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Extant full length butty's and horse boats


pete harrison

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7 minutes ago, pete harrison said:

I am toying with the thought of acquiring an unconverted butty and there is already not that much choice, especially as my gammy knee would be more suited to a small boat.

Lupus, (simply add an awful lot of extra cash!....)

I doubt that Hydrus has that much over or in the hold that makes it a high value conversion, so a possible candidate to de-convert.

(I'm only assuming both are still available - you may know otherwise).

Neither is likely to come cheap to produce a sound unconverted boat with all the running gear, though.

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37 minutes ago, alan_fincher said:

:offtopic:Another even more recent build, (by Roger Fuller this time).

A shame in my view it went for the very wide "top plank" look to provide more space for living, but that apart the rest of the boat was far more convincing than may.....

DSCF6416.JPG


When I took this photo this boat was brand new, had just been collected from Stone, and was heading towards Harecastle.

I can't now find the pictures of it I took after it had been through Harecastle, but lets just say it looked far less pristine.  I think it could only have had what might have been described as a "difficult" passage, and that Harecastle would have been slightly wider at some points after it had been through. :o

Edited by alan_fincher
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27 minutes ago, alan_fincher said:

Lupus, (simply add an awful lot of extra cash!....)

I doubt that Hydrus has that much over or in the hold that makes it a high value conversion, so a possible candidate to de-convert.

(I'm only assuming both are still available - you may know otherwise).

Neither is likely to come cheap to produce a sound unconverted boat with all the running gear, though.

My personal preference would be a small Woolwich butty as I feel their proportions are pleasing on the eye, and the cabin is a little wider than a Northwich. Like I said I am only toying with the idea at the moment, and it will not be for a year or two as I have to complete my current project first :captain:

edit = or an unconverted 'blue top' would be nice, but there are only two left !

Edited by pete harrison
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5 hours ago, pete harrison said:

edit = I am sure there must be a few more FM.C. Ltd. boats as well - including the one at Clattercote Wharf I have just thought of but was not named last time I passed.

I was going to flag this one as being missed of your original list, I'm tied up/working alongside it at the moment. Keswick I believe but I'll ask Greg what he thinks it is on Monday.

Edited by davidg
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19 minutes ago, davidg said:

I was going to flag this one as being missed of your original list, I'm tied up/working alongside it at the moment. Keswick I believe but I'll ask Greg what he thinks it is on Monday.

I have heard this boat referred to as KESWICK but it just can not be as KESWICK is one of several boats recorded as scuttled in Hawtrey's Pit, Harefield :captain:

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8 hours ago, pete harrison said:

377 TOUCAN (left on the list as the stern is free standing and could be stuck back on fairly easily)

Over my dead body, and not before! :)

It wouldn't be simple as it sounds actually - the original sides were pulled round to make the start of the counter and most of the original back end was goosed in 1971 when it was removed (the Bull's Bridge refooting stopped just ahead of the cabin) and it's not healed any in the last 46 years! In truth there'd be very little of it left by the time it had been made good enough to re-use. Happily the rest of the boat was/is in much better condition.

"Lincoln" has a hydraulic drive on the rudder and the hull is unaltered afaik.

What about another station boat - Fern, but that may have had a name change since I owned it? It was the one that BW kept in the Audlem flight for years. That reminds also of Liz - another station boat formerly on Hillmorton section and possibly still with CRT in Brum? Neither of those ever had cabins so may not be eligible for inclusion anyway.

Edited by Rose Narrowboats
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10 minutes ago, Rose Narrowboats said:

What about another station boat - Fern, but that may have had a name change since I owned it? It was the one that BW kept in the Audlem flight for years. That reminds also of Liz - another station boat formerly on Hillmorton section and possibly still with CRT in Brum? Neither of those ever had cabins so may not be eligible for inclusion anyway.

