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alan_fincher

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I'd always thought that they were built by Pimblott's in the 60s. If they were built in the 70s then they had very short lives in the hire fleet as I think the last of them at Hillmorton had gone by 1980 - replaced as I recall by a batch of Rugby Boats including Water Soldier and Water Fern.

 

Waterway Girl, Waterway Lass and Waterway Nymph I can remember, and I think Waterway Maid. Anyone know what the names of the other ones were? Another one was (is?) moored in Swan Lane Basin which still has it's original Perkins 4.108 and hydraulic drive. It says something about the practicalities of hire fleet operation that having built such sturdy and complicated boats as these, the next generation of BW hire boats were fibreglass topped and Lister SR powered!

Edited by Rose Narrowboats
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23 hours ago, Derek R. said:

Having steered TYCHO with a V botton (a very shallow one) and a 45' Springer with a similar V botton, they do stay on line quite well. More so the Springer in fact.

That would be quite an unusual boat. Not many left I shouldn't think, very distinctive.

Just passed admiral benbow on cov canal think thats one too

Note not the Benbow which was i believe surprisingly an admiral class boat.

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51 minutes ago, Rose Narrowboats said:

I'd always thought that they were built by Pimblott's in the 60s. If they were built in the 70s then they had very short lives in the hire fleet as I think the last of them at Hillmorton had gone by 1980 - replaced as I recall by a batch of Rugby Boats including Water Soldier and Water Fern.

 

Waterway Girl, Waterway Lass and Waterway Nymph I can remember. Anyone know what the names of the other ones were? Another one was (is?) moored in Swan Lane Basin which still has it's original Perkins 4.108 and hydraulic drive. It says something about the practicalities of hire fleet operation that having built such sturdy and complicated boats as these, the next generation of BW hire boats were fibreglass topped and Lister SR powered!

Laurence was fairly certain that his photo of the new boats at Hillmorton was taken in 1972. If this were the case they would have taken 3 years to be fitted out which seems unlikely. It's possible that they entered the fleet in 1970. I'm fairly certain that they had gone shortly before I became interested in the local canals in 1977. So maybe they had a working life of about 6 years.

We have to remember that when these boats were ordered -say 1967- there were very few firms building new narrow boats. It was quite natural for BW to order from a boatbuilder who they had used just a few years earlier for carrying boats. The design could have been by Pimblotts themselves based on their experience of building robust carrying and estuarial craft. This may explain why they have lasted so long. 

The boatbuilding and hire industries developed very quickly in the 1970's so that by 1975 BW were able to order new boats from Rugby Boatbuilders and Harborough Marine to more conventional designs which had been proven in those builders own fleets.

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1 hour ago, roland elsdon said:

Just passed admiral benbow on cov canal think thats one too

Note not the Benbow which was i believe surprisingly an admiral class boat.

   ....nor the Benbow ( ie Bath) once owned by the Tardebigge Boat Co......

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10 hours ago, John Brightley said:

For the record this photo is one of Laurence Hogg's from his post here: https://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?/topic/93953-first-ever-steel-narrow-boat-hulls-manufactured-for-leisue-boat-use/page/4/#comment-2066523 and I'm pretty sure that he was correct in saying the build was by Pimblotts c1970.

 

Edit: I've found another thread about them here: Sea barge... - General Boating - Canal World

where Pete Harrison identified them on a Pimblotts build list

"If this is one of the six 'Pimblott' built pleasure boats it will date from 1968/9 (and I think the photograph is one of these six boats). These boats were built under the 'Pimblott' yard numbers 821, 822, 823, 824, 829 and 831 - with all except 829 being described as a "canal Cruiser" (829 has no description). 821 has no owner listed. 823, 824, 829 and 831 were built for Davison Brothers, whilst 822 was for Wyvern Shipping Company. 

This tends to suggest that the hulls of the BW boats were built by Pimblotts, but they then went to Davison Brothers for fitting out before being delivered to the BW Hillmorton yard as shown on the photo.

 

 

 

I'm fascinated to see that one of these went to the Wyvern Shipping Company.

This would have become what was "Panjdora" in their fleet.  I had always thought it looked very similar to the boats run by BW.  A major difference though would be that Wyvern's boat was purely a hull, on which they built their standard offering of a wooden top, probably clad in Masonite. It also had one of the signature Wyvern water tanks on the roof, supplying all the taps typically at luke warm temperatures!

The owner Major Griffin explained to me that when they built a total of four 7 berth boats, they deliberately bought in hulls from different suppliers in a bid to decide on a standard for future builds.

 

The brochure lists Pandora as built in 1969.

 

As part of a Saturday job I used to take boats to the nearest winding hole, turn them, then leave the pointing North, as nearly all hirers used to head that way.  I can honestly say that Pandora was horrible to steer, behaving like a cow on roller skates, and having almost no stopping power, due to the lack of a conventional counter.  The other 3 boats built in this series were very very much nicer.

