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Canal Boat or Narrowboat


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To add to the above there are also three other uses of the term "Narrow Boat" in the 1881 census. These are to describe a boat at Runcorn, Cheshire and two boats at Newbold and Dunston, Chesterfield, Derbyshire.


There is seemingly no use of the term in any of the 1841, 1851, 1871, 1891 or 1901 censuses.

 

In 1911 there are four entries of which three are the use of the term "Narrow Boat Builder" as the occupation in entries for Marple, Cheshire. The other is the listing of "Waterman Narrowboat" as the occupation for a person in hospital in Runcorn, Cheshire.

 

So, apparently very little use in historic census information - unless someone that actually has access to the records can conduct a better search than I have managed - and notably all in parts of Cheshire and Derbyshire where narrow craft would not necessarily be in the majority in the surrounding area.

 

JP

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38 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

To add to the above there are also three other uses of the term "Narrow Boat" in the 1881 census. These are to describe a boat at Runcorn, Cheshire and two boats at Newbold and Dunston, Chesterfield, Derbyshire.


There is seemingly no use of the term in any of the 1841, 1851, 1871, 1891 or 1901 censuses.

 

In 1911 there are four entries of which three are the use of the term "Narrow Boat Builder" as the occupation in entries for Marple, Cheshire. The other is the listing of "Waterman Narrowboat" as the occupation for a person in hospital in Runcorn, Cheshire.

 

So, apparently very little use in historic census information - unless someone that actually has access to the records can conduct a better search than I have managed - and notably all in parts of Cheshire and Derbyshire where narrow craft would not necessarily be in the majority in the surrounding area.

 

JP

 

The records were available using the LDS church 1881 Census and National Index CD file with the Version 3 Viewer, this enabled you to do a "word Search" which I used extensively at one time. Unfortunately the Index does not appear work in any version Windows later than XP, and is not included in the on LDS Church line service. I have been told that a later viewer which works in Windows 10 is available, but so far I have been unable to locate one, even the LDS Church denies it's existence.

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41 minutes ago, David Schweizer said:

 

The records were available using the LDS church 1881 Census and National Index CD file with the Version 3 Viewer, this enabled you to do a "word Search" which I used extensively at one time. Unfortunately the Index does not appear work in any version Windows later than XP, and is not included in the on LDS Church line service. I have been told that a later viewer which works in Windows 10 is available, but so far I have been unable to locate one, even the LDS Church denies it's existence.

That's essentially what I did - albeit directly online via an alternative source - after an initial trawl through records I hold. Not foolproof but I did interrogate beyond a simple search.

 

Despite the lack of results it may very well have turned up the first recorded usage of the words "Narrow Boat" to describe a canal boat of the English inland waterways and of the term "Narrowboat".

 

JP

Edited by Captain Pegg
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A search on "Monkey Boat" reveals just one usage between 1841 and 1911 and that is in 1881 for Alice Dimmock, wife of John Dimmock, of 21 Tomlin's Terrace, Limehouse, London whose location of birth is listed as "In a Monkey Boat".

 

Unsurprisingly "Horse Boat" turns up no results.

 

JP

Edited by Captain Pegg
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10 hours ago, Captain Pegg said:

That's essentially what I did - albeit directly online via an alternative source - after an initial trawl through records I hold. Not foolproof but I did interrogate beyond a simple search.

 

Despite the lack of results it may very well have turned up the first recorded usage of the words "Narrow Boat" to describe a canal boat of the English inland waterways and of the term "Narrowboat".

 

JP

Are you willing to share any information about the "alternative source"? I did find a later version viewer on line, however, the website made it clear that the viewer was the intellectual property of the LDS Church, but as the source was not the LDS Church, I was reluctant to try it.

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9 minutes ago, David Schweizer said:

Are you willing to share any information about the "alternative source"? I did find a later version viewer on line, however, the website made it clear that the viewer was the intellectual property of the LDS Church, but as the source was not the LDS Church, I was reluctant to try it.

