A Short History of the narrowboat "Badger"

George Boyle recently gave a talk on the history of his working narrowboat. His story also includes much background information about the former owners, their boats and canals in general.  The following is the text of George's talk, illustrated with a few photographs.

In order to cover the history of BADGER, it will be necessary to mention her owning company, Fellows, Morton and Clayton, or FMC for short.  Incidentally, photographs of BADGER working are extremely rare. 

FMC was probably the largest of the independent canal carrying companies.  By independent, I mean a company that owned boats but no canals.  Many canal companies also ran their own fleets of boats.  However, they kept boat and canal accounts separate which enabled independent companies like FMC to survive.

Before the mid to late 1800s canal boats did not have engines and were drawn by horses, or in the case of narrowboats, more correctly mules, as a full sized horse was more than a match for a single narrowboat and would be used to pull larger barges or a pair of narrowboats together.

  

In 1860 the first steam engines were fitted in narrowboats  Unfortunately, the steam engine, boiler and coal supplies were so heavy that the payload of the boat was reduced by up to 10 tons.

FM C Steamer "Sultan"

Thus a steamer had to tow at least one, or even two former horseboats, by now called butties, to make the operation profitable.  For that reason, steamers were confined to broad canals where the boat and butty could pass through the locks together.

By 1906 FMC had started experimenting with early diesel and gas engines but very quickly standardised on semi diesel engines manufactured in Sweden by a company called Bolinder, better known nowadays as Volvo.  They liked the engines so much that every FMC motor from 1913 until they sold out to the nationalised British Transport Commission in 1949 had a Bolinder engine of 9 or 18 horsepower.

Bolinder semi-diesel engine

FMC had its own workshops in Saltley, Birmingham, and Uxbridge, London where they built and repaired their boats.  These workshops fulfilled most of FMCs requirements but in1923 they were so busy that they placed an order for 12 boats with WJ Yarwood of Northwich.  One of those boats was BADGER, fleet No 288.

Badger when newly built

 Each boat cost £740 complete including the obligatory Bolinder engine. Eventually Yarwoods built a total of 30 boats for FMC.  When built, BADGER had rivetted wrought iron sides and an elm wooden bottom.  Iron is more rust resistant than steel and lasts longer at the price of being more brittle.  It has been known for an iron hull to crack between rivet holes when struck hard in exceptionally cold weather.  All boat bottoms were made from elm which has unusual properties.  Keep it saturated, as the bottom always is, and it will last for hundreds of years.  However let it dry and it will rapidly degrade to dust.  Incidentally, this is why wooden boats when out of use were sunk awaiting further work rather than being lifted onto the bank where they would have rapidly deteriorated.  Wooden boat bottoms normally only need replacing because of wear against the canal bed rather than rot.  All steel boats only arrived in the 1930s but, even so, the last wooden boat was built as late as 1958.

Although FMC operated throughout the canal network, and had their major presence on the London to Birmingham axis, BADGER was allocated to their northern fleet from new, working between Ellesmere Port and Manchester to the West and East Midlands.

The cabin on BADGER was also made from wood.  FMC were quite parsimonious in their treatment of boaters and they only fitted small bottle stoves in the cabins.

Boatmen with families would need more than this so they had to purchase and fit a range stove for themselves…………...

A narrowboat cabin fitted with stove

…...which they would have to transfer if they changed boats.

Cabins were snug, typically 6ft 6ins wide, narrowing to less than 6ft at the top, by around 8ft long.

It is as well to mention at this stage that when canal transport was new it had no effective competition.  Boatmen were well paid and could house their families on the bank.  Only when the railways arrived did margins become tight, forcing boatmen to bring their families onto the boats giving them cheap housing and extra free labour.

Inside the cabin the stove was near the door, a dinette with a drop flap front was next, and a cross double bed at the rear, although to call them double is stretching things.  BADGER is a comfortable 3ft 3ins wide, my old boat ALTON was a tighter 2ft 11ins wide.

The cabin side of any working boat displays several numbers so this would be a good time to explain their significance.

Firstly – the large number 288 is the fleet number allocated by the owning company for identification along with name.  Another little aside comes from this.  If you were a self employed boatman and owned your own boat, you inevitably put No. 1 on the cabinside.  Thus such boatmen became “Number Ones” and were always called that by employed boatmen.

The second number - “Registered at Birmingham No. 1454” refers to the boat’s health registration under the Canal Boats Act 1877.  This act was passed through parliament by social reformers keen to improve the lot of boating families when conditions were seen to be squalid to say the least.  At the first examination by a local authority inspector, amongst other things, the cabin would be measured and certified as suitable for x number of persons, inevitably with a narrowboat, 2 adults and 2 children.  Thereafter, the boat would be

occasionally examined and reported on, with penalties for the owners and boatmen for transgressions.  It was not uncommon for boatmen to have lots of children, indeed my previous boat ALTON at one time had  man, wife and eight children on board.  When word got out that inspectors were checking, boaters would hand younger children to boats going the other way to fool the inspectors, the children being collected, perhaps a fortnight later when the boats next passed.

