Boats galore.

When you stay in the Boat Museum you pay the entrance fee for the first night, which for us now we are over 60 was £8.50, and subsequent nights are just £4. So we decided to have another night and have a good look around the museum. We have been before but we hoped that there was something new to see.

Just across from our mooring is this ferro-concrete barge, I think FCB18. They were built in WWII to same the use of steel for more strategic items. Around 470 were built by companies such as Wates and many were built in Barrow in Furness. Steel mesh was concreted over to make panels and then they were bolted together. They were not ship builders and actually built houses using the same method. FCB 18 was built in 1944 and could carry 185t. It seems she is likely to have been used on the Manchester Ship Canal. There are several other similar barges among the Purton Hulks on the banks of the River Severn near Sheerness. It still looks in very good nick.

These are the Whitby Locks. The two sets of locks, one narrow, one wide, bring the canal up/down from the Lower Basin to the Upper Basin and the same level as the Shropshire Union Level. Apparently they are named not after the famous port of Whitby in North Yorkshire but after the name village that is now a southern suburb of Ellesmere Port. There are two locks with a short pound between and the wide and narrow pounds are linked to take excess water. Its seemed to be the onloy place in the museum that I could get a picture of the  Shropshire Union Canal, the Ship Canal and the River Mersey.

Down in the Lower Basin 'Holderness' strikes a colourful sight , but there are a couple of other more historic things. (And Helen isn't in the picture!). It is such a shame that the Straddle Warehouse that sit astride the water with columns on the strip islands providing covered moorings for wide and narrow craft. It was burned down in the 1970's. Of all the boats in the museum the one I would want is the 'MSC Pelican' a crane barge. It has a couple of towing bows and hook so could tow along a small barge etc. It's hold could be converted to accommodation and who wouldn't like to play with the crane, and you never know it may make you a bit of money too.

It is good to see that Helen has been recognised in a museum, especially here on Porter's Row. There used to be twelve cottages here now just the four survive. The Porter's in question are porters or dockers of the port. However it seems a family called Porter did live here too. They are furnished for different eras and it was surprising how many of the items we recognised from our Grand parents and parents homes. We are getting older.

Some may say the good old days!

The 'Worcester' is a beautiful boat and could well be another I would consider for my collection. She was built in 1912 at Queensferry, near Chester, for the Worcester and Birmingham Canal Co. for use as a tunnel tug. By 1950 just about all boats were motorised so she became an icebreaker. In 1968 she was abandoined up the Peak Forest Canal when in private hands, until she was raised by volunteers in 1972 and given to the museum

Mendip was 'Chocolate Charlie's' Josher hulled motor boat that was built in Northwich by Yarwoods in 1948. She was No.5 of 6 built as the last of the Josher style boats for FMC. She has coppered steel sides and a wooden bottom. Copper is added as a corrosion protector. Charlie used to collect chocolate crumb from the Cadbury's factory at Knighton near Market Drayton and take it to their Bournville south of Birmingham. There were 50 locks between and it took him 14 hours to carry the cargo. He fitted in two trips a week! When the job finished he kept it at Preston Brook where it remained until his death in 1981.

'Basuto' is a Clyde Puffer and was hidden away by the dry dock. She was built in 1902 by W. Jacks at Port Dundas. She went to Belfast in 1919 to run for Kelly's, a coal merchant. In the 1920's she came to Widness where she became a dumb barge just carrying sand and gravel. She was saved from this indignity when the Manchester Dry Dock Co. bought her and put her back into steam. She got a new boiler in 1961 and was bought by the Museum in 1981. She is needing a fair bit of attention now.

I love the riveted hull plate lines of the 'Cuddington', the way they create the lovely hull shape. 'Cuddington'. She was built at Yarwood's Yard, Northwich, on the River Weaver. She is called a Waever Packet and after launching in 1948 went to work for ICI. She was employed running chemicals, including soda ash, from Winnington on the Weaver to Liverpool. She  continued for them until she was laid off in the 1970's. She came to the canal in 1979.

The best bit of the museum to me are the old films that are played on a loop upstairs in the Warehouse museum. I love those old info-mercial films of the past. You get to see the workings of things, and to see the building of Queen Elizabeth Dock, Eastham, under construction and take a trip up the MSC when everything was busy and working is a real insight. I think about a dozen of the old vessels that were sitting in various stages of dilapidation were removed from the basins over the winter. There is still a couple of wrecks in the lower basin that do not fill the public with confidence that the exhibits are being looked after. I don't suppose all the dozen will be kept as it is cheap to acquire boats, but very expensive to keep them in tip top condition. However the basins do look a bit empty now.