The searches were done on ancestry.com. I believe it was originally a spin-off from Church of LDS but is now a publicly listed company. It's still based Utah so quite probably run by Mormons.

 

I have other reference documents and direct family research and knowledge but I don't have the time to do the 'on foot' research that is needed to dig down into the loose ends that online can't answer. That's for the future for a few missing links I can't answer in my own tree.

 

Jon

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19 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

The searches were done on ancestry.com. I believe it was originally a spin-off from Church of LDS but is now a publicly listed company. It's still based Utah so quite probably run by Mormons.

 

I have other reference documents and direct family research and knowledge but I don't have the time to do the 'on foot' research that is needed to dig down into the loose ends that online can't answer. That's for the future for a few missing links I can't answer in my own tree.

 

Jon


To be clear to David, I assume you have an Ancestry subscription?

This information would not be available in this way without, yes?

After maintaining a subscription for any years, (or more accurately failing to stop it auto-renewing against my credit card each year!), I finally managed to let it lapse a few years back when my credit card number changed.

I miss not being able to look things up, but I was quite imply not making enough use of it to justify the substantial annual charge.

One day,maybe, I'll get back into it.

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In 1793, the C&HN minutes recorded:

Narrow boats off the Rochdale Canal not to pass Salterhebble singly, nor unless they belong to the Rochdale Canal Company.

I have also attached one 1823 image from the C&HN boat register.

Calder & Hebble Boat Register 1793 to 1828.jpg

  • Greenie 1
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24 minutes ago, alan_fincher said:


To be clear to David, I assume you have an Ancestry subscription?

This information would not be available in this way without, yes?

After maintaining a subscription for any years, (or more accurately failing to stop it auto-renewing against my credit card each year!), I finally managed to let it lapse a few years back when my credit card number changed.

I miss not being able to look things up, but I was quite imply not making enough use of it to justify the substantial annual charge.

One day,maybe, I'll get back into it.

Yes. It would be impractical to do such a search any other way.

 

My initial observations on this thread though were based upon my recollections of directly looking at documents. It's that sort of attentIon to detail which is important when determining how to search online.

 

JP

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On 1 January 2019 at 17:52, archie57 said:

Only heard them called that in the Gloucester/Sharpness area, perhaps a west country thing?

That's borne out in evidence. Although there are only eight references to "long boat" in census records from 1841 to 1911 six of those relate to vessels in Gloucestershire.

 

The other two are both at Brereton Wharf, Rugeley, Staffordshire and 50 years apart - 1861 and 1911. This is probably coincidence since the boats concerned were crewed by masters from Stourport and Gloucester respectively.

 

JP

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3 hours ago, Captain Pegg said:

The searches were done on ancestry.com. I believe it was originally a spin-off from Church of LDS but is now a publicly listed company. It's still based Utah so quite probably run by Mormons.

 

 

Yes, according to the volunteers at the local LDS Church family History Centre, ancestry.com is still operated by the Church 

 

2 hours ago, alan_fincher said:


To be clear to David, I assume you have an Ancestry subscription?

This information would not be available in this way without, yes?
 

No, I do not, and never have had a subscription, I have the full 24 CD Family History Resource file which I purchased from the LDS Church some years ago at some considerable expense. It has already been suggested that if i did have a subscription to ancestry.com,  I may well be able to access the word search and "neighbour" facilities, but my question is why should I pay again for something that I have already purchased, simply because the Church will not issue a Viewer that works in Windows 10?

 

 

Edited by David Schweizer
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Logically the correct term is Narrow Boat, to distinguish them from wider craft, anywhere where the locks can accommodate wider craft.  On the narrow canals they were just 'Boats'.

There was a pub in Brum called 'The Longboat', top of Farmers.

On the Thames we were a 'Monkey' or 'Monkey Boat', but when we were empty, the tolls were for a 'Tug'.

