A Somewhat Unusual Request

[Peter X]

It's easy enough for a boat to come adrift from its mooring, e.g. through some malicious person untying the lines, for which you don't need a jilted lover in the plot, vandals do it sometimes. A beginner might tie up badly using a poor knot which works loose, or put mooring pins into a bank badly, after which a storm, or just one or more passing boats creating too much wash might set the boat loose.

 

Having got your fictional boat adrift, very little harm is likely to happen to it on a canal. It'll just slowly drift from one side to the other, or along a little, occasionally bumping into a bank or another boat and just scraping off a bit of blacking. On a river it'll move downstream, but still probably stay afloat and end up pinned against a weir somewhere. To sink it you need it to be below the last lock on tidal water (people do take narrowboats to such places, e.g. the lower Trent, to get from one canal to another), and to be taken out to sea by the ebb tide, where any rough weather could easily swamp and sink it. Even there the boat might well get spotted and rescued as it goes down river, especially in daylight.

 

Your fictional novice boater's most realistic chance of getting sunk would be in a lock, either getting swamped at the front going up, or caught with the stern on the cill going down. Another less dramatic possibility is that they buy a boat which is cheap because the hull's badly pitted, a small rust hole opens up unnoticed, probably somewhere along the waterline, and after some time unoccupied and taking on water the boat gets low enough to rapidly take on more and go down.

[Caerwyn]

Peter> Great advice, I especially like the idea of knots working loose!

 

Bettie> Thanks so much! I was going to say 'excellent', but I'm guessing it was far from excellent for ALFIE's owner! Glad to hear they got it refloated.

 

StephenA> ... I'm still not getting construction dates through that site. Am I meant to be? If I can find out when this specific boat was built, it would be a huge help!

[John Williamson 1955]

Then there was one near here recently, which had been neglected for a while, even though it was being lived on, the rain filled the front of the hull through leaking deck boards (It was a working boat which had been partly converted), and once enough water had got into the front, the waterline reached the engine room vents and down it went over a period of a few hours. People were trying to keep it up, but didn't have a big enough pump available.

 

The boat is now being fully restored to its former glory, as far as I know, but not, I believe, by the owner at the time of the sinking.

[KarlosMacronius]

The easiest way to sink a boat through bad mooring is to tie too tight on a section of canal with fluctuating water levels. level goes up your boat doesn't then the water reaches the outlets and fills the boat.

[cuthound]

 

Having got your fictional boat adrift, very little harm is likely to happen to it on a canal.

What about the rapids on the BCN? I've heard they can be well vicious

[Peter-Bullfinch]

Could the battery on a neglected boat be insufficiently charged to operate the automatic bilge pump and the stern gland drips fill the bilge to eventually sink the boat? Would that not be an easier scenario than a hole being created by banging on the canal edge?

[5thHorseman]

If you want a dramatic event how about something along this line?

 

http://heritagephotoarchive.co.uk/p170170475