Although the museum was only open at weekends for the first couple of years, visitors arrived randomly during the week. They would often get an impromptu guided tour. One such visitor was Old Bill. He introduced himself with a question, “Have you got any steam boats here?”. We hadn’t, but we liked him so we invited him in for a brew and a chat.

Bill had recently retired from lorry driving for the nearby car factory. He told us he had always been known as Old Bill because, everywhere he worked, he had been the oldest William. At Vauxhall there had been Young Bill, himself and Bill the Bum!

Like many amateur engineers of his era, Bill had a lathe in his garden shed but he’d run out of projects since retirement. His first job had been as fireman on a steam lorry and he’d yearned for involvement with a steam engine ever since.

“We don’t have a steam boat,” I explained, “But we do have a pair of hydraulic pumping engines”.
“Oh!” said Bill, “Can I have a look?”

The steam engines used to provide hydraulic power to the whole dock estate. Sadly, they were derelict and all their bearings and other brass bits had been nicked. I unlocked the door and we entered past the silent Lancashire boilers then up the steps into the engine house. Bill got very excited. “Do you think,” he asked “if anyone would mind if I just cleaned them up and painted them?”

Old Bill, realistically, wasn’t going to stop with prettification. He aimed to get an engine running. Soon he had an agreement with a brass foundry in Widnes. He would supply the wooden pattern for the required part, along with scrap brass, and they would cast the part for free. Volunteers who came along at weekends began to bring unwanted brass items with them to add to Bill’s brass stash.

Bill worked long hours in the engine house. He would often drop in for a brew, regaling us with tales of his years driving trucks, his time serving in world war II, and his childhood, playing with snowballs made from asbestos waste.

It took him 3 years to get the first engine running. Reviving the Lancashire boilers was impractical so a small vertical boiler was installed the other side of the covered arm. On steaming days the job of fireman fell to me, using scrap wood as fuel. A simple intercom was used for communication across the water.

As time passed the Boat Museum increased in fame. I acquired a wooden motor boat called Sarah that, like Lilith, needed rebuilding. It developed a bad habit of sinking.

We had an arrangement with the local fire station when a boat sank. They would come and pump it out and put it down to training. The one proviso was that, if they should get an emergency call, they would rush away to answer it.

One day Sarah sank, gunwales under, right in the most prominent part of the museum. I summoned the brigade and they started getting set up, then an emergency call came in and they were off, returning later to recover their equipment.

The museum committee started to take an unusually intolerant view of my sunken boat. They let me know that they were expecting a visit from an unspecified but very important person, and Sarah was an embarrassment.

Lorries began to arrive, delivering half of Derbyshire in the form of crushed limestone to make new roads and paths. A British Waterways dredger turned up and started work. BWB also started work repairing the bottom lock, giving access to the ship canal. This required the use of three huge Sykes Univac pumps, two on the land and one on a work flat.

The job finished on a Friday. The two pumps on the land were taken away but the work flat was brought up the locks and left in the outer basin with the pump still on board.

When the workers had gone I went to have a look. There were suction pipes, diesel in the tank and a starting handle. I shafted the boat into the museum and tied her abreast of Sarah. The suction pipes were soon connected up and fed into the sunken boat.

I spun the handle, knocked down the decompressors one by one and the big 3 cylinder Lister roared into life. Water started to jet across the basin from the pump outlet and a mini Niagara started all along Sarah’s gunwales. In almost no time the cascade stopped and the boat popped up like a cork. The big pump ran out of water to shift, so I rigged up a little electric pump to complete the job.

With Sarah safely afloat I shafted the work flat back to where I’d found it and carefully re-placed all the equipment so that, when they came to collect it, no-one would be any the wiser. After 50 years I don’t think anyone will be bothered!

It soon became clear that our mystery guests were to be none other than Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. We began to get posh impromptu visitors, who we’d never seen before, claiming to have been the first to think of having a boat museum there. It’s amazing what a royal visit will bring out of the woodwork!

