We Are Not All Rogues, Sir!

There are few photographs that exemplify the less attractive aspects of boating than this image of a horse-boat descending Foxton Locks on a dreary winter’s day. The boat is likely to be one of a pair as there are two females who appear to be over 12 years of age and one man with the boat; if they shared the same cabin, under the Canal Boats Act, this would be illegal. A second craft can just be seen several locks behind with its own horse. This scene could be taken any time in the latter decades of the 19th century, and one interesting aspect is that it shows boaters in their everyday working attire in rainy weather. 

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By the end of the Canal Age, boaters had a very bad reputation on the waters and beyond, resulting in decades of prejudice and misunderstanding. But what are the origins of this?

Evidence shows that the first canal boaters originated from bargemen working on the main river navigations. Then, as new cuts connected to the rivers, they migrated from barges onto narrowboats and took advantage of the fresh opportunities they presented. But, in later decades, a new influx of canal workers appeared to swell their ranks. These were mainly from the agricultural labouring class that formed the bulk of those living and working in the countryside. It seems this second wave came onto the cut for specific reasons and it’s important to understand why.

From the country to the cut

Agricultural labourers often started working between the ages of 12 and 15 when sons and daughters left the family home by prior arrangement to live with a farmer as their future employer. They received food, lodging and training for their new careers on the land. However, their quality of life depended solely on the civility of the farmer and his wife. During the Napoleonic Wars this system started to break down as some teenagers took the farmers’ money and signed up for military service, or just relocated elsewhere for better pay. Also, the wars made many farmers wealthy and some adopted pretensions of gentility and chose to distance themselves from their young employees. Agricultural workers were turned out of farmhouses and into rented lodgings, where they only found work as day labourers, being hired or laid off as and when it suited the farmers. Now removed from the watchful eyes of their employees and parents, some of these teenagers and young adults drifted into beer houses and hence drunkenness, neglect and delinquency, with little or no educational instruction. One observer noted, “If he is sober, he gets a room to lodge in, where he has no fire, he looks out for a wife, gets a cottage and fills it with children.

This etching by George Percy Jacomb-Hood in December 1880 of a teenage horse driver on the Bridgewater Canal could easily have been carried out decades earlier when the old fly-boat companies were working. Such scenes were commonplace anywhere between Runcorn, Manchester and London, with the major operators having regular stabling points where the horse was changed for a rested animal. The boy is using a cracking whip to encourage the horse using sound, rather than physical blows. Any evidence that a horse had been harmed would soon bring dismissal. 

Christopher M. Jones Collection



Despite the growth of industry and employment prospects in the urban Midlands and North, many rural labourers stayed in the countryside. After the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, the agricultural industry suffered a long period of depression, resulting in great poverty and a large surplus of labourers falling into unemployment. This, in turn, generated crime such as theft and poaching.

Escape to the cut

When boys and men were considered to have a ‘bad character’ in a particular neighbourhood, they often became boatmen to escape into an environment where they were unknown and could move about without recognition, at least for a while. Indeed, in many cases the canal was the only place available that could provide paid work, not as boat masters or captains, but as horse drivers and labouring boatmen known as ‘chaps’, who were generally aged between 12 and 25. Some described them as people of inferior quality and low moral character, with poor or non-existent education. So the canal world itself unintentionally acted as a magnet, attracting these young and undesirable characters.

However, the canal was not the lawless landscape some might imagine. One of the differences between the boaters and those on the bank is that the former lived and worked in a privately owned commercial environment. The waterways were managed and also policed to some extent by the companies through their staff, so the activities of boaters were constantly under scrutiny. If, for some reason, the boaters stopped working, they had to remove themselves from the canal environment.

Initially, a lot of the traffic on the canals was local in nature, but as waterways connected with each other, routes were created between London, Birmingham, Manchester, Runcorn and Liverpool. Fly-boat operations came about with long-distance throughtraffic running across the country. This created a seven-day working week, which became the norm for the carriage of parcels and merchandise. It’s this sphere of work that later attracted many young boatmen off the bank.

