Goodbye Tranquil Rose Words and photos by Tim Coghlan
I RECEIVED a call last mid-July from James Scowen, whom I had no recollection of previously meeting. He asked if, on August 3, I would allow him to hold what he called ‘ Tranquil Rose’s 50th birthday bash’ at Braunston Marina. With James having recently turned 70 and his hotel widebeam boat, which he endearingly called ‘ TR’, now 50, it would be in effect a double celebration. But the party would also be a double farewell. James would be retiring in little more than a month’s time, having owned and worked TR for just over 13 years since 2020, quite an undertaking to take that on at 57. With his retirement, TR would be put up for sale on the River Wey, its home mooring, where he would complete his final voyage. Sadly James had been unsuccessful in finding anyone to buy and take on TR as a hotel boat. With its spacious accommodation, it would now probably live on as a liveaboard.
I offered James the quayside mooring in the far corner of what we call the ‘Old Arm’ – the remnant of the original line of the Oxford Canal. I told him this was an appropriate mooring. Cars could park almost next to it and, for the touch of living history, it had been used in the 1950s/early 1960s by Michael and Pat Streat as their base for their pair of hotel narrowboats, the Nancy and Nelson. Behind it, the workshop and store they built to service the boats still exist. The Nancy and Nelson are commonly regarded as the first properly fully fitted hotel-narrowboats on the canals. The Streats had achieved this in 1953 by acquiring and converting two former wooden working narrowboats of that name. They worked on the project evenings and weekends on the canal bankside at Leighton Buzzard, coming up from London to do so. The finished boats were then moved to what is today Braunston Marina, to have that mooring to use as their base. So it was an appropriate mooring for this historic occasion.
Previous operators
James told me he would be inviting all known-surviving operators of the TR, which has had six owners since it was built by John Pinder at his then yard at Burton upon Trent in 1973. Of the first two operators, one was untraceable and appeared to be deceased, and the other unable to come. But representatives of the remaining three were all able to attend, and of course James would be there as host. Best of all, TR’s now nearlegendary boat-builder John Pinder, now aged 82, would be coming.
Guest were invited to arrive at 11am, and per James’ email to them: “Fingers crossed the weather is kind to us, and we could take a trundle on TR for a couple of hours and return for a pie and a pint (or something similar).”
I was invited to come and say hello towards the end, but I slightly mis-timed this. I arrived a bit late and, as I arrived, I saw Christine and Andy Newman leaving, now both retired from their long and varied lives on the waterways, he after finally running his Willow Wren narrowboat training, and she for two seasons in the mid-1990s running her restaurant narrowboat Rachel out of Braunston Marina. Also leaving with them was Mike Partridge, who still operates his day tripper boat Charlie from Stoke Bruerne. And they were shortly followed by Steve Furness, who now runs the revived Weedon hire fleet. I had little more than a quick hello with all of them.
The one person not in a hurry to leave, and seated with a nearly full pint of beer, was the boat builder John Pinder. He was very happy to talk to me, and I too to him, once I also had a pint in my hands. John’s working life began in his mid-teens working in his father’s garage in south-west Birmingham. Nearby was the Worcester & Birmingham canal, where some carrying trade still continued, which caught John’s eye. He had learnt welding and panel beating to repair the rust-bucket cars of the time, and it was one step to joining the new world of narrowboat building. After working for other narrowboat builders, he built his first narrowboat in 1969 under the name of his new business –Hopwood Craft Ltd. He then went on to open a branch on the canal at Burton upon Trent.
This was on the broad Trent and Mersey Canal, below the first narrow lock, so newly built widebeam boats could cruise away down to the River Trent and beyond.
Because of this, John was approached in 1973 by David and June Tebbett to build a 70ft by 12ft 6in hotel boat to cruise the northern waterways. It was to be the first purpose-built widebeam hotel boat ever made. John had to design and build it from scratch, in which he and his small team did everything, including the elegant joinery which with pride, John pointed out still survives. The boat could accommodate eight guests in six cabins, three of which had WCs, and a week’s cruise cost £51 per person. The price of the boat to the Tebbetts was £15,000, a sum which in those days could buy a house.
Elegance
I was fascinated by the boat’s elegant canoe stern and associated with it the tumblehome shaping of the stern cabin. John said this was not a copy of any existing widebeam craft, such as had worked the likes of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal, which I thought it was. His inspiration came from the old working butties, especially the joshers of Fellows, Morton & Clayton, which were of course all narrowboats.
As the stern end was intended for a working crew only, John did not need to replicate the wide, rather inelegant cruiser sterns of today’s widebeam boats.
The Tebbetts were typical of the enterprising canal pioneers of the time. The business was called the Trent Valley Cruising Hotel. With its striking bright red and green livery, in 1977 the boat made the front cover of the relatively new magazine, Waterways World. The TR cruised to Leicester, Foxton, Lincoln and Boston and it is claimed that the TR was the first hotel boat of any sort to visit York. To add spice to the cruises, the Tebbetts also used a Daimler limousine to transport guests on day outings from Burton upon Trent, where the boat became based, to the bulbfields around Boston and to the Peak District.
In 1982 the boat was sold to Mick and Cynthia Hall, who continued cruising the northern waterways. Then in 1987, it was bought by the Newmans. It was craned out in Nottingham, and moved by lorry to Stoke Bruerne, where it was launched in the car park halfway up the flight. The name TR remained, but the operator name changed to Thames Valley Cruising Hotel. It then had various changes in owners, operators and liveries until it was acquired by James in 2010. He later changed the operator name to Hotel Boat Holidays, and the livery to its present light design. With 13 years of ownership, James was at the helm of TR for longer than any of the other previous owner/operators.
James cruised all of the southern wide canal, including the occasional foray up the Grand Union to the historic town of Warwick, which was a popular destination for his guests. Sadly in 2016 the modern concrete Bridge 24 moved its foundations, thereby narrowing the canal to about 12ft, and despite the best efforts of the CRT, it has now proved irreparable, and is now inaccessible to boats of 12ft beam and above.
James’ retirement and selling TR has meant a great loss to his many loyal customers, who came year after year. Some were elderly, having retired from active narrowboating themselves, and wanted to continue enjoying the waterways. Today there are only two widebeam hotel boats still operating on the wide waterways, and only a handful of single narrowboats and just one pair of narrowboats still operating on the canals. As James commented: “Once in years gone by, there were hundreds of them.”
The late Robin Smithett recorded all the known hotel boats as best he could in the appendix to his definitive book Precious Cargo. It was first published in 2000 and updated in 2010, shortly before his untimely death. The short entry below that of Tranquil Rose, for ‘Severn Voyager,’ summaries the tale, indeed fate, of many of the hotel boats, for which there were once high hopes: “An ex-Severn barge operated in the mid 1970s by Bob Hardiment. She cruised on the River Severn and was subsequently converted to a floating tea room in Worcester. She is now abandoned at Gloucester.”
In their time, all these hotel boats and their operators were in their different ways ‘precious cargoes’ – including James and his TR – both of which were ‘of some service’ to the inland waterways.