Boatmen commemorated

[Tam & Di]

It may already be posted but this Telegraph article about poppies being released at Anderton justcame to my attention:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/27/britains-forgotten-watermen-remembered-wartime-sacrifice/?fbclid=IwAR2ip0LmBL0eWi8oOuR8ME2zbJJhUlzWmdvAWdEqbpztHlraJ1YJ7InDj-Q

 

Tam

[Alan de Enfield]

 

[cheshire~rose]

We attended the commemoration at Anderton Boat Lift. It was a very poignant event. Sweden and Effingham were positioned below the lift for the duration and I suspect may have wished they had closed their hatches as they are likely to be pulling poppy petals from crevices for a very long time! 

 

I would like to see a low key commemoration at the lift each remembrance day - as "The Cathedral of the Canals" it seems the logical location. 

 

[haggis]

We were there too (on kelpie) but we didn't find it poignant at all. We neither saw nor heard anything to say that the event was to commemorate the boaters who gave their lives for their country. There was no oration of the words spoken at every armistice day service and to us the event was just releasing poppies from the lift. OK the flag was lowered and raised and the last post was sounded. 

There was not even a minutes silence. 

Haggis 

Edited November 13, 2018 by haggis

[cheshire~rose]

I wish the sound system had been better. We could barely hear the words being spoken but they were.  Perhaps where you were positioned prevented you from hearing. Certainly one woman near us kept chatting for ages preventing me from hearing anything and I could have decked her! But perhaps she had not heard that the speaker had started? There was a two minutes silence (the end was marked by The Danny tooting it's whistle. The release of the poppy petals caused a round of applause which was misplaced in my view but you can't stop people reacting. 

[Sir Nibble]

A marketing exercise on the back of the war dead, disgusting. Of course boatmen are commemorated, they always have been, just like everyone else who fell. To single out one group based upon their peacetime occupation is ridiculous.

On another note, the Royal armories museum fired off an artillery piece every ten minutes from 10.00, then for the last ten minutes a continuous "barrage" stopping at 11.00. Most effective I thought. There were a few children kicking up during the silence but rather than see it as a disruption of a solemn moment I felt it was more akin to birdsong after the gunfire.

[cheshire~rose]

How was it a marketing exercise? 

 

It was free? 

[Sir Nibble]

15 minutes ago, cheshire~rose said:

How was it a marketing exercise? 

 

It was free? 

Marketing usually is free to the intended recipient. It was about CaRT's profile, that's all. Do you ever remember the cenotaph ceremony saying "They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old, except boatmen, screw them"

[cheshire~rose]

All around the country at churches, village halls, war memorials, schools and all manner of other places that are frequented by a community people stood in silence and remembered. 

CRT have a magnificent asset in the boat lift just like the people of London have the cenotaph and communities all over the country have their war memorial, church or whatever. 

 

Businesses all over the land commemorate Remembrance Day. Whether individuals consider it a marketing ploy or a genuine act of commemoration will be very much down to personal opinion. If CRT had done nothing then it can be guaranteed that someone somewhere would say how terrible it is they did not. What they did was to use a sit that was well suited to an act of remembrance and invited people to come. My feeling was that this was very much a volunteer led initiative and the volunteers I spoke to who were involved said it was always expected to be a low key affair but once the newspapers got hold of it it took off and caught them a bit by surprise. 

 

And no, they did not read out any words that suggested this was ONLY for boatmen but for me personally being interested in the families and social history surrounding the working boats that was where my focus lay. I can be thankful that I do not have any family member who was lost or injured in conflict and so, to me, this was closer to my heart than standing at a memorial where the focus was on a group of names of people I could not possibly have ever known. 

 

 

[haggis]

Thank you Cheshire Rose for putting me right. We were standing near the Danny almost full on to the front of the lift and us and apparently those around us heard nothing. I am so glad that an attempt was made to make it a remembrance event and I hope that if they ever hold such an event again there will be an adequate loud speaker system. 

Haggis 

[Tuscan]

Interesting to infer the boatlift is 

1 hour ago, cheshire~rose said:

 

CRT have a magnificent asset in the boat lift just like the people of London have the cenotaph and communities all over the country have their war memorial, church or whatever. 

 

 

 

Whilst I agree it’s a magnificent asset a war memorial it is not,  surely this was a marketing exercise why would people want a sound system for a two minutes silence. Having said that if it made people think of the madness of war and the lives that were lost rather than the spectacle of the poppies then I can’t see a problem. 

Edited November 13, 2018 by Tuscan

[cheshire~rose]

You are welcome Haggis, It is a great shame that so many did not hear it properly. I could not make out the words fully (I was probably very close to you standing by the lower barrier just above and slightly further forward of one of the press photographers taking prime position on the towpath just in front of The Danny. ) I saw the person who did the reading arrive with a small hand held speaker which was never going to be sufficient but (and I may be wrong) this was just an idea that some of the local volunteers got behind and perhaps they never intended it to attract so many people? 

We actually only heard about it the day before and made a last minute decision to set the alarm and drive for 2 hours to get there - simply because it seemed the right place for us to be. 

3 minutes ago, Tuscan said:

Interesting to infer the boatlift is 

Whilst I agree it’s a magnificent asset a war memorial it is not,  surely this was a marketing exercise why would people want a sound system for a two minutes silence. Having said that if it made people think of the madness of war and the lives that were lost rather than the spectacle of the poppies then I can’t see a problem. 

They don't but it was the reading that nobody could hear and the fact that the proceedings started with the reading and not everyone stopped chattering to listen (because they could not hear it had started) meant it was even harder to hear 

Edited November 13, 2018 by cheshire~rose

[Jennifer McM]

1 hour ago, Sir Nibble said:

Marketing usually is free to the intended recipient. It was about CaRT's profile, that's all. Do you ever remember the cenotaph ceremony saying "They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old, except boatmen, screw them"

Think the commemoration was because most of the boatmen who gave their lives don't have their name commemorated on village war memorials, or schools, because of their itinerant life style.

 

In my opinion I think a whole lot of history could have been provided, such as the men having their boating skills deployed on canals overseas. Most people don't know about the ladies who took over from the men on the barges, and how they risked their lives manoeuvring explosives and ammunition throughout the waterways for the war effort. Seeing that it was the centenary, it would have been the perfect time for their stories to be told, generating interest and pride for the benefit of the waterways. 

[Captain Pegg]

There is a thread in the History & Heritage section on canal boatman who served in WW1. The discussion stemmed from Lorna York's research and as of April this year she had established 62 canal boatmen who gave service.

 

While I recognise that there are a lot more watermen who will have served than canal horse-boatmen the actual population of itinerant boat families was probably only ever a very small percentage of the overall workforce. They just happen to be the most romanticised and the ones who are most remembered. The use of the term itinerant is also misleading since many of these families had houses or access to houses through close relatives. Whether or not they actually lived in a particular property it seems for the purposes of official records most long distance boaters appear to have had an address.

 

Therefore I do wonder if the notion of thousands of uncommemorated boatmen presented in the linked article above actually has a basis in fact. If it does the appropriate commemoration would be to establish who they are as best as can be done and dedicate a memorial. There is important difference between celebrating the role of boatmen in the wars and of commemorating the sacrifice that some of them made.

 

JP

 

 

[Pluto]

Perhaps they should have held the event at the last Boatmen's Mission still in use as a place of worship, St Andrew's at New Lane, Burscough. This photo was taken on the Mission's 100th birthday in 2005.