Barging through Sharpness

A Broader Outlook: NarrowBoat, Winter 2025

Christopher M Jones

Chris M. Jones looks at photos from the Jack Parkinson collection showing commercial traffic working through Sharpness Lock on the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal

On a sunny day in 1964, waterways photographer Jack Parkinson was in Sharpness and fortunate to see commercial traffic at work around the tidal lock. Here, coastal and river craft were still in trade, mainly in the oil and grain traffics that could still hold their own against competition from rail and road. Coastal oil tanker Shell Steelmaker was built on the River Hull at Beverley in East Yorkshire in 1956 for Shell-Mex and B.P. Ltd, with a gross tonnage of 303 tons. It carried a crew of five men and worked between Monk Meadow Dock, Gloucester and Swansea. As the lock gates are almost open, both craft are revving their engines as they prepare to exit into tidal waters. Sharing the lock was motor barge Deerhurst owned by flour millers S. Healing & Sons Ltd of Borough Flour Mills, Tewkesbury, on the River Avon. It was one of three barges built for Healing’s at Charles Hill’s, Albion Dockyard at Bristol. Motor barge Deerhurst was built in 1933 at 158 gross tons, followed…