Working in Winter
John Saxon recalls the hardships of winter on cargo-carrying boats in the 1950s
Working boat Raymond battles icy conditions on the Grand Union in the 1950s.
Winters generally seem milder now than they were in the mid-20th century. Working cargo-carrying narrowboats on the Grand Union, many a morning you would wake up and have to break lumps of ice from your water cans and melt them in the kettle to make a cup of tea. Then, when you tried to start your journey, you would find the mooring ropes had frozen solid and you would have to pour boiling water over them and hit them with a hammer to loosen them up. You would also have to break the ice from around your boats before you could get away from the bank.
Slow progress
I well remember one trip working as a mate on a pair of Willow Wren boats. We came out of the bottom lock at Buckby in the morning and the ice was so thick that by nightfall we had only managed two bridge lengths along the Blisworth pound. The following morning, after breaking the ice again, I had to stand at the bow of the motor-boat, hitting the ice with a thick piece of wood, while the captain, Bill Anderson, kept reversing and then coming forward, flat out. By nightfall we had only reached as far as Stowe Hill, just a few short miles from where we were the night before. The winter could be very hard on boating families.
“If bad weather meant a one-week trip took you two weeks, you would only be paid for that one trip”
So, through no fault of your own, you would do two weeks’ work for a single week’s pay.
Engine-killing cold
You could never predict what would happen with ice. On a trip in the winter of 1956, I was working as a mate with the late Ron Hough. We had the motor-boat Banstead and butty Feltham and we travelled from the West Midlands coalfields to Nash Paper Mills, Hertfordshire, with a full load. Due to bad weather, there was quite a number of boats waiting to unload, which meant we had to stop there for three days. Most of the engines in the motor-boats were water-cooled, so, every night after being run all day, the engines had to be drained to stop them freezing up. When we arrived, we drained our engine and covered it up with old coats and placed a small Tilley lamp in the engine room.
Among those waiting were Les Hemmings with motor-boat Jackal. Les was a ‘trainee’, originally from the land, and after tying up he left his engine room doors wide open and, as far as I know, never even drained the water from his engine.
On the second day of being tied up, we decided to run the engine for a short time: so did Alf Bodley with motor-boat Lily, and Les with Jackal. Our engine had only run for a few minutes when there was a loud bang. The engine block had split from top to bottom. Alf Bodley’s Bolinder engine also cracked the same way.
Les had to shovel snow from his engine room before he could light the blowlamp and start the engine. We were all waiting for the biggest bang of all – but it never came. Les’s engine ran beautifully!
Thaw and floods
Another problem in the winter was too much water in the cut. When the snow and ice began to thaw, the pounds would fill up until there was water on the towpath. When you were going downhill in the locks you had to be careful that your boat’s cabins would not be flooded out with water cascading over the top gates. We had to draw a side paddle when the lock was almost empty to stop this happening.
Frozen in
Sometimes too, you would be frozen up for two or three days at a time. It’s then that you would feel the isolation of being cut off from the outside world. Depending on where you were and when the ice caught you, your food and water supply had to be looked after because you may be miles from the nearest shops or water source.
It was no joke trampling through anything up to 2ft of snow along the towpath or across fields to get to a tap.
If you were lucky enough to find one, more often than not it would be frozen solid and you would have to try knocking on doors and asking for water. Then you would start to envy the ‘townies’ in their nice warm houses – that is until some of them slammed the door in your face, then you would think them a miserable lot.
When you were frozen up and had to wait for the ice-breaker, you could tell it was coming hours before it got to you, as you would hear the ice moaning and creaking. As the boat got closer, the moans and creaks would become ever louder, and you would know that soon you would be on the move again.