I was once told that ETHEL was the LMS Station Boat kept in the Audlem flight. These boats are an absolute nightmare to sort out (I have tried and failed), although they do make very attractive butty's :captain:

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4 hours ago, alan_fincher said:

Simply compare competitive costs of owning 1 times 70 foot boat versus 1 times 35 foot boat and 1 times 35 foot butty, and (unless you want to do canals with locks under 70 feet), it becomes a bit of a financial no-brainer not to keep it as one boat.

Also you'll have nothing like the same space in 2 times 35 feet as in one times 70 feet, as so much will be "wasted" by having an extra pair of "pointy ends".

(I must admit, however, I have considered whether we could tow a 30 foot "work flat" style boat behind "Sickle" - might have room for us and both dogs then!)

I think Pete's list is interesting, but IMO it contains lots of boats that will never ever be usable buttiys again, (or not without some very serious work).

If it still exists in any form here is what one of the looked like nearly 3 years ago, (and it got worse after I took that picture!).....  I guess bits of it may now be in Bates' yard, but I don't know?

IMG_1662.JPG

And can something that is built with a butty style back end, but which was motorised from the outset ever truly be called a butty, (or at least unless you de-motorise it)?

No consideration around this sort of boat is going to be rational when it comes to efficient use of space or financial considerations surely? It's a matter for the heart not the head.

Naturally a butty for Vulpes would be Lupus.

Maybe you should buy Grinstead :giggles:

JP

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I ought to know the answer to this, but I'm not really sure.  Would our butty, built in 1911 by Braithwaite and Kirke for FMC, have been used as a horse drawn boat or would it have been paired with a motor from the start?  Or would it have been paired with another horse drawn boat?  

 

Sorry if I'm going a bit off topic.

Edited by koukouvagia
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24 minutes ago, koukouvagia said:

I ought to know the answer to this, but I'm not really sure.  Would our butty, built in 1911 by Braithwaite and Kirke for FMC, have been used as a horse drawn boat or would it have been paired with a motor from the start?  Or would it have been paired with another horse drawn boat? 

I'll stick my neck out, and say that as  I believe FMC only had steamers in 1911, (I think the first diesel powered motor was not until about another year later), and that there were never that many steamers, it is fairly likely that boats like yours were initially used mostly as horse boats.

Unless, of course, specific boats were built to run with the steamers, and didn't see use with horses?

I wonder if it is actually a question that can be accurately answered with 100% certainty, though?

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I believe that fmc steamers were not paired as such because there were so many dumb boats. I think specific pairing came in the the creation of the guccc fleet following the widening of the gu and hence the requirement for pairs. So by default all fleet boats prior to this fellows/ railway boats et al would have had an element of horse towing especially on shorter trips.

i could be talking rubbish 

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2 minutes ago, roland elsdon said:

I believe that fmc steamers were not paired as such because there were so many dumb boats. I think specific pairing came in the the creation of the guccc fleet following the widening of the gu and hence the requirement for pairs. So by default all fleet boats prior to this fellows/ railway boats et al would have had an element of horse towing especially on shorter trips.

i could be talking rubbish 

No, I don't think you are.

I'm sure I have read that because the steamers ran more or less non stop, and with a large crew, but carried a much smaller cargo, turn around was always as quick as possible because of the high costs of running them.  I feel sure they would regularly not have waited for a butty to be unloaded but instead picked up another already pre-loaded and ready to go.

But I could be talking rubbish too!

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20 hours ago, pete harrison said:

the end of the carrying boats = 1962.

There are numerous welded / fabricated butty's such as those built as hotel boats as well as the one I used to work which was built in 1972 by John Pinder. The only one that I can think of that was built for carrying was PHOEBE in 1979 by Nigel Jackson and Cliff Sherwood :captain:

Phoebe carried towed at one time by Martin Fuller STR his motor was a "Dustbin "but the name escapes me

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3 minutes ago, magnetman said:

Wouldn't a Northwich and a Woolwich look a bit awkward together? I always like seeing pairs with matching bows.

Many of the existing pairs have little choice in this matter.

There never were any "Large Northwich" buttys built, and as most of the Ricky buttys are long since out of the question, you can only have a Northwich "Town" with a Woolwich one, if you want both to be "big" boats.

