Gauging Garner and Erne

Reader's Letters & Queries: NarrowBoat, Winter 2010

The article ‘Getting The Gauge’ (Summer 2010 NB) is most interesting. During the 1940s, a number of the Thomas Clayton (Oldbury) horse boats (Severn, Pearl, Ribble) were converted to motor boats and this meant that the boats had to be regauged. Sometimes the superseded values were obliterated, but in the copy of the BCN gauging table for Severn in the Waterways Archive at Ellesmere Port, the new values are added in red ink, whilst the old values are crossed out. Not only did the figures have to be altered, but so did the articles on board at the time of gauging. The references to the Erne, master William Gardner, on the Oxford Canal adds more information to what we know about this boat and the Gardner family. On 18th December 1915, William married Maria Monk, the 21-year-old daughter of boatman Henry Monk of Stockton in Warwickshire. Henry (Harry) Monk was master of the TC(O) horse boat Esk when it was registered No 426 at Brentford. During the First World War, Will…