A few days before Her Majesty was due to arrive, stop planks were inserted at the first bridge-hole. Police divers dragged the basin and checked under the boats for bombs. This was quite handy as they found a lot of the tools that I’d dropped in over time.

With the divers' work done the police ringed the whole site, one copper every few yards and every third one with a dog. Access was only possible with a pass. I had a pass, but nobody informed the officers that I lived there. Every time they had a shift change I would get interrogated by bored and suspicious policemen, who clearly thought that my pass was a forgery. I had a wonderful but scruffy mongrel called Caspar who was invaluable in guarding the site, but was not happy about all the police dogs on his manor.

On the big day, Old Bill came dressed in his shiniest overalls. The royal visitors wanted to see his engine running. The sun shone and crowds of visitors assembled, many of the ladies wearing dresses of delicate shades of pink or white.

My job, of course, was to fire the boiler. This had the added benefit of keeping me out of the way as my Cromwellian sympathies were well known. For the first and last time I was supplied with the luxury of coal to fuel the fire.

I had full pressure in good time. The intercom crackled and Bill told me that it looked like it would be a while before the royal party reached the engine house, so we might as well run the engine.

This happened a couple more times, then Bill said he thought they wouldn’t be much longer. I had a full boiler, full pressure and the safety valves just sizzling. To cool things down I put on the damper and filled the firebox with coal. Deprived of air, the coal began coking, and a haze of sulphurous yellow smoke drifted from the chimney.

The intercom crackled again. “They’re coming over now!” said Bill, “Give me steam!"

I removed the damper and, from inside the firebox came a loud WUMPF as oxygen ignited the hot coal. As the products of combustion exited the boiler they took with them the layers of soot that had built up in the passages.

A great cloud of black ordure rose from the chimney, sailed above the island warehouse and descended on the ladies in pink and white dresses...

Bill was dead chuffed about meeting the Queen and later related to us the entire conversation that he had with her, several times.

******

Bill carried on with his work in the engine house for many more years, leaving a legacy that is enjoyed to this day by museum visitors.

The old boiler was replaced with a new gas fired one, eliminating any future risks of dry cleaning claims.

Caspar moved to Runcorn with me in 1982. Sadly, he later succumbed to cancer aged about 10.

Sarah’s original name turned out to be Forget me Not, built originally as a horse boat in 1927 for number one boatman Henry Grantham. She was motorised at Braunston in 1929 and fitted with a counter stern in 1931. She was launched after a comprehensive rebuild in 1994 and now is the principal motor boat for the Wooden Canal Boat Society. Among other things, she tows Hazel on well-being trips. After 32 years in the water she now needs another overhaul.

After the excitement of the opening weekend I fetched my pair of little orange boxes into the museum basin and took up residence. The museum boats were all moved away from the accessible bank and tied around the island warehouse for safety from vandals. Initially the museum was only open at weekends. I hadn’t really considered what a big voluntary task I’d taken on. There was no fence around the site and it was regarded as a public footpath. Most of the boats leaked and had to be pumped out regularly. I was working full time and had Lilith to finish rebuilding.

I don’t recall how I first met Dave and Al. They had just left school and, like most school leavers in those days in that part of the world, signed on the dole. They both wanted to escape from their respective parental homes, but didn’t have the means. They jumped at the chance of moving into an old boat and helping me to look after the museum. Dave occupied the Yorkshire keel Ethel and Al took up residence on board the Mersey Flat Mossdale.

Meals were taken aboard my floating chicken hutch, Mosquito, and mostly comprised dubious stews cooked on my little paraffin stove.

Although Dave and Al were long term friends there was constant tension between them. Al was quite tall and good looking. Dave was witty, in a slightly lugubrious and self deprecating way. Much of the bickering was connected to Al’s determination to outdo Giacomo Cassanova in his amorous conquests, and his delight in bragging about it. His dalliances frequently took him away to spend time with various ladies, which left the burden of boat pumping to me and Dave.

