Coronation Livery?

Heritage Update: NarrowBoat, Autumn 2007

In Summer 2007 NarrowBoat on page 12 we published pictures of butty Tiverton and accompanying motor. Laurence Hogg has pointed out that these show the boats not painted in the regular blue & yellow scheme of British Waterways. He believes they are in a short lived ‘Coronation’ livery of red, white and blue. There are other instances of this seen in black & white photographs, where a boat’s tones mismatch the others. Some good examples appear in Sonia Rolt’s book A Canal People, the best being that of butty Hale on page 110, which is pictured opposite blue & yellow butty Bakewell. Laurence believes that it is a myth that these are over-painted pre-war Grand Union Canal Carrying Co boats as the Hambridge pictures show freshly painted boats. Christopher M. Jones, on the other hand, believes it likely that there was a good deal of GUCCCo paint already in stock at Bull’s Bridge when BW took over and it was common sense to use it up when repainting…