The third number - in Badger’s case 804 -  is the one allocated by a canal company when they gauged the boat, that is, calculated the weight carried on any given draught.  They did this by loading weights into the boat and measuring the freeboard at intervals.  Thus they produced a chart for each boat which was copied to each toll office so that the load could be measured and the correct tolls charged. 

The number itself cannot be seen in the photo of the cabin side.  It was on two plates attached to the front face of the cabin.  However, I do have one of the original number plates issued to BADGER in 1923 which I found in the bilges when cleaning out.

The next number - 1396 - is unique to FMC boats. Because their boats went out onto the River Thames, the company registered itself in the Worshipful Company of Thames Watermen and 1396 was the number allocated to FMC.  It was a bit of unnecessary show by FMC and when the company livery changed post 1923 the use of this number was dropped.

There is one final number showing in the photo – 72505.  This is not historically significant in working boat terms, but was allocated by British Waterways in the 1970s when all boats were renumbered for their records.

The bows of working boats also had devices on them.  They were not just pretty designs but had distinct meanings.  Thus on the bows of  BADGER the double arrow device signified it was an FMC boat.  Other companies had different devices and all could be readily recognised by staff.  We have to remember that very few boatmen were literate, indeed several good friends of mine, retired boatmen and women, have never been able to read or write. The red diamond indicated it had already been gauged by the Birmingham Canals Navigation Company, the No 804 referred to earlier.  This was important as the toll clerk would know he had a copy of its gauging sheet available, and would allow a boat carrying the device straight into the toll lock.  A boat not showing the diamond would be pulled to one side for checking.

Returning to BADGER.  When built she was fitted with an 18hp engine.  This was a clear indication that she was meant to tow a butty most of the time.  FMC was so parsimonious in its use of engines that a boat intended to run “single motor” would only have a 9hp engine fitted.  A boat being taken away from butty towing to single motoring for any length of time, would have its 18hp engine removed and a 9hp put in its place.

Although early records for BADGER, or indeed any other FMC boat, are hard to come by, several things can be deduced.  In 1921,  the Shropshire Union Canal and Railway Company decided to give up carrying on their own boats.  FMC took over, but only bought the Shroppies 25 best boats.  Thus there was a need for new boats to fill the gap.  Additionally, because of the layout of the locks, the Shroppie is one of the few narrow canals where boat and butty operation is a realistic option.  Add the fact that she was fitted with an 18hp engine, and brought into use at just the right time, I believe I can reasonably deduce that BADGER was allocated initially to Ellesmere Port-West Midlands traffic via the Shroppie.

When working a boat and butty through narrow locks, the boatman has to operate each lock twice to pass the boats.  The Shroppie has a narrow flight at Audlem of 15 locks plus two other flights of 5 each.  In earlier busy times, horses were stationed at such locations to work the butty through separately, speeding up the operation.  In later years the boatman (and family) were on their own, and had to bow haul the butty themselves.  I have records of the boatman being paid an extra pound, later one guinea, to carry out this task.

 At Audlem part of the lock flight is closely spaced.  The ever resourceful boatmen discovered that by splicing a number of towing ropes together they could make a line long enough so that as the motor entered one lock it was able to draw the butty into the lock behind saving them work.  However, they still kept the extra pound bonus.

Records only really become available from 1940 onwards, although I am still doing research to find more. 

Health records from the follow up inspections of health inspectors have interesting snippets such as “cabin roof leaking” a not uncommon fault with wooden cabins, and sometimes name the cargo on board at the time but do not give its weight or destination.

The Boat Museum at Ellesmere Port holds many records relating to the canals.  Sadly, they are not always indexed as one would like, and educated guesses are needed to find the gems hidden in there.

Consignment notes are particularly valuable and with their attached paperwork they enable me to find out what was carried, its weight, origin and destination, name of captain and even the wages he was paid for the trip.

From these papers I can see that over the years the following types of cargo have been carried and I have produced a spreadsheet of these movements which, from time to time I add to as more information becomes available

 

Cocoa Beans, Tinned Vegetables, Flour,  Wheat, Sugar, Silicon Metal, Soda Crystals, Chocolate Crumb, Steel Tubes, Bentonite Clay,  Spelter, Aluminium and Copper.

An interesting omission from this list is coal.  I have never found any records of BADGER carrying coal.  Additionally, when a boat carries coal, the iron or steel hull is internally etched with acids leeching out of the coal.  BADGER’s hull has no such etching.  Thus I can conclude that BADGER never carried coal and was never a “dirty coal boat”, as people on the bank would call them.  Given that the vast majority of working boats that survive ended their days carrying coal, this in itself is unusual.

For many years BADGER was paired with the butty NORTHWICH….

….which is itself preserved at the Gloucester Boat Museum, although sadly not in the best of condition.

