Something Fishy.

 On leaving Sheffield we had a bit of a dash to get to Keadby due to a birthday, meeting visitors and tide times. It can be that some will think the Stainforth and Keadby Canal somewhat boring with it being wide and more or less straight, quite windswept with several bridges to sort. The railway line stays close for a long distance and we always try to pass the time by getting the drivers to wave and toot the whistle, which frequently they do!

Winkwell bridge is the easiest of the six bridges to operate and it just to the east of Thorne.

Looking for some historical subject to blog about on this part of the canal that is seemingly along way from civilisation I was thinking it would be all about more drownings, machinations of the railway companies and the canal or the building of bridges that may inhibit the passage of keels and sloops. Instead I cam a cross one about fishing.

Moore's Bridge requires the barriers to be closed.

Fishing or angling would have been a way of finding more food for most. In 1653 Isaac Walton wrote 'The Compleat Angler' in 1653 and continued to up date it for 25 years. In 1789 it seems that gentlemen anglers were becoming concerned as to where they could be allowed to fish and the Thames Angling Preservation Society was started up in 1789 to preserve their rights. By 1810 there were several 'how to angle' books and people advertising the manufacture and retail of equipment. The first angling club in the region of the Stainforth and Keadby Canal I could find was the Lincoln Angling Club with 40 members. The in 1857 there is a fishing match on the Stainforth and Keadby Canal.

Maude's Bridge was next and this was really the easiest to work, as some children from this cruiser did it for us!

On 22nd June 1857 a fishing match was organised by Mr. Jonathon Wreakes of the Crown Inn, Scotland Road, Sheffield. The match had been held the week before between Maude's and Ling! Bridges, but there had been accusations of baiting the winning peg. This was investigated and found to be false. The prize giving was the week after at his pub where the first prize of a silver cup worth £8 and 11 other prizes were awarded and a good night of speeches etc was had by all.

The canal is wide as it was for the vessels that navigate the Humber estuary used it. You can see it is on a grander scale than the narrow canals. There is plenty of weed about here.

John Wreakes was born in 1818 to Jonathon and Ann Wreakes. He was a grinder and his son was also in the trade. He specialised in scissor grinding and had risen to be the Treasurer of the Union in 1846. At the end of that year he was convicted of intimidating a widow of 5 months, Mary Shackley who was trying to continue her husband's trade of scissor manufacturer. She rented steam power in a 'factory' of Hull where she employed men to do various stages of the business. She maintained that Wreakes had sort to get rid of her two grinders as they had left the union. There were long reports in the newspapers and that was the time of the Sheffield Outrages when there was much union activity against the owners, including bombings, and many similar intimidation trials. John was found guilty and sentenced to three months hard labour in Wakefield Prison. He immediately called for an appeal. There does seem to be a lot of political interfering with this. He was given bail at £10 and was fully acquitted once the appeal did get heard in April 1847.

After Maude's comes Medge Hall and Godnow Bridges. Then there is this Vazon Bridge that was very hard to open as it is a push to open. This time it had been 'fixed' and was very easy.

John Wreakes was still in the scissor grinding trade in the 1851 Census but in the 1861 his the publican of the Crown Inn on Scotland Street. The success of the fishing match means that John organises the same the following year. This time there are 34 prizes and 102 competitors, 64 from Sheffield but many from around Yorkshire and Nottingham. There were a 1000 spectators 400 of whom arrived on a special train from Sheffield to Crowle Station next to the canal. Each fishing peg was 29 yards apart. It the prize giving meal the following week another competition was announced. This was a match between two top anglers on from Radford, Nottingham and a Leeds angler. There was to be a days fishing in each's home waters and the aggregate bag would be the winner. The fishing would start at 06:00 and finish at 17:00. The first match was at Shardlow and the local angler Mr. Bailey won bu a good margin. The following Monday the match was on the Stainforth and Keadby canal and he won this by an even larger margin. His prize was topped up to £100 that would be worth around £13,000 today! He also benefited from selling the equipment he manufactured and his 'How to Angle' book too.

Vazon Railway Bridge is next, and last, and is always interesting to watch.

The annual competition seemed to get larger with 231 competitors, 60 prizes and 2000 spectators in 1859. In 1860 there were 80 prizes and competitors spread 1.5 to 2 miles on each side of the canal and it became styled the All England Angling Match. 1862 there were 171 prizes and in 1863 182 prizes with the first prize being £20 plus a silver mounted rod. 1864 there were 500 competitors for 181 prizes, first being £25, and John Wreake chartered a special train which 900 took the opportunity to use. Fishing competitions were now taking pace regularly on the canal and on other waters but all seemed to be orgainsed along similar lines to the way Wreake ran the 'All England Match'. There were other matches on the Stainforth and Keadby in February and July. The match in July had also grown in size and was also promoted by a pub in Sheffield. In 1865 there were 494 competitors and 700 arrived on the excursion train. I'm not sure that this was sustainable as in those days the fish were taken away to be weighed and not kept in a keep net, weighed and returned to the water as is the practise these days.

We arrived at the visitor mooring at Keadby and had three visits over a couple of days. The weather was good and it was great to see everybody.

In January 1866 John Wreake died of a heart attack minutes before he was to host a grand dinner at his pub for a local huntsman. There were 1000 at his funeral and Scotland Street was blocked for hours by those wishing to pay respects. It seems that the pub was taken over by a George Elliot. George was a pocket knife blade grinder, showing there was a great degree of specialisation in the business. He was also one of the executors of Wreakes' will. I wonder if he was left the pub as Wreakes had a wife and children too? John's work in promoting angling was continued but never with the same vigour it seems. In his turn George died at the Crown in 1869 and his wife tried to continue but it was a sad reflection of the hey day of the match and in 1870 there were 'only' 97 prizes. The following year the competition did not take place.

During our stay in Keadby Helen had another 21st birthday and we had a barbeque with our daughter to celebrate.

The legacy of that fishing competition was for fishing matches to continue on the Stainforth and Keadby. In a strange quirk of fate the competition that had been held in July for the last few years took over the mantle of the All England Match, and was promoted by the innkeeper at the Rawson's Hall on Tenter Street, in Sheffield. His name was John Shackley was the son of Mary who had accussed John Wreakes of intimidation. Funnily enough during the appeal it was said that in actual fact Wreake had been trying to help the two sons as the two grinders he had been trying to warn Mary Shackley about had been stealing work form the sons!

Whilst looking into this I found another story that illustrates another thought. The story goes that two boys were fishing in the Stainforth and Keadby Canal when one caught a small fish. A seagull flying over saw this and swooped down and swallowed it. However the hook caught in its beak and he had a fish and a bird to his credit. There is nothing overly remarkable about this but it went 'viral', or viral for its day. It ended up in newspapers all over the north of England, Norfolk, Durham, Liverpool, Preston, Hull and Manchester. It seems this is akin to that 'stuff' you get on your phone all the time.