A Birmingham Bantam

Reader's Letters & Queries: NarrowBoat, Autumn 2011

In the Article ‘Boxes By Boats’ (Spring 2011 NB), there was a picture of tug Bantam 49 working at Forgings & Pressworks at Witton. At the end of the article it said that the service was so successful that a second tug and three more boats were being added to the fleet. I am the daughter of E.C. Jones of Brentford who built the Bantam tugs and the boat referred to in the article. I have done extensive research on the history of the company and their boats. I don’t have the history of every one of the 89 Bantam tugs that were built between 1949 and 1969, so can anyone tell me if E.C. Jones built the second tug? If so, was it one of the Bantam series? Thirdly, did they build the other boats referred to? Pam Vernon-Roberts, by emailLaurence Hogg thinks that the tug was Cambrai, built by Harris Bros, and not a Bantam. It appears briefly in Keith Christie’s film on the DVD British Canal History in Colour. The extra boats were not specially built but were cut-down…