Preservation
The Society aims to preserve wooden working boats, and its fleet of six wooden boats is moored at Portland Basin at the confluence of the Ashton Canal, the Peak Forest Canal and the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, known to boaters as Dukinfield Junction.
The Society's oldest boat is "Lilith", a working boat which was 100 years old in December 2001. Lilith is a butty, i.e. a narrowboat without an engine, destined to be towed, or hauled, by another boat. Lilith was also a Birmingham "joey" boat, and No. 9 in Stewarts' and Lloyds' fleet.
"Forget-Me-Not" was built in 1927 as a horse-drawn boat for Henry Grantham who was a "Number One" (owner boatman). The boat was used to carry coal from Coventry to the Grand Union Canal, but from 1959 she became a houseboat.
"Hazel" is the last surviving full length example of a Runcorn Wooden header, built in 1914 to trade on the Bridgewater Canal. From 1929 she was owned by Number One Agnes Beech. Subsequently she served as a comfortable home to several families.
"Queen", built in 1917, was originally named Walsall Queen and is the oldest surviving wooden motorised narrowboat.
"Elton" and "Southam" were donated by British Waterways as an alternative to being scrapped. Southam is one of a fleet of 62 wooden butties (known as "big rickies") built for the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company in the Thirties at Rickmansworth.
Read more about this topic: Wooden Canal Boat Society
Famous quotes containing the word preservation:
“If there is ANY THING which it is the duty of the WHOLE PEOPLE to never entrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity, of their own liberties, and institutions.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality.”
—Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
“It is my hope to be able to prove that television is the greatest step forward we have yet made in the preservation of humanity. It will make of this Earth the paradise we have all envisioned, but have never seen.”
—Joseph O’Donnell. Clifford Sanforth. Professor James Houghland, Murder by Television, just before he demonstrates his new television device (1935)