Ashton Boatman

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.

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.

On Friday I collected some redundant advertising panels donated by Tameside Council. These had been round the market area while it was being revamped, a process that was delayed by the collapse of Carillion and then by the pandemic. They're made of tough plastic sandwiched between thin layers of aluminium. They'll be very useful for re-roofing "Southam" and are an environmental positive by being re-used rather than sent to landfill and then new materials having to be ripped from the Earth.

I tried to unload them and get them stacked on "Southam"s roof on my own, but discomfort from my catheter suggested I'd better stop. I later discovered that I'd taped it a bit too tightly to my leg, so certain movements were pulling it.

On Saturday morning Nessie and Aaron helped me to stack the panels. Aaron then helped to shift some bags of engineered wood flooring that have been donated. I'm not sure what we'll do with these but I'm fairly sure they'll come in useful.

"Queen", the oldest surviving wooden motor narrow boat  afloat (sometimes) is being unhelpful. She's up and down like a yoyo. She went down about a week ago and Nessie raised her again yesterday. I checked her at about 7pm and, though she was leaking, it was well within the capacity of the pumps.

In the evening I took part in a very positive committee meeting. We have a really good committee now. The biggest problem is that they're all so busy with their day jobs. We could do with some retired people joining (preferably ones without too many grandchildren, boats or camper vans so that they have some spare time)

Anyway!  I confidently reported to the meeting that "Queen" was afloat, only to find this morning that she'd gone down in the night. This time 3 pumps were still running strongly despite their batteries being under water. Obviously there's been a big influx somewhere. Mind you, I thought that before when she went down.

I wonder if we have a quantum leak, ie, one that doesn't leak when you're looking for it but pours in when you're not.

Nessie is not happy, especially as his car engine has blown up so he has to walk everywhere.

Here's a picture of "Queen"s bow when she was afloat yesterday. Isn't it a lovely shape!

"Queen" is, as far as we know, the oldest surviving wooden motor narrow boat. She dates from 1917 and seems to be mostly still original wood. Needless to say, she is pretty poorly.

"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?

No, I'm not just harvesting likes. About a month ago we found that a feral cat had given birth aboard "Lilith". We couldn't take them with us on the recycling trip so I moved the kittens on to "Elton". Mother cat then moved them into "Queen", well hidden. Several people have been feeding the mother, who was rather skinny. She's now looking a lot better.

Today I saw the kittens out gamboling in "Queen"s fore end. They're lovely. We already have homes offered for some of them but I think some help is needed in catching them. We need to catch the mother too and get her speyed, otherwise a boatload of kittens will become a regular thing.

Containing my Anger.

It was 6PM on a Tuesday evening and I had had a long day cutting planks for "Hazel" with the chainmill http://www.care2.com/c2c/photos/view/186/483743566/Cutting_planks_for__quot_Hazel_quot_/Chris%20cutting%20greenheart%20with%20chainmill%203%2011%20picbri.JPG.html
In order to minimise disturbance to residents in the various flats I worked on this across on the towpath side, next to the junction with the Peak Forest Canal.

It had been a long day, made less comfortable by a vicious wind that whipped up the sawdust into a desert storm. As I inserted the resharpened saw into the groove for the final cut, an Anderton Marina hireboat emerged from the Peak Forest Canal and started to turn into the wind towards Manchester.

The lady of the boat, a solidly built cheerful scotswoman, walked by on the towpath with a big collie dog. We exchanged smiles and she carried on, then backtracked to ask about a safe mooring for the night. Her husband was now frantically backing up to avoid the boat hitting the newly repainted "Community Spirit" on the outside of the turn. The wind caught the flat cabin side like a sail and took the boat sideways.

I suggested that they back up and tie on the outside alongside the flats, the site of the prophet John Wroe's magnificent but long disapeared house. This was good advice from the point of view of having an undisturbed night, but would involve some manoevring that beginners would find challenging even on a still day.

As we spoke the boat reversed into the shallow water on the far side of the bridge and the rudder crunched into the stone copings. The bonny lady hurried over the bridge to help push it off and pass on my advice to her partner. He engaged forward gear and attempted to get the stern away from the bank, but an ominous underwater clattering indicated that the blade had picked up something that was battering the bottom of the counter as it rotated.

Its ability to manouvre further inhibited by rubbish on the prop, the boat moved slowly forwards, still in the grip of the wind. I could see that he wasn't going to get the boat to its destination without hitting one of our boats, but I wouldn't have minded if he simply scraped his bow along the side of "Southam". The sensible thing to do would have been to forget about engine power and use the shaft, which lay idle on the cabin roof, to get control of the errant fore end. I have always, however, found a great reluctance among trainee, and sometimes experienced, boaters to use the shaft.

The strategy employed to control the boat was a surprising one. As the bow headed into the arm where the boats awaiting restoration float in shallow water I expected to see a flush of sterngear from the still clattering prop. Instead the boat carried on until it impacted "Elton"s stern. She gave a lurch, then resigned herself to being used as a fulcrum as, still in forward gear, the man put his tiller over to lever the boat round. As soon as he backed up the wind caught the bow and he lost control again. He repeated the manouvre, but this time, the hireboat's bow having moved a few feet Eastwards, it was "Queen"s turn to suffer the indignity of a ramming.

I stood watching, open mouthed and dumbstruck. I knew that both boats were tough enough to withstand these blows, but I was amazed at the sheer disregard for other peoples craft.

The boat backed up again. The next boat in line for a blow from its bow was "Hazel", our most fragile boat. Somehow he managed to miss her, but, as anticipated, scraped his bow along the side of "Southam" instead. As his stern end approached the footbridge he threw a line up to his wife, who sensibly led the boat back to the overnight mooring that I had suggested.

I started the saw and quickly completed the last cut, by which time my anger had subsided a little. I shafted "Lilith" back across the basin to tie up abreast of "Southam", then went to dig out some leaflets from "Forget me Not"s cabin. I walked over to the moored hireboat and tapped on the roof. The woman emerged and reddened when she saw me. I sought to defuse her embarrasment with a smile, it wasn't her who had been steering, and handed her the leaflets. I said "Here's some information about the historic boats you just rammed". She was full of apologies, but she didn't call her husband out to face me. I diverted the conversation away from the incident as she was clearly uncomfortable, but it was her partner that I wanted to feel that discomfort. He had not once looked in my direction as he carried out his cavalier careering around the basin.

I went off to get some food. Early in the morning the boat left to work down the locks to Manchester. I wonder what sort of night the arrogant man had. It would be no surprise to me if the ghost of Jack Monk ( "Queen" was his first motor boat and remained his favourite) had visited him in the night and given him terrifying dreams of boatmans justice.