One of the reasons why agricultural labourers didn’t flock to urban industrial areas was the difference in work ethics. The working day in the countryside was largely 6am to 6pm with generous breaks for meals; the reduced daylight of winter months meant a shorter working day and therefore more leisure time for workers. This is quite the opposite of the industrial areas where it was the same long working day in summer and winter, meaning a life of relentless drudgery with no downtime other than a few one-day holidays.

Food and drink

Also, obtaining food was not an easy matter in the 18th and early19th centuries, and the provision of sustenance was an important incentive to those seeking work. Fly-boats had to be victualled at the beginning of each trip by specialist suppliers because it was difficult, if not impossible, to obtain provisions en route, as village bakers and butchers only served their regular, dependable customers and did not cater for passing trade. Acquiring food was a factor for other canal workers. Bow-hauliers working on the River Severn in the early 19th century were part-paid with meat and drink, and this was as important to the men as their wages. In a similar way, horse drivers on the canals and rivers of northern and eastern England contracted their services by hauling keels for their captains and were also part-paid with overnight accommodation aboard and food. In the rural labouring community, the provision of food and drink in the job was also important and was essential at harvest time when workers from all parts of the community left their usual jobs to work in the fields, including canal workers.

One of Pickfords’ fly-boats underway on the Regent’s Canal at Macclesfield Bridge in St John’s Wood, showing its two-man shift on the first leg of the journey from City Road Basin. The fine lines of these craft ensured they moved at a fair speed and left the slow-boats far behind, but once the railways had become established they started to disappear. Pickfords left the fly-boat trade for the railways in 1847, but had local railway boatage services for the LNWR at Wolverhampton into the 20th century. 

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This interesting engraving of the Bridgewater Canal passing south of the manicured gardens of New Worsley Hall shows boaters, their craft and their animals. The hall was built for Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere, and was completed in 1846 with the terraced gardens being developed by 1857, which helps to date the scene. This illustration gives details of clothing, horse harness and family boaters of that period. Given that coal formed a substantial cargo on that waterway, it’s likely that this pair were returning light from Manchester to the collieries. 

In the 1820s several paintings were made by Thomas Shepherd of Thomas & Matthew Pickford’s flyboats and these provide a valuable insight into their appearance and the men and boys that worked them. At City Road Locks on the Regent’s Canal, one of Pickfords’ fly-boats starts forward by bow-hauliers towards Islington Tunnel in the distance, while the other is being gauged by the clerk in a top hat. Such craft ran with a four-man crew, two resting and two working in shifts, over a period of five days on the longer trips. As long as the boats were moving there was little trouble, but many feared that if Sunday trading laws were implemented to prevent working on the Sabbath, the enforced day of idleness would inevitably result in drunkenness, theft and vandalism from the young crews employed by the captain. 

Fly-boats share the junction between the Regent’s and Grand Junction canals with a wide-beam barge and several narrowboats. This junction is now known as Little Venice and is quite different today compared with the scene depicted in this 1820s engraving, made from one of Thomas Shepherd’s drawings. The fly-boat in the foreground is typical of Pickfords’ craft, which worked as single boats, usually carrying 10 to 12 tons and cutting through the water at 3½ to 4 miles an hour. 

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Fly-boat captains had to manage their boats like a business: the crews were their employees for whom they were accountable. These captains were only allowed to reach such a privileged position through hard work as crew members, having proved themselves to be responsible, honest and conscientious individuals, and able to keep discipline over their crews.

Probably one of the reasons why bad behaviour of young ‘chaps’ went on for so long was that the responsibility for them lay with the boat captains who employed them. Only in extreme instances, when a boat-master was unable to control the criminal behaviour of his crew, did the employers step in and force the perpetrators off their boats. Some captains were robbed by their own crews who also stole or damaged the cargo through criminality and drunkenness

One of the main items stolen from boats was alcohol, which those with criminal intent seemed to have little problem obtaining. Some could acquire a specially made kit to surreptitiously open barrels and steal the contents. Stolen property from a merchandise cargo had to be fenced to criminals and these were said to be corrupt canal company staff and others situated along the line of canal.