Think Towcester & Bideford or Nuneaton & Brighton, for example.  Such pairings have always been quite normal, I would say.

All the steel or composite buttys I have record of Letchworth/Flamingo, ("Large Northwich") working with were Woolwich ones - mostly "Large" but some "Small".

  • Greenie 1
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16 minutes ago, magnetman said:

Wouldn't a Northwich and a Woolwich look a bit awkward together? I always like seeing pairs with matching bows.

See page 19 of the recently published book The Twilight Years of Narrow Boat Carrying. It is of Widgeon & Snipe, large Northwich and smaller FMC butty.

"Clearly these boats were not designed to work together, but  the latter days of canal carrying involved all sorts of mismatched pairings."

Edited by Ray T
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29 minutes ago, alan_fincher said:

Many of the existing pairs have little choice in this matter.

There never were any "Large Northwich" buttys built, and as most of the Ricky buttys are long since out of the question, you can only have a Northwich "Town" with a Woolwich one, if you want both to be "big" boats.

Think Towcester & Bideford or Nuneaton & Brighton, for example.  Such pairings have always been quite normal, I would say.

All the steel or composite buttys I have record of Letchworth/Flamingo, ("Large Northwich") working with were Woolwich ones - mostly "Large" but some "Small".

Fair enough. I just like seeing matching bows. Like Bletchley and Argus - Both H&W boats so if I were looking for a butty to go with a Northwich motor (I don't think you are yourself) I would much rather see it with another Northwich if possible. Obviously availability makes a difference. 

 

And its personal preference. Beverley and Ascot were another pair I liked but don't know whats become of them. Maybe Gary is still doing fuels around MK?. I always find non matching pairs a bit "awkward" to look at when breasted up.

 

I'm interested as to why this thread does not include BCN "butty" boats and horse boats. .

 

Edited by magnetman
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2 hours ago, X Alan W said:

Phoebe carried towed at one time by Martin Fuller STR his motor was a "Dustbin "but the name escapes me

PHOEBE worked on the Caldon Canal with Tony Angel's (Angell's ?) HYPERION and later Martin Fuller's ANNE. I also recall seeing it paired with Roger Fuller's ELSTREE when doing retail coal in the early 1980's.

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3 hours ago, koukouvagia said:

I ought to know the answer to this, but I'm not really sure.  Would our butty, built in 1911 by Braithwaite and Kirke for FMC, have been used as a horse drawn boat or would it have been paired with a motor from the start?  Or would it have been paired with another horse drawn boat?  

 

Sorry if I'm going a bit off topic.

As already stated by Mr Fincher and Mr Elsdon these boats generally pre-date F.M.C. Ltd. motors and I am certain most were horse boats, but without good traffic records it is difficult say which worked as horse drawn singles and which worked in horse drawn pairs. Richard Thomas has done a considerable amount of work on F.M.C. Ltd. steamers (as well as all of the others) and has collated numerous inspections that formed a part of the Canal Boat Act. These were snapshots of pairings at the time of inspection and usually indicate the pairings  

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3 hours ago, magnetman said:

Wouldn't a Northwich and a Woolwich look a bit awkward together? I always like seeing pairs with matching bows.

You can't catch me out that easily !

When I was boating there were very few matched pairings, probably excluding the camping boats at Braunston. As far as large Northwich / small Woolwich were concerned back then TADWORTH / ARGO, WHITBY / PICTOR, YEOFORD / ARGON were all paired - and that was just in central Birmingham.

As I am getting older I am finding it harder to get on and off large butty's, and as boats spend most of their time tied up I would rather have the feeling of extra space that comes with a small Woolwich butty when compared to a small Northwich of F.M.C. Ltd.. The ideal back cabin space would be a 'blue top', but as I have already said there are only two unconverted 'blue top' butty's left - and I find a large motor and 'blue top' butty quite pleasing on the eye :captain:

edit = I did once own the matched large Woolwich pair BADSEY and BARNES - but sold them 27 years ago.

Edited by pete harrison
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