The lockies had to take our word for the tonnage we had on board, tolls were charged per ton.  Though often a lockie just told us to carry on to the next lock, because they didn't know where the toll tickets were, or they couldn't be bothered with the paperwork.

Who knows what Head Office made of this boat which carried less and less tonnage as it went on.

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2 hours ago, Captain Pegg said:

Yes. It would be impractical to do such a search any other way.

 

My initial observations on this thread though were based upon my recollections of directly looking at documents. It's that sort of attentIon to detail which is important when determining how to search online.

 

JP

 

Having spent hundreds of hours in County and City Archives, I agree, however the beauty of the Family History Resource File was that it was a word for word transcription of the 1881 census.

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10 minutes ago, David Schweizer said:

I may well be able to access the word search and "neighbour" facilities, but my question is why should I pay again for something that I have already purchased, simply because the Church will not issue a Viewer that works in Windows 10?


Well at the end of the day you purchased a piece of software that was probably originally certified for Windows 95 or Windows NT.

Admittedly that software also came with a whole raft of data CDs, which are not really useful without the software, or some other way of accessing the data, but you were still buying effectively a program for what are now very obsolete versions of Windows.

Few suppliers of such software guarantee that it will work in perpetuity on every Windows version that follows, and we have had at least 7 later versions of Windows since then (XP, 95, 98, ME, 7, 8 & 10), not to mention many side variants of each of these.

 

Windows is actually pretty good a running software designed for much older versions, but it is by no means guaranteed that you can simply load a very old program and expect it to run as if it were written for Windows 10.

I suspect a lot of these problems can be resolved by using "Compatibility Mode" within Windows 10.  Have you actively tried this for the LDS Resource File Viewer?

Try Googling "Compatibility Mode in Windows 10".

A sample article here......

 

https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/set-compatibility-mode-windows-10

 

Incidentally I have just checked, and it is about 17 years since I purchased the software you are trying to run.  i think I would expect to need to do a few tweaks if I were ever to try to load it up again.

 

 

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Its interesting to see documented references to Narrow Boats' back into the 18th century on the Calder & Hebble. Considering the variety of craft on that navigation it was necessary to specifically mention the differences and one wonders whether the term Narrow Boat was created for that purpose or it was used by the people that already owned or worked on them.

In the Boat Registers of 1795 that I have seen the usual term is Boat or Canal Boat, although in the Cheshire register there is one reference to a Long Boat. This particular craft was owned by a man from Wheelock and traded between there and Manchester. Clearly the term Long Boat was used outside of the Severn Valley even if rarely.

I find it hard to believe that when the civil servants were writing the text of the Canal Boats Act of 1877 prior to publication that the term Narrow Boat was in such common usage they decided to use it in the Act. Indeed they didn’t seem to know much about the canal carrying trade at all considering the number of amendments following the Act’s introduction to make it more effective. Perhaps it was just a coincidence they adopted the term Narrow Boat when was already in existence in the north.

George Smith whose campaigning led to the Act refers to the craft simply as Boats or Monkey Boats, and he travelled extensively all over the country taking to many working on the cut. In his Canal Adventures by Moonlight book of 1881 I’ve only found one instance of the term Narrow Boat and that was because of a specific reference to the cabin measurements.

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Since when have Civil Servants understood the details of work outside of their remit?

 

"What do we call these types of boats?"

"Well, they are long and narrow, I suppose we could call them either."

 

And so they did. I doubt there would have a been a nationwide consensus on their description, just whatever happened to come into the mind of the writer of documents at the time. Only later did a term begin to become popular, the origins of which is about as debatable as where Homo Sapiens originated from.

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4 hours ago, Derek R. said:

Since when have Civil Servants understood the details of work outside of their remit?

 

"What do we call these types of boats?"

"Well, they are long and narrow, I suppose we could call them either."

 

And so they did. I doubt there would have a been a nationwide consensus on their description, just whatever happened to come into the mind of the writer of documents at the time. Only later did a term begin to become popular, the origins of which is about as debatable as where Homo Sapiens originated from.

