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Carriage of Grain by water


Tam & Di

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This is money inflation calculator gives £5.50 in '76 as £41.67 today

 

Today's minimum wage for 25+ is £7.20; so today assuming an 8 hour day you'd earn £57.60

 

What we have is a wage slip for a week. Basic pay is £31.75, then there are a few extras like that £5.50 for specific work. Doesn't say how long they took. After deductions the total pay for the week is about £40 - so about £300 in current terms.

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What we have is a wage slip for a week. Basic pay is £31.75, then there are a few extras like that £5.50 for specific work. Doesn't say how long they took. After deductions the total pay for the week is about £40 - so about £300 in current terms.

That's interesting, thanks for posting that info :cheers:

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Di is writing an item on carriage of grain by water, particularly in the London region, and needs some pointers to help flesh out her information. She’s looking particularly at 1900 onwards.

 

Does anyone have knowledge or can point her towards sources about carriage by lighter, barge, wideboat or narrowboat, particularly in the London region but elsewhere in the country might be useful too?

 

Traffics, craft used, crewing information, amounts carried, to and from, type of grain and imported or not - these are some aspects that would help.

 

Tam

 

 

Grain barges (50ton) used to pass through Brentford sometime in the 50s & 60s, I think these had been towed from London by one of the tugs that made regular trips up to the GU. Each barge that was being towed had a Lighterman on them, and entered through Thames locks at high tide when both sets of gates would have been opened at the same time. After passing through the gauging locks at Brentford each barge would then be towed by horse, later the horses were replaced with tractors. I don’t know where they went to after leaving Brentford.

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The current owners of Misterton have a long standing blog which I used to follow ages ago when they were first renovating it and on searching for it I was pleased to see that it was still going, at least as of last February. The blog is here with a brief history of the barge here.

 

Slightly off topic I know but hopefully potentially interesting.

 

Misterton's owner is a member of CWDF too, his pseudo is : flatplane8

 

Peter.

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  • 2 weeks later...

David,

 

Thank you for your writeup and especially the above section. Our Sheffield size boat Goodwill was built in 1953 and worked for Waddingtons. We knew that she did carry wheat but I had little idea how this fitted into broader patterns. Steve Waddington told us that she would take wheat from Hull to Mexborough, Rotherham and Sheffield, and then on the return trips take coal from various pits to the Hull gas works.

 

We know from a 1976 payslip found under the forecabin floor that the skipper got £5.50 pay for loading 100 tons of wheat!

Yes thanks David. .....i knew that i had not dreamed about the grain barges on the Trent

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Tilbury. Esp Cargill a huge US grain co. Iirc bulk imports of grain used to come and still do to there. Only a vague memory. Guess they used to tranship to Limehouse? A total guess. But remember visisting Cargill once profesionally at Tilbury on Thames and bulk grain is all I can remember. If not Cargill others? Tilbury is/was Londons principle port esp for dry bulks. Essential to research.

Edited by mark99
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In the North West, Joseph A. Rank Ltd., expanding flour milling business resulted in two steel boat fleets being commissioned as British Isles Transport Co Ltd.

Six Dumb Boats in 1932 M30 to M35 to service his mills in Manchester and in 1933 seven Motor Boats A36 to A42 to supply his mills in Blackburn. Both fleets utilised the Grain Silo in Birkenhead Docks. Most of the M Boats were sold off in the mid 1950's, but the A Boats were sold off with worn out bottom hulls from 1946 to 1950. Five of them are still afloat to-day.

The photo below shows the A 40 working three handed in 1933 driving at the A 38 in the background between Chorley and Whittle Springs and yes that must have been the local 'tarzan' diving off the stern end.

post-26034-0-80300600-1476024982_thumb.jpg

 

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Some of your questions about grain traffic can be answered by looking at NarrowBoat magazine Spring 2016 in Alan Faulkner's Famous Fleets article (and captions) about T W Toovey Ltd.

 

Thanks for that Chris. Unfortunately when I click on "buy it" on the NarrowBoat Magazine website it only tells me I must subscribe to read it on-line. I'd rather get a print copy if I can.

 

 

Tilbury is/was Londons principle port esp for dry bulks. Essential to research.

 

We revived the grain trade by barge from Tilbury to Coxes Lock Mill in the 80s with the little Trent barge Clinton and the Dutch luxemotor Annie which was partly what prompted the current research Di is heading.

 

 

From Tilbury to Coxes Mill:

 

attachicon.gifAnny0005 (Medium).JPG

 

That's a great picture of our son Jason taking Annie in to discharge. Is there any chance of a higher definition copy that I can send on to him?

 

Although the research is focused on grain on the Thames other food stuffs and other areas are all useful, so thanks to all, especially David.

 

 

 

edit to add: I've found a way to make a better enlargement of Annie and in fact the steerer is Geoffrey Mason who used to work a pair of camping boats for Union Canal Carriers (Bexhill and Brighton? a memory failure at the moment). Jason is on the fore-end. Geoffrey moved to Gent shortly after and runs the English Bookshop beside the canal in the middle of town.

Edited by Tam & Di
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In the North West, Joseph A. Rank Ltd., expanding flour milling business resulted in two steel boat fleets being commissioned as British Isles Transport Co Ltd.

Six Dumb Boats in 1932 M30 to M35 to service his mills in Manchester and in 1933 seven Motor Boats A36 to A42 to supply his mills in Blackburn. Both fleets utilised the Grain Silo in Birkenhead Docks. Most of the M Boats were sold off in the mid 1950's, but the A Boats were sold off with worn out bottom hulls from 1946 to 1950. Five of them are still afloat to-day.

