The college summer holidays of 1975 was when I intended to make some real progress on Lilith. I booked some time on Chester dry dock and began to make preparations. My intention was to renew the stern post as the old one was rotten. The new curved planks that I had fitted were just sort of hanging where they should have been spiked in to the hoodings. My only problem, I thought, was what to make the stern post out of.

Another victim of the purge of the hippies and the hairies o’ was a couple who lived on a pair of wooden joeys called Thelma and Flute. Thelma was motorised with a full length conversion. Flute was open with just a small back cabin. They had hoped to build some sort of business on the cut but now had decided that there was no future in it. They were selling up and moving to a cottage in Wales.

They had some pieces of wood to get rid of, including a railway sleeper, which, in my innocence, I thought would do for a stern post. There were also some pieces of cedar which once supported the flat bed of a lorry. They still hold up Lilith’s cabin roof to this day. If I remember rightly I gave 50p for the lot. This transaction started a persistent rumour that I rebuilt Lilith exclusively with old railway sleepers.

I had to move Lilith back into Chester for the docking. In those days very few boats troubled with the Wirral line from Chester to Ellesmere Port. As the docking date drew close I kept a sharp eye out for a boat heading that way.

One day a newish looking Springer passed my boats and I thought I’d give it a try.

I let an hour or so pass then got on my bike and rode to The Port. The boat arrived there shortly after me, so I helped them tie up and then made my request, to which they readily agreed. After they had made a cursory examination of the derelict basins we loaded aboard my bike and set off. The young couple in charge of the boat hailed from Southampton and had borrowed it from one of their parents.

Lilith still had no rudder but she followed the cadged tug fairly well. I did my best to keep her out of mischief with the aid of a length of 3x2. We reached Chester without major mishap.

Her arrival caused great consteration among the boatbuilders over at Taylors yard. It was clear to them that I had a lot to learn. The big issue was the width of the seams, the gaps between the planks.

Earlier in the year the wooden josher motor Daffodil had been on the dock having her bow rebuilt. Arthur Howard had taken charge of spiling, cutting and steaming the planks. He had done it so accurately that you could hardly get a fag paper between them, let alone a run of oakum. I heard the lesser boatbuilders complaining about it as they tried to do the caulking and I determined not to do the same. I left quarter inch gaps between the planks.

A more serious problem as far as David Jones was concerned was that to let me rip out a stern post and attempt to replace it with a railway sleeper was asking for trouble . My chances of making any sort of watertight seal seemed vanishingly small.

I was given a choice. I could cancel my docking at no cost or, I could carry on with it but agree to pay massive amounts of compensation for every day over my allotted time. As my only income was a student grant (yes, impecunious ex students, they paid us to study in those days) I took the safer option.

Through the auspices of David Jones I’d bought some through and through boards ( sliced lengthwise through the tree trunk retaining the bark on each side) of larch. He suggested that I use some of this wood to make an apron behind the stump of the sternpost so that I would have something to spike the planks into.

I made a journey to Liverpool to buy oakum, pitch and tar from the delightfully named Liver Grease Oil and Chemical Company, then somehow lugged it all back on the train. I fitted shearing, a thin vertical layer of planks that lines the inside of the hull. The pitch and tar were boiled up, in a pot on a fire on adjacent waste ground, and combined with horse manure to make chalico. This wonderful substance was used to seal around the apron and between the planks and the shearing. With shearing in place I started caulking those gaping seams. I soon needed a further trip to Liverpool for another bale of expensive oakum.

Often, as I was working, Arthur would come to see what I was doing. He would take a pinch of snuff and offer me one, which I refused, then he would say “course, you know don’t you” and carry on to explain how I should be doing whatever job I was making a pigs ear of.

With the Autumn term fast approaching I blagged another tow back to my mooring at Croughton, but the identity of my victim this time is lost in the pile of dead dendrites at the bottom of my skull.

20 years later I enjoyed a cup of tea on board Thelma somewhere around Milton Keynes with a chap known as ‘Cup o Tea’ John. Sadly, shortly afterwards he sold her to new owner who allowed her to sink and left her to the mercy of British Waterways. More recenly I saw a photo of Flute, still looking the same, for sale on the River Chess. I wonder if she still exists. Despite all the excellent work of Arthur Howard, Daffodil was eventually broken up.

Lilith is now part of the fleet of the Wooden Canal Boat Society. Those planks fitted over 50 years ago are now needing replacement again so she is laid up at Portland Basin, waiting. Get in touch if you’d like to help general@wcbs.org.uk 07931 952 037