I was shocked recently when a someone who has never restored a boat told me, in an authoritative tone, that Queen was beyond repair. Queen is probably our most important boat from a historical point of view, being the oldest surviving wooden motor narrow boat and a style of boat that died out in the first quarter of the last century.
Like most wooden narrow boats that survive today, she provides just a pattern, a set of ironwork, a history and a lot of work. Providing that the main structure survives, albeit full of fungus, nothing is beyond repair. There may be philosophical questions like, if you've replaced all the wood is it still the same boat? You could ask the same about 160 year old Talyllyn , still hauling trains on the Talyllyn railway. All her working parts were renewed in about 1960.
A museum minded person may prefer to follow the preservation route. At Ellesmere Port they've put most of their wooden boats into dry storage in an industrial unit. That's fair enough, but no-one will ever see them in action on the canal again.
When we restored Hazel we replaced every bit of wood in the hull. I have seen boats that have been restored that bear no resemblance to their original form. With Hazel we carefully made accurate moulds to ensure that new planking would bend to the same shape as the original. For each plank we carefully made spiling boards to transfer the shape on to the new wood. At 12 inch stations we copied the bevels of the edges of each plank into a bevel book so that the edges of the new planks could be planed to fit each other, just like the old ones did.
Essentially, transforming boats like this is what the WCBS is set up to do. Hazel has gone from a complete knacker to a boat that gives lots of people the opportunity to enjoy the canal, while still remaining faithful to the pattern set by boatbuilders in 1913.
Back in the 1970s I was chief boat pumper out and vandal chaser off at Ellesmere Port. I was well into replanking Lilith and already contemplating the task of restoring Forget me Not. She became a bit of a problem to keep afloat and I doubt if there were many people who thought she'd ever become an active motor boat again.
Being slipped for restoration in 1987.
And at the Braunston Boat Show 1995, loaded with 10 tons of stone setts for delivery to Braunston Marina.
It took a long time and everything was done on a shoestring, but we did it. For Hazel we had much greater resources, but still much less than the cost of just taking her to a commercial boatyard and writing a big cheque.
To do this requires strategic thinking rather than tactical thinking. When we raised Queen from the bottom in Buckinghamshire we had no prospect of restoring her in the short term. To leave her where she was would guarantee her destruction. So began over 30 years of careful conservation.
When an opportunity came up to buy a water drip Bolinder engine, of the sort that powered her from 1924 until 1947, we bought it. They don't come up often, especially at affordable prices.
It was the same with Hazel. The stem and stern posts were a tree from someone's garden in Wythenshawe, years before we were able to start the restoration. The wood for the bottom was donated by someone in Aberdeen, delivered, then stored until we had the funds to start work. I'm constantly on the lookout for suitable trees being felled. Just going to B&Q doesn't work.
Now we're moving into a time when we need to do more tactical thinking, bringing together the funds, the materials and the skilled labour to get Queen up and running again. If you can help please leave a comment.
Queen as we found her 1994.
