The thoughts, fantasies and random ramblings of Ashton Boatman Chris Leah, largely, but not exclusively, connected with his work for the Wooden Canal Boat Society, restoring historic wooden canal boats and putting them to work doing good deeds for the community and the planet.
"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?
"Lilith" was my first wooden narrow boat. I bought her for £100 in 1974, then replaced all but one of her planks over the next 9 years. Some research be Dave McDougal at the Black Country Museum showed that she was gauged on 2nd December 1901.
After we set up the Wooden Canal Craft Trust (as it was then called) I donated her. Since 1996 she's worked on recycling trips, as well as doing useful jobs like carrying timber for "Hazel"s restoration. Now, after more than 40 years, she needs her stern end rebuilding again.
Sadly, she's unemployed at the moment, except for storing firewood and scrap iron. The recycling trips are suspended until the covid infection rate drops considerably.
Here's a photo of "Lilith" tied alongside Boatmans Walk.
We ran a 'Thank You' trip yesterday for some NHS workers. A new volunteer, Cheryl, came along and steered "Hazel" under Aaron's tutelage. She said she was a photographer. Well, I thought, everyone's a photographer nowadays. Then she sent me the excellent photos she took from "Hazel"s hatches.
I was on the motor boat which Mick Owen was steering.
A few pictures of a thank you trip returning through Dukinfield on 3rd November. "Forget me Not" steered by the wonderful Aaron Booth, "Hazel" steered by new volunteer Patricia under the tutelage of Geraldine Buckley.
When we were buying trailers to tow with the land rover, prices had gone stratospheric. I managed to locate a suitably sized box trailer at a reasonable price all the way down in Kent. It does the job but the chassis turned out to be both flimsily built and badly corroded. For the last few days Nessie has been busy reconstructing it. He's planning to finish it tomorrow morning ready for shop deliveries to commence at 10AM.
Emuna has just remarked that young people find it hard to credit that when we started school some of the older teachers had been born in the nineteenth century. It's true. When I was at Southam Junior Boys School the headmaster was Mr Dencer (yes, there were jokes about his name but not when he could hear). He retired in, I think, 1963, so, assuming he retired at 65, he'd have been born in 1899. I don't recall any members of Pink Floyd having attended the school but their "Wall" LP certainly resonated with me regarding schooldays.
I digress. I'm supposed to be writing about our need for a WCBS wood monitor. Firewood monitor would be better really. I call it that because in junior school they used to give a trusted boy (not me) the job of going round each day topping up the ink wells in all the desks. He was the ink monitor.
Through the winter our boat stoves get through a lot of firewood. This comes from various sources, but a major one is the firm of Cargo Packing Services, located near to Portland basin.
They make packing cases and produce handy sized offcuts all year round and are delighted to have people take them away.
The trouble is, too many people know about them. Perhaps I shouldn't be telling you! Anyway, in the winter, when firewood is needed, when you go there there's always somebody's just taken it all. In the summer, nobody wants it. The thing to do is to collect it in the summer and store it up. We have a bay in "Lilith"s hold reserved for this purpose.
For some reason, very few people seem to see the logic in this. Why fetch firewood when you've got plenty? They ask. It's an easy job that really helps the charity, but we struggle to find a volunteer who will reliably turn up a couple of days a week, take a wheelie bin over to CPS, fill it up, trundle it back, then bag up the wood, sorted into different sizes, and put it in "Lilith".
Following the tradition that if no-one else wants to do a job, I end up doing it, it's become one one of my regular tasks. I don't mind, it's just that there's lots of other jobs that I could be doing that somebody else probably wouldn't know how to do.
When the Dutton Drydock Company donated their Land Rover Discovery to the Wooden Canal Boat Society there were some prophets of doom who said we shouldn't accept it because the bottom would fall out of it. To be fair, at 24 it's a bit long in the tooth as motor vehicles go, but I was re-assured that the main structural component supporting the body had already been renewed. It was certainly a generous donation.
A little while ago I started to get concerned. Various items had dropped through a hole next to the back nearside wheel arch. I began to wonder if the doomsters had been right. The MOT is due soon.
I needn't have worried. The remarkable duo of Stephan and Nessie have been at work the last few days. There was a bit of a false start when I hired a mig welder from Marchstream in Denton. It didn't work. I'm not going there again! The bullet was bitten and I bought a new one from Machine Mart in Openshaw. Not much more expensive really.
The back end is now done, ready for shop collections and deliveries tomorrow (we still need a volunteer driver for doing this by the way) . Stephan has found more welding to do in the front end, then it will be ready for the scrutiny of the MOT person.
"Southam" is one of our younger boats, built by Walkers of Rickmansworth as a butty in 1936. She finished carrying work in 1962 and in 1965 was motorised and converted. She had a second life as a pleasure boat and residential craft until she sank on Braunston Puddle Banks in 1992. We bought her off British Waterways who had raised her and taken her to Hillmorton, where she sank again. After carrying out some repairs she housed a series of live in caretakers and did lots of work towing on recycling trips and on an epic trip to Lincoln to collect timber for "Hazel".
Various repairs have been carried out over the years. She's the best of our unrestored boats. In 2019 we replaced most of one side. 2020 was supposed to be the year when we sorted out the falling apart cabin, but because of that nasty virus, 2020 didn't really happen.
The engine fitted in 1965, a 3.8 litre BMC Commodore, was pretty much worn out, but a similar engine, hardly used. was donated by Tameside College. Stephan, our engineer has rebuilt it and transferred the marinising parts.
Now work has slowly restarted on the boat. Nessie has been armour plating the stern end ready to receive the engine.
This will give the stern end the strength to carry on until we have the resources to rebuild it.
Today I went off in "Namaste" the trusty Land Rover to Whiteheads timber reclamation yard, on Coalpit Lane in Bardsley. I prefer to use reclaimed timber, partly to avoid waste, but also because it's often better than new stuff. I had a long chat with the boss who, like everyone else and his dog it seems, is thinking of moving on to a boat.
They hadn't got much in but I managed to get these excellent boards for cabin building.
Because there's so much else to do it will probably take a long time to get "Southam" up and running. When she is back in service she'll be able to give "Forget me Not" a rest from towing "Hazel" and "Lilith", She'll be able to provide accomodation for volunteers who want to stay and will be able to fly the WCBS flag at waterway events. One possibility is to kit her out as a floating craft shop. All we need now is time, money and skilful volunteers.
Meanwhile I've been adjusting "Forget me Not"s gearbox. It had started slipping in both directions. Now both the forward clutch and the reverse brake band grip well. The only trouble is, we're back to needing a lot of muscle power to change gear. I think I'm going to have to modify the linkage again to give more leverage. We'll get it right in the end!