Fly-boats worked non-stop with a four-man crew – two working and two resting until the time came to change over – and with so many eyes aboard it was not easy for an individual to steal unless others were in on the crime.

Such criminal activity was not limited to the waterways, however, as evidence suggests that a considerable amount of railway cargo was stolen by various members of railway staff.

Away from the boats, other items that were stolen included produce from farms like eggs, vegetables and poached game, and grass and clover hay for horse feed. It was said a scythe was a standard item of equipment carried on boats, which allowed those on board to harvest the required amount in a short space of time.

Improvements

One carrier that was said to have tried to improve matters was Pickfords. One of its managing partners, Joseph Baxendale, encouraged and helped captains to set up a bank account to manage their finances, which also gave the firm a little more control over its employees. This was partly successful, though, after some captains became men of property they left the cut for a life ashore. Good wages paid to captains allowed them to marry and keep homes on the land so that their children could receive some degree of education. Some of their boys would eventually grow up to become boatmen and, if they showed promise, they were promoted to captains. However, Baxendale noted that an improvement of boaters generally wouldn’t happen unless all carriers adopted similar practices for their men.

Crews employed on fly-boats were said to have shown a gradual improvement in education and, at the beginning of the railway age, some of the worst examples of animal cruelty and crime gradually reduced. It was noted that an increasing number of crew members proved themselves to be sober, hard working and honest. Some married and sent their children to school to read and write, as the captains had done. One of the reasons for the improvement was that the carriers themselves had taken steps to drive men and boys of bad character off their craft.

A rare view of boaters relaxing and playing dominoes in the hold of an empty boat while waiting for a load at Brentford in around 1926. This is quite different from the description of some of those almost a hundred years earlier, mainly working as horse drivers and crews of fly-boats and other all-male-crewed craft. Many felt that while these boats were kept moving, the young crew members were occupied and safe, but when they were tied up they were idle and started causing all sorts of trouble, usually in a state of drunkenness. 

A husband-and-wife team aboard a narrowboat and an all-male crew aboard a Thames barge. Women came aboard boats just after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, probably because of a severe housing shortage in the countryside and the poor state of the economy. 

Boating families

The long-distance boaters who carried coal, stone and minerals, did so on slow boats. About the time the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, women and their children began living on slow-boats with their husbands. There may have been several reasons for this. During the war, women and girls had replaced many men as agricultural labourers, but on their return, men wanted their old jobs back and females were pushed out of the labour market. If they married boatmen they found there was an increasingly severe shortage of housing in rural areas, and the combination of these two factors may have prompted the wives and children of boatmen to reside on slow-boats.

However, some women were not married and were paid employees of the captains, their role being to provide and prepare food, although it’s likely they steered as well. In other instances the slow-boats were worked by a man and boy, often a son or relative, while his wife and daughters stayed in a house on the bank. Unlike the fly-boats operators, these boaters had the freedom to stop where and when they wished and worked fewer hours by mooring up at night. Children growing up on the boats were under their parents’ constant attention and consequently much better behaved than those employed on fly-boats.

Changing attitudes

The impact of the railways affected the fly-boat trade straight away and carriers started to reduce the size of their fleets. Ultimately, the railways not only put an end to the road stagecoaches but fly-boat carrying too, and carriers operating such services from the 1850s onwards were quite different to those at work in the Canal Age. It is probably for this reason that the criminal class of teenagers and men who had previously found a place with fly-boat crews started to gradually disappear from the canals.

Published in 1875, this engraving on the cover of The Graphic newspaper shows typical slowboats carrying heavy goods such as coal, ironstone and limestone. The nearest is Walter, owned by Joseph Steadman of Bilston, and is most likely a hired craft, as Steadman was a boat-builder based at Pot House Bridge, Bradley, Bilston. Many of the slow-boats were operated by families or fathers and sons, with the women living on the bank in order to give their daughters a better chance of getting an education. Note the water jug on Walter next to the chimney instead of a water can or barrel. 