Here is Pandora

 

Pandora_001.jpg

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1 hour ago, John Brightley said:

Laurence was fairly certain that his photo of the new boats at Hillmorton was taken in 1972. If this were the case they would have taken 3 years to be fitted out which seems unlikely. It's possible that they entered the fleet in 1970. I'm fairly certain that they had gone shortly before I became interested in the local canals in 1977. So maybe they had a working life of about 6 years.

We have to remember that when these boats were ordered -say 1967- there were very few firms building new narrow boats. It was quite natural for BW to order from a boatbuilder who they had used just a few years earlier for carrying boats. The design could have been by Pimblotts themselves based on their experience of building robust carrying and estuarial craft. This may explain why they have lasted so long. 

The boatbuilding and hire industries developed very quickly in the 1970's so that by 1975 BW were able to order new boats from Rugby Boatbuilders and Harborough Marine to more conventional designs which had been proven in those builders own fleets.

I don't think it can be 1972 either as Rugby Boats very briefly operated from the far end of the arm with a poly tunnel over the gauging dock and I'm pretty sure that was over that period. What also strikes me about that photo is the total lack of any of the rest of the hire fleet in the arm.

 

You are absolutely correct that they had a much smaller pool of builders to turn to, but from what I was told BW had a fair bit of input into the design. The cabin profile was a BW idea designed to minimise the chances of damage in bridge holes and in the ever shrinking Harecastle Tunnel. I believe the first boat to use the design was the Yarwoods built inspection launch Vigilante, but the repair-yard built BW hire boat conversions and the zoo bus cabins used the same profile albeit in timber rather than in steel as per Vigilante.

The big bluff bow was intended to protect the boat from collision damage or sinking (misadventures with gate paddles or cills) but it made them absoloute pigs to get on and off. They were intentionally shallow drafted to cope with the conditions of the time, and the vee-bottom was to ensure they could get close to the bank for mooring in an era where there was much less piling, but the trade off was that in the wind they were a bit like a polystyrene cup. They were however very good (so my mother assures me) at putting the fear of god into yoghurt pots when the bow was seen looming through a blind bridge hole at short notice :)

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FWIW I've just managed to date some photos I have of four of the Pimblott boats at Hillmorton to December 1977. Also visible in the pictures are the ex-working boat conversions Water Lily and Water Lupin. I'm certain that Water Lily was still in the fleet through 1978* and by 1980 the whole fleet was either Harborough or Rugby built so assuming the Pimblott boats outlasted the conversions (which seems reasonable) they only did so by a year!

 

* I built a model of it at school (ahhh) made out of cereal boxes, which with hindsight was remarkably accurate given the crude way the sterns were constructed!

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13 minutes ago, Rose Narrowboats said:

FWIW I've just managed to date some photos I have of four of the Pimblott boats at Hillmorton to December 1977. Also visible in the pictures are the ex-working boat conversions Water Lily and Water Lupin. I'm certain that Water Lily was still in the fleet through 1978* and by 1980 the whole fleet was either Harborough or Rugby built so assuming the Pimblott boats outlasted the conversions (which seems reasonable) they only did so by a year!

 

* I built a model of it at school (ahhh) made out of cereal boxes, which with hindsight was remarkably accurate given the crude way the sterns were constructed!

That's great, thank you. It matches my memories. Somewhere I have a couple of BW brochures from c1980 so when I find them I'll update this topic.

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Someone mentioned earlier that they were the first steel purpose built leisure boats, from 1970. I think the Ice cream carts where a lot earlier than that.  I remember going on holiday in one in the mid 1960's all the way from Nantwich to Oxford and back in a fortnight, called Trace Anne, which had wheel steerage and a centre cockpit. I also remember the disappointment my father had that we could not stop in Oxford for a couple of nights but had to leave later the same day, the middle Saturday, as he point out to me only the other day.
Somolda built the boats if they got slack with orders for Ice Cream vans, which was the Cummins family main business, at their works in Crewe. Having built them at their Crewe works they then had them brought to the basin at Nantwich and launched there. At one time they had quite a large fleet, not sure what happened to the company. Their original hire boat was named Ethel Mary after the wife of the founder, Sid Cummins, I believe originally it was there own personal boat, before they started their hire boat business.

Edited by Ian Mac
spelling - dyslexia
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14 minutes ago, Ian Mac said:

Someone mentioned earlier that they were the first steel purpose built leisure boats, from 1970. I think the Ice cream carts where a lot earlier than that.  I remember going on holiday in one in the mid 1960's all the way from Nantwich to Oxford and back in a fortnight, called Trace Anne, which had wheel steerage and a centre cockpit. I also remember the disappointment my father had that we could not stop in Oxford for a couple of nights but had to leave later the same day, the middle Saturday, as he point out to me only the other day.
Somolda built the boats if they got slack with orders for Ice Cream vans, which was the Cummins family main business, at their works in Crewe. Having built them at their Crewe works they then had them brought to the basin at Nantwich and launched there. At one time they had quite a large fleet, not sure what happened to the company. Their original hire boat was named Ethel Mary after the wife of the founder, Sid Cummins, I believe originally it was there own personal boat, before they started their hire boat business.

According to info on the net, Simolda Ltd was started in 1963 and dissolved in 2002.

