haskayne to Rodley and Back in a fortnight, In 1973 we picked the boat up in Rodley (the previous hirers and wanted a one way) and went to Goole, Selby and Sowerby Bridge before returning over the Leeds and Liverpool. Dad's slide collection is currently being scanned so gradually pictures of these  trips will go online. 

 

Prior to this we had gone with Tingay from the Ashby Canal (and previously from Atherstone, but I don't remember that) 

[Pluto]

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was Summit Boats based at Finsley Gate, Burnley.

[davidwheeler]

1972. Maid Marletta class. One of the Maidboats fleet. This is a boat of the very highest quality, plank on frame, made by a boatbuilder of real skill. Good and big for the Thames, but excellent also for exploring the Wey Navigation, where we were in search of the Stevens barges which, to our dismay, had finished a couple of years before. This large boat handled like a Ford Anglia - you could manouevre it and park it as easily. It would spin like a top when asked. A single prop. It came to the point where we were searching for the smallest space between boats ( and there were plenty of them) just to see whether we could fit without touching the boats ahead and astern. So if you have the chance, go for this one. £69 for two weeks end of season and fuel at 19p per gallon.

1973. Dawn treader and other. This company produced a stylish brochure designed by Robert Wilson. The photo of the trio of boats didn't look too bad to our eyes and this was to be our first steel hull. You can see what we got. They were utilitarian and ugly, and that makes a big difference to enjoyment levels. In addition to that, the one we had had suffered an incident. It had caught itself on a cill and bent its skeg. This caused it to be heavy to steer with the need for constant sideways pressure. Two weeks at the end of the season: £65. But I suggest you think carefully before booking this boat. Even at that price.

1974. Tod's Boathouse and Julie Ann. A handsome wooden cruiser built in 1962. Tod's wharf full of good looking wooden boats with just a sprinkling of glass fibre ones, and one steel hull. The location among the finest anywhere. Well worth the second visit to the Brecon canal and now with a powered lift bridge. What more could one want, so go for this boat if you can.

And at £42. for the week plus 13 gallons of 2* petrol at £6.89p, pretty good value, don't you think?

1976 - Anglo Welsh. Kibworth class 'Pytchley'. We had seen, of course, these boats before and fancied a go on one of them. I have nothing to say about it, really. It was satisfactory. Everything worked apart from some of the louvre window panes would drop down or out. It was a diesel powered boat like a lot of other very similar diesel powered bo

ats and that perhaps may have been it, or my, problem. £247 for two  week in May.

I really haven't got the hang of this, have I? I will leave it for now and perhaps do the last three boats of the decade later.

[davidwheeler]

1975. Boat Enquiries Ltd - Conifer Class - 'Larch'. What we actually got was 'Talpa', an ex-BCN dayboat, 50', with a 22 hp 2 x cyl. Petter McLaren diesel out of 'Hydra' a BW Woolwich built 40' tug. Wow. Not the most comfortable 4 - berth, with the main accommodation at the fore-end, and two pipe cots backing on to the engine room. But for canal credibility this boat was a winner. The engine was superb and if one inadvertently left one of the cylinders suppressed, the remaining one tonk, tonked away quite happily. A joy, this boat. Sometimes these interesting substitutions happened. We saw this boat for sale some years ago and with a bit of luck she is still going. This was the first time we had used a booking agency. For the first time, a very wide diversity of boats to choose from and really useful.

£140 for two weeks in October. 

1977. I have got the years out of order but never mind. Boat Enquiries. Romulus class. 'Romulus'. This was a pleasant steel narrowboat, the shell built by one of the well known builders but I cannot remember which. Nothing particularly special  about it, but a good quality reliable and trouble free hire boat. £140 for two weeks at the end of the season.