One of the odd things is that, though Mossdale and Ethel generally didn’t leak much, as soon as a resident went away, that person’s boat would sink.

I struck a deal with Dave, who had excelled at school woodwork. If he helped me to fit out Lilith I would give him Mosquito. We started gathering old pallets to break up for material.

Animals began to appear, mostly connected to another school leaver called Malcolm. His name was usually abbreviated to Mal, but then often, rather cruelly, extended again. I think it was Mal who brought us a rabbit that ran about in Lilith’s hold for a while. We referred to it as the guard rabbit, until it was stolen. A similar fate befell Butty, a rather plump black and white cat that Mal supplied in order to deal with a rat problem. She had no effect on the rats but had the unfortunate misunderstanding that cabin bilges were put there to act as litter trays.

It was the famously hot summer of 1976. Extremes of weather are not good for wooden boats, and constant heat causes their planks to shrink, potentially opening up leaks. We tested electric bilge pumps to destruction and were constantly charging batteries to run them.

We worked out an alternative method of draining bilges. The only building in use then was the Toll House. In its basement, at a lower level than the basin, was a tap. From somwhere we acquired a long length of alkathene water pipe, which reached all the way from the tap to the bilges of the nearest boats, usually George and Scorpio, the two Leeds & Liverpool boats, notorious leakers. If you put one end of the pipe in the deepest part of the bilge, and the other end on the tap you could fill the pipe with water. Once removed from the tap the water would run back and syphon out the bilgewater.

Just round the corner from the museum there was a night club over a garage. One hot summer’s night I was woken in the early hours by the sounds of shouting and splashing. I went out to investigate and found that the top wide lock was full of drunken revellers, with others on the sides encouraging their antics. They had all gone to cool off after a night of drinking and dancing. This became quite a regular occurrence through the heat wave, especially on Saturday nights. Happily, no-one drowned.

The government appointed Denis Howell as minister of drought. Indians in Leicester performed a rain dance, and achieved just a few spots. The Thames began to be pumped backwards and most of the canal system shut down. Not until October did the rains come, and they came with a vengeance. The cabins on Mossdale and Ethel were underneath planked decks, which had shrunk drastically. The water poured in all over Dave and Al’s bedding and possessions.
Al moved on to pursue further education in Rotherham. Dave completed Lilith’s cabin so I gave him Mosquito. He made a nice job of rebuilding its cabin then took up a woodworking job in the Midlands. He sold the boat to his successor as museum guard, who abandoned it.

Mal left to work on the gravel boats on the River Soar. Decades later, using a slightly different name, he contacted me via Facebook and offered to move to Ashton to volunteer for the WCBS. He’d just retired from a career putting on puppet shows at holiday camps. Unfortunately he then suffered a series of health problems before his Facebook account became inactive.

The last I saw of Mosquito she was sunk in the covered arm. Mossdale is now preserved as a dry exhibit. Ethel was broken up in 1985 as the museum didn’t have the resources to restore her. Lilith is at Portland Basin awaiting attention after over 40 years of further service.

If you’d like to help getting Lilith and other historic boats restored and working for the community contact the Wooden Canal Boat Society or phone 07931 952 037

In military circles it is said that plans rarely survive contact with the enemy. The same could be said of my plans for a teaching career. I dropped out after my first teaching practice and got a dead end job in a fascist paper factory. I use the F word advisedly. The boss kept asking me if I was Jewish and once told me that he’d fought on the wrong side in the war.

No longer needing to be near the college I moved my two little boats to join Lilith on the farm moorings. The fees were 50p per boat per week, which was a bargain for Lilith. Even at £1.50 for the 3 boats it wasn’t too bad but, when he realised that I was living on them the farmer demanded £3 a week for the 3 craft. Extortion!

I moved on to the towpath side near the village of Stoak. With a wage in my pocket I was able to re-activate the little car that I had left behind at my parent’s house.