The photo below shows the A 40 working three handed in 1933 driving at the A 38 in the background between Chorley and Whittle Springs and yes that must have been the local 'tarzan' diving off the stern end.

 

 

Thanks for the reminder of that important traffic in the north west. When did this finish - 1953? We shouldn't forget, of course, the grain traffic for Ainscoughs, in their own fleet of long boats, from Liverpool, Birkenhead and Manchester to Burscough and Parbold which finished in 1961.

Regards

David L

Edited by fanshaft
  • Greenie 1
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David

 

A 40 was the last surviving B.I. on this run mid to late 1950, although some deliveries continued after with British Waterways boats. I have a Litherland Lift Bridge record of M/b Bacup dated 9th January 1951 carrying 46 tons from North Shore Mills Liverpool to Blackburn.

 

Dates of sale of each boat A 36 January 1949, A 37 December 1949, A38 January, 1948, A39 November 1949, A 40 November 1950, A 41 December 1946 and A 42 February 1949. Dates sold, supplied to me, courtesy of the late Clive Guthrie.

 

Roy Gibbons

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We are currently researching the cargoes frequenting the London Canals and Thames to Brentford. I've unearthed a MovieTone clip from May 1931 the end of which according to the narration, shows a ' horse-drawn barge' (Golden Spray name just visible) 'loaded with corn at Brentford bound for Langley' - which is Toovey's mill at Kings Langley. I understand the grain would come down the east coast in sailing barges, presumably from East Anglia? We too would be pleased to know a bit more about this for a proposed exhibition at the London Canal Museum.

http://www.movietone.com/N_search.cfm

 

Search story number 1196/2 The clip is called 'English Canalways to be Transformed' which referred to the improvement and widening works begun in the early 30s on the Grand Union but never completed.

 

Celia

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We are currently researching the cargoes frequenting the London Canals and Thames to Brentford. I've unearthed a MovieTone clip from May 1931 the end of which according to the narration, shows a ' horse-drawn barge' (Golden Spray name just visible) 'loaded with corn at Brentford bound for Langley' - which is Toovey's mill at Kings Langley. I understand the grain would come down the east coast in sailing barges, presumably from East Anglia? We too would be pleased to know a bit more about this for a proposed exhibition at the London Canal Museum.

http://www.movietone.com/N_search.cfm

 

Search story number 1196/2 The clip is called 'English Canalways to be Transformed' which referred to the improvement and widening works begun in the early 30s on the Grand Union but never completed.

 

Celia

If you go back to the seventeenth century, most of the river navigations on England's east coast were built to supply London with grain. It was the promotion and construction of the Aire & Calder Navigation c1700 by local merchants and coal owners which marked the first sign of the industrial age, as this was the first successful waterway to be built to promote industrial development.

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I understand the grain would come down the east coast in sailing barges, presumably from East Anglia? We too would be pleased to know a bit more about this for a proposed exhibition at the London Canal Museum.

 

That's a very interesting clip, albeit rather brief and a bit fuzzy. What leads you to suggest the grain came down the east coast and presumably from East Anglia in the 30s rather than being imported grain?

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That's a very interesting clip, albeit rather brief and a bit fuzzy. What leads you to suggest the grain came down the east coast and presumably from East Anglia in the 30s rather than being imported grain?

Yes, I know at that time there was a lot of grain imported, notably it was the last cargo that kept the Clipper ships running, as it was economic to carry on a sailing ship with a small crew and lower overheads- see "The Last Grain Race" by Eric Newby.

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That's a very interesting clip, albeit rather brief and a bit fuzzy. What leads you to suggest the grain came down the east coast and presumably from East Anglia in the 30s rather than being imported grain?

Try contacting the Society for Sailing Barge Research, as they will have details of east coast grain traffics by barge. I could o through my copies of 'Topsail', their journal, but am a bit tied up at the moment with the L&LC 200th anniversary. By the way, the society is well worth joining as Topsail is an excellent read for those interested in old barges, even if it mainly looks at the south east.

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David

 

A 40 was the last surviving B.I. on this run mid to late 1950, although some deliveries continued after with British Waterways boats. I have a Litherland Lift Bridge record of M/b Bacup dated 9th January 1951 carrying 46 tons from North Shore Mills Liverpool to Blackburn.

 

Dates of sale of each boat A 36 January 1949, A 37 December 1949, A38 January, 1948, A39 November 1949, A 40 November 1950, A 41 December 1946 and A 42 February 1949. Dates sold, supplied to me, courtesy of the late Clive Guthrie.

 

Roy Gibbons

Roy, would you mind me sharing your info?

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Roy, would you mind me sharing your info?

No problem at all. The B I Fleet never got much publicity.

I posted many comments and photos under the heading 'Shirley Short Boat'

a good few weeks ago, with many anecdotes told to me by my Dad.

Regards.

Roy Gibbons.

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No problem at all. The B I Fleet never got much publicity.

I posted many comments and photos under the heading 'Shirley Short Boat'

a good few weeks ago, with many anecdotes told to me by my Dad.

Regards.

Roy Gibbons.

Thanks Roy, that's kind of you.

 

I shall look out your other post too.

 

:cheers:

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Yes, I know at that time there was a lot of grain imported, notably it was the last cargo that kept the Clipper ships running, as it was economic to carry on a sailing ship with a small crew and lower overheads- see "The Last Grain Race" by Eric Newby.

 

A great book. One reason I asked is that the grain we carried Tilbury to Weybridge for Allied Mills was imported CWR (Canadian Western Region Hard Wheat), referred to as "queers". I've not seen anything to suggest that Tooveys used East Anglian grain moved by water, but that is not to say it wasn't.

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