old waterway books

Adventure Stories from the 1950's.

The decade commenced with another Thames adventure –Eric Leyland’s ‘Discovery on the Thames’ published in 1950.

Sunny Stories. Mystery of The Tunnel. 1954

Sunny Stories. No’s 611, 618, 637. From March, May & September 1954.

For very young children – ‘Sunny Stories’ appeared in the UK throughout the 1940’s / 50’s and was edited by Enid Blyton for many years. As a shareholder in the magazine she seems to have taken exception to the appearance of advertisements in the magazine for books written by authors other than herself. This disagreement culminated in her resignation as editor in 1954. Her replacement was none other than Malcolm Saville who as we have seen had already written two canal adventure stories in the 1940’s. Knowing canal stories to be a ‘good thing’ he included these 3 stories in comics issued soon after the commencement of his editorship.

‘Young Johnnie Bimbo’ First Ed Dust Wrapper from 1955 and Paperback version from 1970.

Shown above, Malcolm Saville produced his third and last canal book - ‘Young Johnny Bimbo’ Published in 1955 it was again set on the Grand Union Canal but this time involving circus life.

CANAL CATS, BADGERS, MONKEYS & TUNNELS.

Gunpowder Tunnel by Bruce Carter 1955.

A book with a new direction appeared in this same year – ‘Gunpowder Tunnel’ by Bruce Carter. Set in the 18th century this was the first book in the ‘Historical Adventure Story’ genre of books to appear with a canal setting. This setting was a device that was to become very popular in succeeding years for both adult and juvenile fiction works. The author had thoroughly researched his subject and chose to set his story around the building of Sapperton Tunnel on the Thames and Severn Canal. The result was an exciting and realistic adventure story for 10 –12 year olds.

Shown above – Two books for younger readers which appeared in 1955.

The most elusive of children's canal books appeared in 1957 written by the established writer of juveniles – Winifred Finlay. ‘Canal Holiday’ seems to be exceptionally uncommon, in fact so rare that I have yet to find or even see a copy (In the unlikely event that you have a spare copy then I’m your man). So I am sorry that I cannot show you an illustration of this book.
Most readers of this blog will be familiar with Tom Rolt’s first book ‘Narrow Boat’ . It is said that Rolt wanted to illustrate his book with photographs but ‘Countryside book production’ conventions to which his publishers Eyre & Spottiswoode adhered prevented this. I suppose it depends on your point of view but personally I find the scraperboard images produced by D J Watkins- Pitchford for this book perfectly complement the nostalgic melancholy of this text with its plea for the retention of a fast disappearing way of life.
At any rate judging by the rare book prices asked for any of Watkins- Pitchford’s books ,there must be a lot of admirers out there.He even has a society dedicated to his life and work. A Keen fisherman and countryman he also wrote several books for children one of which for very young readers involved badgers and a canal. Bill Badgers Winter Cruise is illustrated below with its 1st edition dust wrapper and should you want a copy be prepared to pay £120 plus for it !!

First Edition Dust Wrapper from 1959.

One of the best children's books from the period - John Verney’s Friday’s Tunnel involves the imaginary Callender family in a series of adventures with yet another canal tunnel as a setting. John Verney was an established artist who illustrated his own books in the style of Edward Ardizonne.

Fridays Tunnel. First Edition 1959.

The final book of the era was unusually set on a wide beam boat on the waterways of the North East. Well researched and with an authentic tone it describes the fight for survival of a No1 or bye trader against the larger carrying companies. It was the first book to be set on a wide boat since the publication of Jims Children in 1903.

The Monkey On The Red Rose 1st Ed.1959.

To follow and in preparation – Books of the 1960 – 70 period.

To read the whole 7 parts in this series in one go (1870-1960) go to my other blog - http://canalbookcollector2.blogspot.com

'Rush Cutting' - From Life on the Upper Thames (1875).