BADGER has also been paired in the past with the butty KILDARE, which is also preserved and is now the regular butty to the steamer PRESIDENT.

Nowadays, people have a leisurely view of canal travel.  The cry is always going up, “slow down” “what’s the hurry” but it wasn’t always like that.

Canals are naturally a slow means of moving.  Even in working days 4mph was a good speed on a narrow canal but to people earning a living, being paid by the trip, not the hour, time was money.  When travelling a working boat was never stationary.  It was always moving, horizontally along the canal, or vertically up and down locks.  In pursuit of this, boatman worked very hard.

My records show BADGER with its butty NORTHWICH loading at Ellesmere Port for Wolverhampton and 10 days later being back at Ellesmere Port loading again.  A round trip of 138 miles, with 132 locks, 100 of which were narrow meaning the butty had to be handled separately.

Even more remarkable was a trip in 1947 where BADGER left Ellesmere Port loaded with wheat for Autherley, a suburb of Wolverhampton.  FIVE days later she was back in Ellesmere Port loading again.  On this occasion she was single motor, that is, no butty, but that often meant the skipper was also on his own.  This trip involved 133 miles and 90 locks.

To complete such trips could mean a 6am start and 2am finish every day.

As I mentioned earlier, in 1948, the canals were nationalised and  seeing the writing on the wall, FMC sold out to the new British Transport Commission in 1949.

This was not the end of carrying and BADGER continued with her new owners.  Boatmen still lived on the boats with their families, often having no other home.

In the 1950s BADGER appears to have settled down with NORTHWICH to a steady life carrying various cargoes on the Shropshire Union Canal.  One interesting cargo was chocolate crumb for Cadburys from their factory at Knighton, Shropshire, to Bournville.  This is partially finished, but fully edible chocolate and boatmen would always have a supply handy to bribe local children into opening the odd lock gate for them.  In the case of BADGER, never having carried coal it was essential to obtain coal for the cabin from passing coal boats so something to trade would have been useful.

By the late 1950s, available cargoes, other than coal, were becoming harder to find as road haulage was expanding.   British Waterways, as they were now called, still had optimism for the future, and they built a small fleet of new narrowboats, some of which were allocated to the North West, mainly for coal and china clay in the Potteries.

In 1960, the skipper of BADGER and his family were given one, later a pair, of these new boats and they moved into coal carrying.  BADGER was taken out of the working fleet and transferred into the maintenance section.

 

Unlike today, where CRT have a fleet of modern purpose built maintenance boats, it was common for ex working boats to be pressed into service.  Rather fortunate for BADGER, because the alternative was a rather ignominious scuttling in one of the mining flashes around the system.

BADGER was allocated to Fradley, near Lichfield but one of the first jobs would have been removal of the Bolinder engine and the fitting of a much more user friendly air cooled, electric start one, more attuned to what maintenance men could handle as opposed to the livaboard boatmen. 

 

Sadly, at some time in the late 1960s, BADGER was attacked by vandals and set on fire.  She was deemed to be beyond repair and laid partially sunk at Fradley for at least a couple of years before the decision was made to sell her, normally for scrap.  BADGER was towed to Anderton for disposal.

 

However, BADGER was not quite ready to give up yet.  Fortunately, around that time, a man called Malcolm Braine was one of a few people who were buying scrap canal boats and restoring them for resale.

In fact, I believe I am correct in saying that Malcolm has saved every boat I have mentioned today, that is ALTON, SANDBACH, BADGER, PRESIDENT, NORTHWICH and KILDARE along with many others and deserves much credit for that.

Malcolm purchased BADGER, saving her from scrappage, and knowing that there was no market for a working boat, restored her to the condition you see today.

Badger moored at Furness Vale

Even though I was now retired, having only ever owned working boats, when I was looking for another boat I was naturally drawn to another unconverted boat with which to cruise round, visiting historic shows and the like.  My wife convinced me that dragging all that empty hold around was a waste of space and perhaps a partial conversion with more living accommodation than a back cabin would be a good idea.  I think the exact words were, “Get another unconverted boat and you will be on it on your own” so I was convinced.

BADGER as converted is a good compromise.  She still retains a reasonable length of open hold, which I call my garden shed.  All the junk goes in there.  The cabin extension contains a bathroom, galley, sitting accommodation with coal stove and two additional sleeping berths up front.

When Malcolm converted BADGER, he replaced the elm bottom with steel ending any damp problems or wearing of the wood.  He fitted a Lister JP2 engine, later replaced by a Gardner 2LW which she still has.

Because we now have living accommodation up front, I am able to dress the back cabin as working boatmen would have done, without the hassle of trying to cook and live in there, making up the bed every night for example.

We have a bungalow in the village so do not live on the boat full time but for more than half the year we cruise round the canal system, visiting various historic boat shows showing BADGER off to the public.

Badger with full complement of crew. 

George Boyle 2019