The planking was complete at the stern end of Lilith and I wanted to build a back cabin to live in. Someone told me that at Ellesmere Port the canal was chock full of wood from the recent motorway construction. I drove over there and, though I found no free wood, I came across volunteers preparing the derelict area for opening as a boat museum in a few weeks time.

I got talking to Tony Hirst who told me that they had a problem. They were planning to bring lots of historic boats to the opening, but had no way of keeping them safe in a place renowned for vandalism and arson. I immediately volunteered to become resident volunteer caretaker, boat pumper outer and vandal chaser offer.

The photo is of Lilith on her 120th birthday, December 2nd 2021. We towed her and Hazel to the first winding hole up the Peak Forest then returned to a patch of waste ground in Dukinfield and had a bonfire. An oak tree was planted in the ashes, growing the wooden boats of the 22nd century!

Arrangements were made to move my boats. Lilith was to hang on behind the Thomas Clayton pair Spey and Gifford. My floating hutches were to follow on after the celebrations were over.

Lilith still had no means of steering, so it was an interesting journey, dangling on the end of a line from Gifford’s anser hook. Tony Lewery was steering the butty and a combination of his efforts and my use of an improvised shaft we mostly kept her out of trouble.

Trouble came on arrival at The Port. The volunteer harbourmaster was the owner of a Josher steamer and tended to look down on lesser craft. With one glimpse of my disreputable Joey boat he ordered her to be taken down to the bottom basin, which was then still derelict. Bad decision!

There are parallel locks down to the bottom basin, one set wide and the other narrow. Being a narrow boat Lilith started down the narrow locks. It had been several years since she had been through a narrow lock and she had not been dieting. It took a team of volunteers, diverted from other work, most of the afternoon to drag her protesting hull through those two locks. It was then decided that she could come into the top basin after all. She returned up the wide locks.

When the weekend festivities were over I fired up my little Ailsa Craig outboard and whirred along the canal with Mosquito and Melford, the floating chicken hutches, to take up residence in the basin and start my new duties.

Gifford is still an important part of the Boat Museum’s collection.

Spey is still travelling the canals in the care of the ‘Spey crowd’. They are probably the best example of a shared ownership group looking after a historic boat. They have continually maintained and improved her for over 50 years and are now passing her on to a younger generation.

Lilith is in the care of the Wooden Canal Boat Society and, in her 125^th year, is awaiting another restoration at Portland Basin, Ashton under Lyne.

Please feel free to get in touch if you would like to help https://www.wcbs.org.uk/ 07931 952 037

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

It was October 1974 when I arrived in Chester on a pair of floating chicken hutches. My intention was to live aboard my humble craft for the next 3 years whilst attending the nearby Chester College with the aim  of becoming a teacher.

I soon discovered that I had innocently sailed into a conflict between posh boaters and ‘undesirables’. Because of my ramshackle boats, I found myself classed in the latter category. As one of the chief ‘undesirables’ decided to emigrate to Holland he had to dispose of his assets here. This gave me the opportunity to buy a full length boat for £100. A simple BCN joey.

The boat carried a metal plate in each end with the number 9 painted on it, her Stewarts & Lloyds fleet number. She had been part of the huge fleet that used to carry products from Coombeswood tubeworks. Her top bends were painted yellow, denoting that she had later belonged to Alfred Matty, canal contractors. I later discovered that one of the tricks of the seller was to tow away unattended boats, sell them to several people, then disappear, leaving his victims arguing about who was now the rightful owner. Happily. I was never challenged about the ownership of number 9.

At the time I was engaged to an R.E. teacher called Kathy. The romance of the canals had really got to me and I envisaged a future living in a back cabin. She saw herself enjoying life in a nice semi detached suburban house. We compromised on a full length conversion of our new old boat. When she visited to view our future home, I pointed out that the boat needed a name. “Call it ‘Lilith’” she said, explaining that it was Hebrew for a screech owl and that she’d solved someone’s final crossword clue that day by knowing that fact. I won’t go into the mythology around Lilith, but, suffice it to say that it’s rather more than her explanation and evokes strong reactions from people of particular religious affiliations. Anyone wishing to know more should search on t'internet.

