‘Brightwork’ painter’s legacy lives on
Leeds & Liverpool Canal Society president Mike Clarke pays tribute to retired boatbuilder Sam Yates (1932-2022).
I STILL remember my first meeting with Sam in 1992 at Eanam Wharf. Maggy Simms was setting up a small museum in the canal warehouse after it had been redeveloped by Lancashire Enterprises in 1988.
British Waterways also had an interest in the improvements and had converted Kennet into a floating heritage centre around the same time. Maggy worked at establishing contact with people who had worked on the canal and she asked me if I had talked to an old boatbuilder from Whitebirk. That was my first meeting with Sam.
You are never sure how much someone knows when you meet in this way, but it was immediately apparent that Sam was extremely knowledgeable and had a clear recollection of his time working with Jack Hodson and the other men at Hodson’s Dockyard at Whitebirk. He also mentioned that he ended up doing all the paintwork at the yard and Maggy quickly put in an order for a sign for the new museum. It was the first piece of traditional canal work Sam had done for 30 years but was unfortunately lost when the museum closed.
Sam had started work at Hodson’s as an apprentice in the mid-1940s, when there were still eight or nine men employed on building and maintaining wooden boats, mainly for the East Lancashire coal trade. Jack Hodson obviously saw the makings of a craftsman in Sam and he was certainly correct. For Sam, every job, no matter how small, was important and occasionally he would learn by his mistakes.
Eighteen-year-old Sam was asked by Mr Hodson to do his first bow plank replacement, not an easy task as the plank had to curve in one direction and then the other in order to fit properly. Sam measured and cut the plank correctly, but then put the chamfer for caulking on the wrong side, completely wasting a length of oak planking.
Mr Hodson did not make a fuss, but said to Sam to lean the plank up among other plank ends, saying they would soon find a job for it. However, it stayed leant up in a corner and Sam had to walk past it several times a day, a semi-permanent reminder of the old craftsman’s saying, ‘to measure twice and cut once’.
All the boatbuilders were expected to do the simple base painting and at first Mr Hodson was the only one to do the ‘brightwork’, the scrolls and lettering used on Leeds & Liverpool Canal craft. Apprentices were given one attempt at lining out and Sam obviously passed the test as he was given more and more of the detail painting, until one day Mr Hodson said he had a bad back and asked Sam to complete a half-finished job. From that time, Sam did all the brightwork, though it comprised less than 10% of his work at the yard.
Until the late 1960s, it did not matter how intelligent you were, if you were working class you could not go to university. Instead, the most intelligent went ‘on the tools’ and learnt a trade, as Sam did and these were the people who really formed the basis of Britain’s post-war prosperity.
Sam’s father looked after the bowling greens for Blackburn Corporation and had a great knowledge of opera which he handed on to Sam; the Humming Chorus from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly was played at Sam’s funeral. There were other opportunities for cultural activity, and Sam was a regular at The People’s College, an adult education centre on Whalley Range from 1948-1969. There were talks on a wide variety of subjects and as with many craftsmen Sam was always keen to learn about things outside of his usual activities.
After serving his time, Sam had to do National Service. What you did as a conscript was a bit of a lottery, so instead Sam joined up for five years, which meant he could continue his work as a boatbuilder. He was sent down to the old RNAS depot at Calshot, where the old boatbuilder in charge quickly realised that Sam was highly competent. Almost immediately, he was sent out to the Far East to look after repairs to Air-Sea Rescue boats, often working on his own away from the main base. It was an introduction to world travel and to wooden boatbuilding far from Blackburn.
On his return, Sam went back to working at Hodson’s, the canal still busy in the early 1950s with boats serving mills and the Whitebirk Power Station. However, local coal mines were running out of coal, resulting in the end of canal transport in East Lancashire in the early 1960s.
Hodson’s was taken over by a caravan company, and Sam stayed on to undertake the repairs. This company lasted until the early 1980s before closing, when the site was taken over for road developments. Today, little remains of the boatyard, though the rails for one of the slipways can still be seen when the water is low.
Sam then became a craft teacher for people with disabilities. Subsequently he met and married Anne and started a new family, though they had travelled quite extensively before this. Both Sam and Anne were keen to meet people and to have new experiences.
The Leopard Award
It was around this time that I met Sam and we began looking at how to keep some of the canal traditions alive. In 1993, Roy Gibbons, from one of the Burscough boating families, suggested to Alan Holden that a trophy should be awarded each year for the most meritorious short boat. It was to be called The Leopard Award, named for Appleby’s boat Leopard which had been crewed by Roy’s Uncle John. We asked Sam to suggest something interesting, and he made a trophy based upon the wooden tiller of a dumb boat, suitably painted and still on display on board Kennet.
Over the following years, Sam continued to provide me with further i n f orma tion, often as small sketches, about Whitebirk Dockyard, as well as to draw scenes for Christmas cards, often featuring the canal. I finally got him to agree that we should write a book together called Brightwork, published in 2008, which has saved this northern tradition for future generations. Sam did not want to be listed as one of the authors, but I included his name anyway.
He went a little quiet when he saw his name on the book, but I think he was really quite proud that his work had received some acknowledgement. He was always a little reticent, and when we first met and talked about his work in the dockyard, he said: “I didn’t think anyone would be interested.” We went on to write about Hodson’s boatyard for an article published in Waterways Journal 11, in 2010.
Sam did a lot for the Leeds & Liverpool Canal Society even before we took over Kennet in 2011 and we have examples of his work, such as a traditional water barrel and a cabin ventilator. He also provided numerous examples of scrolls, and a complete set of traditionally painted letters and numbers which I was able to digitise and then use for our displays.
The best thing about Sam was probably his pleasure in sharing his skills. Without him, brightwork would have been a lost tradition, while his sketches of boatbuilding at Hodson’s give an insight into another craft which was being forgotten. Given the lack of understanding of the craft trades by educationalists and politicians, we are unlikely to have the benefit of such craftsmen and women in the future.
As an apprentice in the 1960s, I certainly worked with similar skilled workers who had a pride in their job and were always open to new ideas and influences. It was such people that Tom Rolt was concerned were being forgotten when he first wrote about canals and canal history in the 1940s. I am certain Tom would have been delighted to meet Sam and, as I do, have regarded himself as lucky that our paths through life had crossed.