Talk:Narrowboat

weight

just wondering - we have the typical physical size of the boats, anyone know what their typical unladen weight and carrying capacity would be? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.46.180.56 (talk) 02:04, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Answer to the above comment:

Assuming you mean proper narrow boats, an all-steel GUCCC boat weighs about 12 tons (the motor slightly more than the butty). A narrow boat loads about a ton to the inch which means an empty boat draws about 12-14 inches (obviously an empty motor is ballasted down by the stern or it wouldn't have enough fan hold). The typical load for a pair on the midlands canals (until the demise of the BW fleet in 1963) would be approx 23 tons on the motor, 27 on the boat (the boatmen - meaning born-on boatmen - used the expression 'motor and boat'). The last traffic worked over any distance in the traditional way was not one-off retail coal trips or the gravel on the Soar worked by Threefellows, it was the 'lime juice run' (always referred to as 'the barrels') which transported steel drums of pulped lime from Brentford to Boxmoor. The boats worked uphill loaded, back empty. The traffic finished in 1981 (although the last full season was the year before). The last load was carried by T&D Murrell & Sons' pair Towcester and Leonids in early September 1981. The average load throughout the 1970s was 52-53 tons.

A Boatman —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.112.12.105 (talk) 22:18, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

You must also allow for the water depth. OK if you are on the GU and plenty of water, but a GUCCC fully laden boat would be struggling to say the least on most other canals. I remember following Fulbourne (not laden) down the south oxford one year - progress was slow - it was more of sliding along the bottom, rather than floating... Sad to say, the bottom is much nearer the top on most canals, even boats with 2ft draught have some problems these-days.  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 17:21, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

news story 50 years ago

Apparently there was a news story roughly fifty years ago about how children who grew up on the boats from birth had serious educational or cognitive deficits, which ended up being a kind of minor media scandal, and was sort of the beginning of the end of that way of life... AnonMoos (talk) 13:54, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi-res image available

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Welsh_Canal.jpeg Saffron Blaze (talk) 02:52, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

History

Very little is covered about the history of the canals. The canal system was completed a short time before the explosive growth of the railways. The mobile-gang construction practices of canal building were adopted by the railway companies. They permanently employed very fit and skilled men rather than the temporary hiring of locals. They were all housed in mobile camps, along with their families. These gangs could work several times faster than locally hired men. The canal companies were all soon bankrupted. They had spent decades building the canals, and just when it was pay day for them the railways took most of their custom. Trains were much faster, and could carry fragile and non-bulk cargo more cheaply. Even the Manchester canal, which allowed ships inland, was closed more often than open during C19.203.213.60.111 (talk) 02:18, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

This is an article about narrowboats and I think it does a reasonably good job of describing them. In its very first sentence it contains a link to History of the British canal system which seems a much more appropriate place for the information you want to see. In an encyclopaedia which runs entirely on hypertext links I can't see what is wrong with the current situation. With best wishes, DBaK (talk) 07:24, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Suggested external link

I would like to suggest adding an external link to the article:

A complete walk through of a historic working boat, with every detail explained, has been created as a virtual tour:
https://www.haraldjoergens.com/panoramas/bclm-swallow/files/
It shows narrow boat "Swallow" at the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley.

The viewer can explore the boat from the outside, from three different angles, explaining all the features.
There is a view of the engine room (where the engine can be "started").
The boatman's cabin is shown in a day view and a night view, to show how the cross bed was used.

HaraldJoergens (talk) 07:58, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Purist

The article currently says "Purists^[who?] tend to write the term with a space (narrow boat) when referring to an original (working) boat or a replica, omitting the space when referring to modern canal boats of around 7-foot (2.13 m) beam and used for leisure including residence." It then goes on to list various authorities who refer to modern boats as narrowboats.

The quoted sentence falls foul of WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV. Who are these "purists" how many of them are there and is their POV one worth noting given the more authoritative organisations listed in the next sentence. If it is a minority view for which a source can be found then it may be worth footnoting it. -- PBS (talk) 15:40, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

I have removed the term "purist" and replaced the sentence with the Oxford English Dictionary definition mentioning the the word "Narrowboat" as a replacement for "narrow boat" was first recorded in 1998 (about 20 years ago). -- PBS (talk) 13:54, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Lead

I have replaced the lead with a summary of the sections in the body of the text as stated in WP:LEAD "The lead should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic.". -- PBS (talk) 13:54, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)

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Household Words

There are a few mentions of a Household Words article, apparently from 1858, but no bibliographic information. This ought to be cited. The text of the magazine can be found at http://www.djo.org.uk/household-words/volume-xviii. I'd rather not search through the table of contents (quite long) to find the article, but perhaps someone else would be willing to do so.

Very interesting encyclopedia entry. Phiwum (talk) 12:52, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

I found the article. I had overlooked the hyperlinked TOC and I saw the name of the article in the Narrowboats entry. The article can be found at http://www.djo.org.uk/household-words/volume-xviii/page-289.html, but I have not read it to ensure that it says what is reported.

I'm not sure how to cite the article properly, so if someone more knowledgeable can do so, I'd appreciate it. Phiwum (talk) 13:01, 27 August 2019 (UTC)