I found a mooring for “Lilith” on a farmer’s field halfway along the Wirral line of the Shroppie. It cost 50p a week! It was clear that before beginning the conversion I would need to do some work on the hull. Opposite my Chester mooring was Taylors boatyard. Alan Parry was busy there rebuilding a classic Taylors cruiser, “Barbara Joan”, which had been burned out by vandals. I asked him where I could get some oak. He advised that I shouldn’t waste my money on oak but should just go to the local timber merchant and buy lengths of red deal. “It’s just as good” he claimed. I was puzzled by this but took his advice as he was a proper boatbuilder. Eventually it dawned on me that he was just being kind. He assumed that, like most wide eyed youngsters that start doing up an old wooden boat, I would soon give up. He wanted to protect me from wasting too much money.

Work really started in the Easter break in 1975. I bought the longest piece of 2” X 8” red deal that they had at the local builders merchant and somehow balanced it across the saddle and handlebars of my folding bike, then carefully pushed the contraption the mile to my boats. I loaded it on to the roof of one of my tatty craft, then set off to deliver it to “Lilith”. I chipped out a plank, cut rough scarph joints on the ends of the new plank and bolted it into place. As I removed one plank, those around it started to disintegrate, so I repeated the process on them.

Soon I got to planks that were curved and so the wood needed steaming. I had no equipment so I approached Alan Parry again. He lent me a gas fired industrial wallpaper stripper to generate steam. David Jones, who had taken over Taylors yard, let me use some space and the master boatbuilder, Arthur Howard, lent me some big G clamps. I put the plank into a long plastic bag, scrounged from a carpet shop, then led steam from the wallpaper stripper into it for a couple of hours.

Whilst the plank was cooking I set up a crude former. I put a stout wooden beam on to blocks so that it was off the ground, then put two more blocks on top of this at what looked like the right distance apart. When the plank was ready I removed it from its bag and laid it on top of the blocks, then used the clamps to bend the floppy plank down to touch the beam halfway between the blocks. I would then lash the plank down so that the clamps could be removed and returned to Arthur. Next morning I would release the plank, now hardened to its curve, load it upon to the boat roof and take it out to “Lilith” for fitting. This method would not work on most boats. Luckily, joeys are of a simple shape with no complex curves or twists.

In the 1970s ex Stewarts & Lloyds joeys were everywhere as they gradually dispersed their fleet. Of all the wooden joeys that  in every corner of the network, I’m only aware of 3 survivors. Birchills resides in the Black Country Living Museum. Daisy now belongs to Forces Veterans Afloat and has been somehow re-bottomed in steel. Someone kindly did some research and discovered that No9 was originally built in 1901, though how much original material survived is a moot point. As Lilith she is now celebrating her 125th year, though more than 50 years after her restoration began, she now needs lots of new planks again.

Lilith now belongs to the Wooden Canal Boat Society, a charity devoted to saving historic wooden canal boats, restoring them and putting them to work for the community. Website https://www.wcbs.org.uk/

One of the attractions of the waterways are the former working boats, often gaily painted, covered in shiny brass and lovingly maintained by their owners. Every year there are several gatherings of ex working boats. Some are converted, some still clothed up and ready to carry another load, but, there’s one thing that nearly all have in common- they’re made of metal.

100 years ago metal boats were the exception. Most were made of wood, oak for the sides, 3 inch elm for the bottom. Sadly, though many gained a new lease of life as pleasure boats after they finished carrying, the enormous cost of maintenance meant that most ended up being destroyed or simply abandoned.

Based in Greater Manchester, the Wooden Canal Boat Society is busy not only saving a small fleet of wooden narrow boats, but also putting them to good use. Museums are all well and good, but boats were made to be used.

