Boat Painting

Reader's Letters & Queries: NarrowBoat, Summer 2013

With reference to Christopher Jones’ article ‘Livery Variations on Narrowboats’ (Spring 2013 NB), I agree completely with his comments on the lack of good traditional painting on most craft today. There are some examples of superb painting but these are in the minority. Much time and effort is spent on replica hull shapes, and increasingly the use of vintage engines which is all excellent, but good boat decoration seems to be overlooked in most cases, and some of the amateurish attempts at traditional painting are worse than not trying at all. In the 1980s I was fortunate to be able to build a replica long-distance working boat and felt free to decorate it as I wished, in the manner a working owner boatman might have done in the past. I enclose a few pictures of the results (above), which I do not claim to be the best – I too am an amateur, a ‘weekend’ boater (now an armchair boater), and with the benefit of hindsight would have been much more ad…