Christopher M. Jones Collection



The working environment of the canals was an important consideration, and the boating way of life offered a better standard of living for ordinary working people than many other occupations. Indeed, boating was one of the only jobs where employees could work at their own pace, free from the constant critical observation and overbearing control endured by those in a multitude of industrial and commercial workplaces. There was also the appeal of hiring or buying your own craft, becoming self-employed and so operating independently.

One measure of how these boatman could be regarded in the commercial carrying trade was their ability to get a toll credit account from canal companies. A carrying company wanting such a privilege had to submit references in order to verify its credit worthiness, normally from its bankers, or a canal company with which it already had an account. Credit was usually on a monthly basis. Not surprisingly, a boatman trying to get credit without a bank account would have to be well trusted by the canal company, and some did manage this. John Edwards of East Challow, near Wantage on the Wilts & Berks Canal, was one owner-boatman who qualified in 1904. This meant he could take coal up the Oxford Canal to Sandford Paper Mills on credit, which allowed him to pass without paying cash tolls. He paid the balance off on the return trip at Oxford Wharf. Another was John Walker of Bugbrooke Wharf who in 1926 gained credit from both Coventry and Oxford canal companies to carry coal to the Ovaltine works of A. Wander Ltd at Kings Langley, among other places. Because Walker had a small fleet of boats and a connection with a substantial company like Wanders, he was unusually granted a monthly account.

Mixed press

Over the course of time there were many negative reports relating to boaters, whether in correspondence or in the printed media, but not all boaters received a bad press. The Builder magazine of 22nd February 1862 published an article titled ‘Lodgings Afloat’, which reported, “The census returns will tell how many men, women and children were on board barges and other vessels on the canals of England and Scotland on the night of the 7th of April last, and part of the world will be surprised to learn that several thousand persons live for the chief part of each year on board the canal vessels. These are generally a hardy race, industrious, and in the main sober and careful.” It went on to say, “It is clear that both men and women pride themselves on the care bestowed in keeping their craft smart. The children, who sometimes number five, six and more, are generally clean and tidy. The sturdy woman, with one arm guiding the helm, may be often seen with the other hand dressing the little ones. The little cabin, of far too small proportions for a nursery, is in almost every case a pattern of brightness.” It was not entirely a glowing report, however. “In the daytime the open door and chimney allow ventilation; but at night the closing-up is not wholesome for so many tenants, and is the cause of serious attacks of sickness.” An interesting comment on their homes ashore was also made. “Besides these floating houses, the barge people have mostly a furnished house in some country place; but they are not much used, except in the extremely cold winter weather, or when some of the family are ill.” All this was compared to the lot of the merchant sailor working on colliers bringing sea-coal to London, and of the two the canal boat fared much better.

Boaters were also lifesavers. The Rugby Advertiser of 2nd September 1927 reported, “A plucky rescue – George William Tennant (6) of Clemens Street, Leamington, had a narrow escape from drowning in the canal at Leamington on Monday. William Knibb, of Braunston, in charge of a motor-barge, saw the boy disappear in the water. At first he thought he was bathing. He went to the boy’s rescue, applied artificial respiration, and later took the boy home in a passing motor-car.On another occasion the Cheshire Observer of 14th April 1945 reports, “On Wednesday evening, Albert Clowes, a canal boatman, of Birmingham, saved the life of a little boy who had fallen into the canal.” This incident was at Tower Wharf, Chester, and the three-year-old was quickly plucked from the water by Albert using a boat shaft, after which he applied artificial respiration as the child was unconscious. An ambulance driver and a police constable took over until the boy recovered.

Finally, the last word goes to Miss Mabel Tawney of Oxford; in September 1913 she contacted the Oxford Canal Company on the matter of Sunday trading and commented on the boaters, “Though rather rough, they are a very straight, pleasant sort of people, I find.”