It all started back in the 1980s as a project to restore the wooden motor boat “Forget me Not” and make use of the former joey boat “Lilith”. Whilst “Forget me Not” was being stripped down and put back together again at Guide Bridge, on the Ashton Canal, “Lilith” was bow hauled and hitch hiked around the network carrying buskers to raise funds for tree planting in Africa.

Before “Forget me Not” was finished a third boat was offered, “Hazel”. Built (probably) in 1913, she turned out to be the last Runcorn wooden header narrow boat afloat. She made an epic journey from London to Ashton in 1988. She was slipped for inspection at the Ashton Packet Boat Co. Almost every part of the boat was on its way out. The only possibility was to save up the pennies for an eventual complete rejuvenation.

In 1992 the ‘big ricky’ “Southam” was purchased from BWB for £525, sunk at Hillmorton. This was followed by “Elton”, donated by BW sunk in Southall in 1993 and “Queen”, the oldest surviving wooden motor narrow boat, sunk at Denham, in 1994. These boats were hitch hiked to the Boat & Butty yard in Runcorn.

After “Forget me Not” was launched a recycling project was begun in 1996 using “Forget me Not” and “Lilith” to collect unwanted goods from canalside homes for resale and recycling. Initially these goods were sold on a flea market stall. Now the society runs the biggest charity shop in Ashton, though recycling trips have been suspended during the covid crisis.

Tameside council has given the charity huge amounts of help. The boats were moved to the local history museum, Portland Basin, in the late 1990s and work on a Heritage Boatyard in Stalybridge started in 2000. The ground here had to be lowered by 2 metres to canal level.

A “Hazel” sponsorship scheme encouraged supporters to make annual contributions to a fund for her renovation and maintenance. In 2011 this reached £23000. A further donation of £75000 from Tameside council enabled work to begin on her. Boatbuilder Stuart Hughes flew in from America to take charge of the work. She was launched in 2013 and entered service in 2016.

Every boat has to have a purpose. “Hazel” is a well being boat, enabling people suffering mental stress to spend time on the canals (an idea later pinched by CRT!) She has been restored to her original unpowered condition, so guests can enjoy the peace of a canal journey being towed by a distant motor boat or, possibly in the future, a horse. Currently she is funded by the National Lottery to provide time afloat for NHS and care workers who have worked hard through the covid pandemic.

“Lilith” has been the recycling boat since 1996, though she’s currently idle until this project resumes. As it is nearly 40 years since her restoration was completed she is in need of some serious work as soon as the resources are available. She’s recently celebrated her 120^th birthday.

“Forget me Not” , built at Polesworth in 1927, does the towing on wellbeing trips and, when they resume, on recycling trips.

“Southam”, 1936, was originally a butty. Motorised and converted in 1965 she has also been used for towing. She had new planks fitted in 2019 but the reconstruction of her cabins has been delayed by the pandemic. Her 1965 fitted BMC 3.8 engine is to be replaced with a similar unit donated by Tameside College. Her future will be as a spare tug, volunteer accommodation, representing the WCBS at events and possibly as a mobile craft shop.

At present a priority is clearing “Elton”, 1937, of recyclable metals that have built up on board so that she can be tidied up and used as workshop space. In the longer term plans will be made for her restoration and a project for her to work on. Ideas are being bandied about at present.

Similarly “Queen”, 1917, is awaiting restoration. After some recent submarine adventures work is underway to make her float more reliably. Short term she will be used as a craft workshop. Like “Elton”, ideas for her post restoration use are under discussion. A water drip Bolinder, similar to the one that powered her between 1924 and 1947, is being restored for her at the Anson Engine Museum.

This collection of boats is of national importance but they've been maintained on a shoestring budget. In order to ensure their survival and future usefulness the WCBS needs to grow into a well funded national organisation.

The society would like to hear from people interested in helping with this, whether it's project planning, fundraising, business development, publicity, administration or just helping out at ground level. You don't necessarily have to live near Tameside to help.

For more information, or to volunteer, please visit our website

Chris Leah, 2022