MY ANCESTOR WAS A... BOATMAN
Linda Barley of the Canal and River Trust reveals the evolution of working life on Britain’s canals
Discover the evolution of working life on Britain’s extensive canal network with Linda Barley
During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, canal mania swept across Britain. It fuelled the emerging Industrial Revolution and led thousands of people to invest in canal companies. Their main aim was to transport goods and raw materials cheaply and efficiently.
Fortunes were made and lost with some companies running successful canals, while others failed to complete construction. At its peak in the 19th century, Britain’s inland waterways system provided a national network of over 4,500 miles, much the same as motorways today.
One horse could pull a narrowboat loaded with up to 50 tonnes and sometimes a ‘butty’ boat would be towed behind to carry more cargo. Carrying companies, operating the wider northern waterways, built boats suited to transporting the vast amounts of coal needed to supply the cotton and wool factories. In 1793, 100 boats a day were said to pass over the Birmingham Canal summit. By 1821, Josiah Baxendale reported having “met and passed upwards of 400 boats full or empty” in the same summit, over six hours.
Canal companies came under pressure to provide faster transport due to the economic slump after the Napoleonic Wars. ‘Fly-boats’, faster narrowboats, were given priority at locks and toll stops and kept to a fixed timetable. They travelled round the clock, carrying less cargo
but drawn by relays of horses and worked by four men. In 1832, one missionary said that “the men who work the fly-boats are little better than slaves, they toil and work, day and night, week and Sundays”.
Crews were mostly young single men, but captains were often married with families. Captain Randle, master of Stourport, returned home to Stoke just three times a year. The most important route was Birmingham to London, a trip taking three days and three nights. Cargoes included cotton from Manchester, pottery from Staffordshire, woollens from Yorkshire and lace from Derbyshire with goods from the British colonies and local produce carried on the return journey.
‘Slow-boats’ could take six to seven days from Birmingham to London, with boatmen expected to work up to 20 hours a day. The work was as arduous, though not as frantic as the fly-boats.
Despite the grinding toil, many early boatmen were drawn to the canals as an alternative to factory or farm work. Accounts of boatmen in these early days are chequered, with those working on the Bridgewater Canal being declared most courteous. However, many were considered rough, shiftless and dishonest.
For boatmen in the late 1700s and early 1800s, the favourable wages were an incentive, but pay varied depending on the route and cargo type. In the 1840s, fly-boat captains for Pickfords were paid five guineas for the voyage from Manchester to London, from which they had to pay three hands.
Master boatmen hired on the Coventry Canal from 1840- 44 might earn between 15s and £1 10s a week after paying for the horse, but not including any hired labour. For the journey from Stourport to Manchester captains were paid £ 9, clearing 30s a week after expenses. In the 1870s, a fly-boat captain’s weekly wages averaged £ 4 to £5, with his crew receiving £1 a week each.
Canal communities
By the mid-19th century, the new railway network provided quicker and cheaper transport, forcing canals into a decline which would last over 100 years. Some canals were bought by railway companies and survived, but wages were forced down. The most important change was the source of recruitment to the slow-boats. As wives began to travel with their husbands and to assist with the work, ‘family boats’ became numerous.
As a result, the canal community became cut off. Children were raised in an isolated society with little opportunity to break out through education. Boating became a closed occupation, which was reluctant to allow outsiders (‘gongoozlers’) to join. Boatpeople developed their own style of dress, language and decorated their boats with a form of folk art called ‘Roses and Castles’, crochet lace and ‘ribbon plates’.
Many clergymen refused to marry or baptise boatpeople, so they went to more welcoming churches and returned to the family’s place of origin for burial. Nonconformist records, such as Methodist and Salvation Army church rolls and chapel minutebooks, may be useful.
Most boat families took great pride in keeping their cabin homes clean. Inspector George Smith reported in 1876 that while some cabins were “the most filthy holes imaginable”, others were in “apple pie order”. A narrowboat cabin was usually 8½ ft long by 5 ft high and 6¾ ft