1978. 'Merlin'. A 36'  steel Springer with a Perkins 4/99 diesel. Not hired this time, but swapped. Two weeks on the boat for two weeks on our Devon farm. Based at Longwood Boat Club on the BCN Rushall Branch, it allowed us to explore the BCN. Not trouble free, the Perkins engine had overheating problems which caused us some concern in uncertain areas of Birmingham, but eventually we were able to extract a smooth round wooden pellet from the cooling system after which all was well until the ignition switch fell off while negotiating a tricky part of the navigation. But Birmingham then was not as it is now. The public was kept off the waterways by high fencing, to avoid, we understood, children falling in and drowning. But it made it difficult to get out. One day, for various reasons we had done a longish journey of over fifty locks - no great difficulty because the BCN locks worked like silk - and arrived back in Gas Street. We had to climb a fence to get out to find food, but there was nowhere. Nothing at all. So we went to bed hungry. Deeply fascinating in those days, fleets of 30 or more day boats with attendant tugs, 'Caggy' the tug the only moving boat we saw in two weeks. And nobody about.

There we are. Not a hire boat, but nevertheless these swaps were then current. So ways of getting on the canals other than hiring were available. A very jolly boat, Merlin. I like Springers.

That is it. A good variety of boats were available in the 1970s. But after that, too many sheep to look after so boating for us was put on hold.

[magpie patrick]

4 hours ago, davidwheeler said:

 

 

1974. Tod's Boathouse and Julie Ann. A handsome wooden cruiser built in 1962. Tod's wharf full of good looking wooden boats with just a sprinkling of glass fibre ones, and one steel hull. The location among the finest anywhere. Well worth the second visit to the Brecon canal and now with a powered lift bridge. What more could one want, so go for this boat if you can.

And at £42. for the week plus 13 gallons of 2* petrol at £6.89p, pretty good value, don't you think?

 

 Mum and Dad hired from them also, 1965 and 66 - Easter in 1966 as I was due in July and mum didn't want a holiday with a one month old baby! You couldn't get past Talybont then. Dad also recalled that the cabin layouts were slightly different, with the fore cabin a foot longer and the cockpit correspondingly shorter on one of the boats. he asked Todd the reason, expecting some gem of wisdom based on experience of the earlier vessel, but apparently they just measured up incorrectly the second time!

[John Brightley]

This is brilliant - thank you David for posting this information. There are a number of us on this forum who are interested in the history of the canal boat hire industry. 

'Dawn Treader' and its two other sister boats were operated by the Adkins family of Holt Farm, Napton. My second canal holiday was on 'Dawn Treader' in 1977. We had a good week going to Market Harborough and back.

 

As it says on the brochure extract you've attached, the 'Conifer class' were operated by The Water Folk, a company owned by Alan Picken, who owned a large very eclectic mix of ex working boats.

[Stroudwater1]

There were hire boats at Alvechurch before the marina and ABCs involvement in the early to late 1970s. I’m afraid I can only remember boats  Jade and Amethyst but there were a few others. It’s possible that Amethyst was a Norman, Jade was smaller and wooden. They mostly had a blue hull and some had varnished sides of the cabin with some red. 
 

One couple came to travel  with their pet monkey. It promptly ran up the flag pole that was at Scarfield Wharf  and wouldn’t come down for a very long time. 

 

Edited February 13 by Stroudwater1

[John Brightley]

On 12/02/2024 at 11:35, davidwheeler said:

1977. I have got the years out of order but never mind. Boat Enquiries. Romulus class. 'Romulus'. This was a pleasant steel narrowboat, the shell built by one of the well known builders but I cannot remember which.

'Romulus', as shown in the brochure photo, was built by Colecraft. I seem to recall that Cosgrove Cruisers also had an older boat 'Remus', which was a Springer. That may be it shown in your photo above.

[ditchcrawler]

Maybe a chat with these people Best Canal Boat Holidays UK | Staffordshire Canal Boat Hire (canalcruising.co.uk) they have been hiring since 1948

[Rob-M]

1 hour ago, Stroudwater1 said:

There were hire boats at Alvechurch before the marina and ABCs involvement in the early to late 1970s. I’m afraid I can only remember boats  Jade and Amethyst but there were a few others. It’s possible that Amethyst was a Norman, Jade was smaller and wooden. They mostly had a blue hull and some had varnished sides of the cabin with some red. 
 

One couple came to travel  with their pet monkey. It promptly ran up the flag pole that was at Scarfield Wharf  and wouldn’t come down for a very long time. 