How about starting with Homo heidelbergensis/erectus/habilis/Australopithecus ? ???

Edited by David Schweizer
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4 hours ago, Derek R. said:

Since when have Civil Servants understood the details of work outside of their remit?

 

"What do we call these types of boats?"

"Well, they are long and narrow, I suppose we could call them either."

 

And so they did.

The premise of the OP and the subsequent discussion and evidence suggest that's precisely what didn't happen, hence there is only a tiny amount of variation from recording narrow beam craft as simply "boats" or "canal boats" historically.

 

Census records were complied from both written and verbal evidence of the householder; for most boat people it was probably the latter. What is recorded is far more likely to be the words of the householder (or master of the boat) than the invention of a civil servant.

 

Language constantly evolves so it isn't necessarily the case that the various terms we know exist for canal boats have any long standing historical usage. The evidence suggests these names were localised and/or limited in use in the 19th century and that 'narrow' was an adjective applied to distinguish a narrow craft from a larger one where there was a need to make that distinction.

 

It seems the singular noun 'narrowboat' is a creation with about 50 years history, which is probably what most of us would have figured in any case.

 

JP

Edited by Captain Pegg
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I'm glad you can feel so "precise" about it, and census entries can also be quite inaccurate as to descriptions either by the occupants, or the receiving checkers in deciphering an individuals longhand. I have entries on several certificates relating to birth, marriage and death relating to just one member of my family that put him as "Journeyman"; "stonemason's assistant"; and "Works Foreman". Of course, he could have been all at different stages in his life, and it depends upon the moment the individual informing their situation either on paper, or to a registrar. We cannot be accurately sure.

 

I would certainly concede that "boats" or "canal boats" would have been the most used in the respects of early recording. Probably.

Edited by Derek R.
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I have a relative who is variously described as 'Iron furnace stoker';  'Blast engine fireman'  and  'Boiler feeder', all at Dowlais Ironworks.

Another is a 'Mariner' at a Cotton mill  ??  His father was a 'Speed Tenter'.  I have no idea what these might be.

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ISTR that there is a reference to a narrow barge trading to Tucking Mill on the Somersetshire Coal Canal in the early 19th Century, we (the SCCS) have regarded this as significant as at the time the account was written it was possible that a wide barge could reach Tucking Mill, as the stop lock at the entrance was wide until the mid 1830's. Thus narrow barge was used to distinguish the vessel from the boats more typically seen on the Kennet and Avon and the River Avon. 

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30 minutes ago, Chris Williams said:

I have a relative who is variously described as 'Iron furnace stoker';  'Blast engine fireman'  and  'Boiler feeder', all at Dowlais Ironworks.

Another is a 'Mariner' at a Cotton mill  ??  His father was a 'Speed Tenter'.  I have no idea what these might be.

Might it be possible he was involved in fabric manufacture? A Tenter was a frame over which open weave material was stretched.

 

Searching for Mariner at a cotton mill brought this up:

http://www.lan-opc.org.uk/Bolton-le-Moors/Little-Bolton/parkst/marriages_1911-1916.html

 

Clearly it's a chaps name, and he's in Bolton, but made me think his name had been mixed with his occupation. He also was married to a frame tenter!

Edited by Derek R.
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1 hour ago, Chris Williams said:

I have a relative who is variously described as 'Iron furnace stoker';  'Blast engine fireman'  and  'Boiler feeder', all at Dowlais Ironworks.

Another is a 'Mariner' at a Cotton mill  ??  His father was a 'Speed Tenter'.  I have no idea what these might be.

I have no idea about a mariner in a cotton mill although there is a company that makes Mariner yarns (wool), but I have come across the term Stenter  - a similar term to Tenter (maybe a typo on your document?) which is still used today. I have had a quick look and it is a machine which adjusts the width of the cloth and also assists in the heat setting of certain chemicals. If you are interested this link expalins the process.

 

Howard

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