Ashton Boatman

After "Queen"s latest submarine adventure Nessie has got back to work concreting the bottom. This has involved a lot of shifting around of stuff inside. Some of it was rubbish and is being got rid of. Some of it is firewood and has gone to Stalybridge for cutting. Other stuff is useful or saleable. Once she's sorted out and reliably floating we can make good use of the space inside. It's all part of the WCBS getting sorted out after several years of drifting. We need more volunteers though, particularly people who are organisers rather than those who need to be organised.

Nessie emerges with bags of gunge out of the bilge.

"Queen" is the oldest surviving wooden motor narrow boat (as far as we know) built in 1917 for Hildick & Hildick of Walsall she was originally "Walsall Queen" and apparently worked between Walsall and Brentford carrying coal with her butty "Queen of the Ocean". She's become known as the boat with nine lives as she's been sunk and abandoned 3 times so far. She finished her carrying career in 1947 with Harvey Taylor of Aylesbury and was left to sink. She was rescued in 1949 and became a pleasure boat until sunk again in 1987. Rescued again, she was patched up but sank at Denham on the Grand Union and was due to be smashed up by BW until rescued by the WCBS in 1994.

Yesterday morning Nessie checked her pumps and everything was OK, but, a couple of hours later we realised she was quickly going down. The pumps were still running, so she must have sprung a really big leak. Another task to keep us busy, raising Queen and fixing the leak.

We're going to have to start fundraising for her restoration before too long. Any offers of help?