 

My parents purchased Hedge Rose which was an ex Alvechurch hire boat.  That must have been early 1980's, not sure how long it had been a hire boat.  It was a steel narrowboat with wooden cabin.  We moored there when the small hire fleet was run out of a shed and a caravan before the A frame building was built.

[Richard T]

Our first hire was in October 1974 when we hired Larch from Willow Wren Kearns at Middlwich. This was and maybe still is a 50ft wooden topped boat sleeping 8. We were a group of 7 and took it to llangollen and back. It was powered by a 3cylinder Lister. Cabin heating was by a catalytic gas heater.

Willow Wren at Middlewich subsequently became Middlewich Narrowboats which was run by Chris Cliffe and his wife for many years. Chris is still around living in Sandbach we met him about 3 years ago at Glascote moving a boat south, he was still wearing a Middlewich Narrowboats boiler suit! They had a fleet of wooden topped boats with steel bridge guards on the front. Overtime they acquired some all steel boats.

From memory there were three 70ft 12berth boats - Oak, Beech and Sycamore - I have seen the latter fairly recently at Weedon. There was then several 50ft either 6 or 8berth boats, these included Larch, Pine, Cherry, Ash. There was also a camping boat Rowan.

I have some photos of these boats which will need scanning. Others are on my Photobucket page which they now want a ransom to allow me to access them.

The yard at Middlwich was distinctive with its canopy. Some of the wooden tops are visible in this photo.

As I've said in another post hire boats from the 60's and 70's are poorly represented in the current fleet of boats. If a suitable one had come on the market a few years ago I would have bought it and restored to its hire configuration but I'm a bit too old to do that now.!!

I've now found some photos of the wooden tops. The photo of Pine was taken after it had been sold and was moored on the Dee branch at Chester. Ash was on the K&A.

Edited February 13 by Richard T

[kevinl]

Went on the Norfolk Broads holiday, must have been about 1965, got hooked on boats.

Nearly 60 years later I still am, just bought a grp to get a mooring nearer home for my metal (or should that be my mental one) nearer to home.

K

[Alstonite]

We hired Oak from Middlewich around 1988. 10 berth boat for 5 of us (2 adults and 3 children under 10) we were rattling around inside a bit, but it was all they had available as it was a last minute booking and we got it at a reduced rate. Was a bit of a handful watching 3 kids and handling the boat but had a great time. 

[Ronaldo47]

In spring 1976 I was one of a group of 14 who hired Black Prince's original fleet of two boats, Nelson and Rodney, from their original  base at Cosgrove. Both were brand new Harborough Marine 60'-ers. One had two sea toilets, the other two Elsans plus a shovel for burying their contents if we found ourselves with no access to a sanitary station (which we did have to use  in that year's restricted lock opening hours due to the drought).  Gas fired central heating and decent showers.   

 

The only problem we had was when the knob that you had to press to open the oven door, came off. As the only one who had brought any tools, I was able to fix it, which involved  taking the door off its hinges and removing its back panel to re-attach the knob. 

I don't remember the cost of hire. 

 

Each boat was presented with a hand-painted wooden plaque on our return.  BP were still doing this the last time we used them, but  using circular slate plaques.

Edited February 14 by Ronaldo47
typos

[cuthound]

A self drive UCC camping boat similar to this was my first experience of canalling back in July 1973, courtesy of my local mixed venture scout group.

 

[Richard T]

9 hours ago, cuthound said:

A self drive UCC camping boat similar to this was my first experience of canalling back in July 1973, courtesy of my local mixed venture scout group.

 

That looks like Kimberley. I hired Lindsey in 1976 with a group of scouts.

[ditchcrawler]

Lots here including boy scouts camping and living on onions 

 

[cuthound]

13 hours ago, Richard T said:

That looks like Kimberley. I hired Lindsey in 1976 with a group of scouts.

 

Yes that is Kimberley. Sadly I didn't take any photos which show the name and can't remember which camping boats we hired from UCC (2 boats for the scouting holiday and a single boat the following year for myself and a group of friends).

Edited February 17 by cuthound
Clarification