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As I have been away this may have been posted before , it came up on Facebook

 

I've had this email from CRT. WCBS is not in a position to intervene. Anybody else? Good afternoon
I am the Canal and River Trust ( CRT) License Support Officer for the Oxford Canal and I contacting you prior to the removal and possible disposal of Hesperus 77578 to see if you may be interested in the recovery and restoration of the boat or relevant parts prior to its removal.
We currently have the historic wooden boat Hesperus 77578 sunk on the Oxford Canal which needs to be removed as it is causing a hazard to boats and other canal users. The current owner has abandoned the boat and has not responded to any form of contact from CRT.
As the boat may have historic value a survey has been requested by CRT and completed by J Bates from Bates Boatyard. The report details the condition of the boat and suggests that the boat or some parts may be salvageable although at some considerable cost.
A removal report has been submitted to Central Boat Services to lift and remove the boat from CRT waters due to its condition and location in the near future.
An excerpt from the report is attached for your information.
If you are interested in the restoration or salvage of Hesperus 77578 or parts please contact me to discuss further details.
Regards
Andy
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On 13/10/2022 at 21:22, Ian Mac said:

Someone mentioned earlier that they were the first steel purpose built leisure boats, from 1970. I think the Ice cream carts where a lot earlier than that.  I remember going on holiday in one in the mid 1960's all the way from Nantwich to Oxford and back in a fortnight, called Trace Anne, which had wheel steerage and a centre cockpit. I also remember the disappointment my father had that we could not stop in Oxford for a couple of nights but had to leave later the same day, the middle Saturday, as he point out to me only the other day.
Somolda built the boats if they got slack with orders for Ice Cream vans, which was the Cummins family main business, at their works in Crewe. Having built them at their Crewe works they then had them brought to the basin at Nantwich and launched there. At one time they had quite a large fleet, not sure what happened to the company. Their original hire boat was named Ethel Mary after the wife of the founder, Sid Cummins, I believe originally it was there own personal boat, before they started their hire boat business.

 

There are (welded) steel purpose built leisure boats that pre-date 1970. 

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11 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:

As I have been away this may have been posted before , it came up on Facebook

 

I've had this email from CRT. WCBS is not in a position to intervene. Anybody else? Good afternoon
I am the Canal and River Trust ( CRT) License Support Officer for the Oxford Canal and I contacting you prior to the removal and possible disposal of Hesperus 77578 to see if you may be interested in the recovery and restoration of the boat or relevant parts prior to its removal.
We currently have the historic wooden boat Hesperus 77578 sunk on the Oxford Canal which needs to be removed as it is causing a hazard to boats and other canal users. The current owner has abandoned the boat and has not responded to any form of contact from CRT.
As the boat may have historic value a survey has been requested by CRT and completed by J Bates from Bates Boatyard. The report details the condition of the boat and suggests that the boat or some parts may be salvageable although at some considerable cost.
A removal report has been submitted to Central Boat Services to lift and remove the boat from CRT waters due to its condition and location in the near future.
An excerpt from the report is attached for your information.
If you are interested in the restoration or salvage of Hesperus 77578 or parts please contact me to discuss further details.
Regards
Andy

 

 

This is all a bit strange. Is the "HESPERUS" not in the tender care of Tooleys at Banbury?

 

It was moored on their service moorings IIRC back in the Spring and alternating between floating and sunk, and not creating a hazard or obstruction, except inasmuch as it was/is using one up a chunk of their precious mooring space.

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, stagedamager said:

Hardy is at Banbury under Tooley's care, Hesperus was there for docking and sealing works by Tooleys for the current custodian who, even owning 2 wooden boats has no clue about wooden boats and how to look after them sadly.

 

I stand corrected, thanks. 

 

 

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2 minutes ago, stagedamager said:

No worries. It's always tricky when two old boats are next to each other. Hardy is the one with a cabin and up. Hesperus was without a cabin and more down than up.....

 

ISTR Hesperus spending a whole year blocking up Welsh Richard's dock at Cropredy, and looking for most of that time like there was very little of it left to salvage. 

 

 A massive an welcome change of attitude by CRT though, who used to (as BW) wade in and scrap anything in the way, regardless of historical significance IIRC.

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6 minutes ago, stagedamager said:

No worries. It's always tricky when two old boats are next to each other. Hardy is the one with a cabin and up. Hesperus was without a cabin and more down than up.....

 

And the one at Buckby is?...

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I agree, too many were lost over that time. I do hope Hesperus and Ariel can be saved but I think they're a few years past it now sadly. I would however happily provide a home for the ironwork if it ever came to it.

Just now, alan_fincher said:

 

And the one at Buckby is?...

Ariel. Another victim of Frost damage

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2 hours ago, stagedamager said:

Hardy is at Banbury under Tooley's care, Hesperus was there for docking and sealing works by Tooleys for the current custodian who, even owning 2 wooden boats has no clue about wooden boats and how to look after them sadly.

I wonder if there will be a similar posting about the one at the top of Buckby, I assume its still there full of Gardner engine bits

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