Rushes on the Thames were usually cut in the month of August and were used in the cooping (barrel making) trade, for the seats of chairs ,in basket making and for the poorest sort of thatching.
The rushes were tied in bundles called bolts and were then left to dry for 3 weeks before being stored. In 1875 a bolt cost 1 shilling (10p).
The rush was occasionally grown in plantations, the seed being sown in the flam (soft oozy ground) and then being allowed to grow for 6 years before harvesting, the crop being cut every alternate year.

The 1968 edition with the authors original photographs and an introduction by Tom Rolt.

Those of you that were young in the 1970’s may remember a children's TV serial and book with the same title as the above book. Bill Grundy’s book and the serial that had produced it were both loosely based on a journey that had taken place 60 years before and which had itself resulted in the publication of one of the best known canal books of all time.

The author E Temple Thurston was a professional author, playwright and poet very popular in the Edwardian era with over 40 published books to his credit. Many of these had been made into early silent movies and its a great shame that the Flower of Gloster does not appear to be one of them.

The Flower of Gloster. First UK Edition. 1911.

The book came out in 1911 and with its green cloth binding, gilt titles and simple embossed illustration of a narrow boat; is a classic example of Edwardian book design and production at it’s best.

It must have been sometime in the spring of 1910 that the author hired a Thames and Severn canal boat in Oxford for a month. Joseph Phipkin the owner recommended canal boatman Eynsham Harry as a suitable captain for the voyage and together with Fanny the horse as motive power the three set off along the Oxford and Warwick canals, Stratford on Avon Canal and (of the greatest interest to todays readers) – the Stroudwater and Thames and Severn canals on what was to become one of the most legendry canal voyages of all time.

The books prose is Edwardian and typically florid but don’t let that put you off as the conversations between the author and boatman ‘Eynsham Harry’ are as interesting and informative as the journey they undertook. The chapters dealing with their journey through the Stroudwater & Thames & Severn Canals are memorable because although they were not the first or the last to write of journeying through these waterways (Geoffrey Boumphrey passed through the canal in the mid 1930’s); accounts of Thames & Severn Canal navigation are few and far between and accounts with photographs even more so.

Frontispiece illustration of Chalford – Thames &Severn Canal. From 1911 First Edition.

In the 1968 David & Charles reprint of the book (See First Illustration) ; L T C Rolt who wrote a new introduction, managed to include photographs taken on the actual journey by Temple Thurston which did not appear in any of the original copies of the book. These original editions were illustrated by artist Ernest Dakin as in the illustration above. Thus we find, for example, photographs of ‘The Flower of Gloster’ at Cropredy Lock on the Oxford Canal, a trow on the Stroudwater navigation and portraits of such memorable characters as Mrs Izod the ferrywoman on the Avon and ‘Old Willum’ the lengthsman on the Thames & Severn Canal, waiting, as Rolt remarks in his introduction ‘for the boats that never came’.

The ‘Flower of Gloster’ is a book from a vanished age. In its pages we discover a picturesque and romantic vision of an England which, even as the book was being published, was rapidly disappearing for ever. All the stolid country characters and quiet country places encountered in the book harken back to an agrarian pre industrial past – pre motor and pre railway. A countryside which was placid, uneventful but hard.

‘Flower of Gloster’ Second Edition 1913.

The book enjoyed a modest success and was reprinted in 1913 in the same format but this time with a grey cloth cover and black titling and illustration. Such was the popularity of the book that in 1918 the publishers William & Norgate issued a cheap unillustrated edition.

The 1918 cheap unillustrated Edt’n.

There has been some discussion over the years as to whether Temple Thurston's journey actually took place in one long voyage as he describes or whether it was in fact the result of a series of shorter journeys and travels. David Blagrove discussed this in some detail in an early ‘Waterways World’ magazine article of December 1972. However the events occurred, it doesn’t really matter, I suppose, for the events described seem authentic enough and the authors photographs are indisputable evidence of the authors first hand familiarity with his subject matter,

I include also, an illustration of the first American edition, printed and issued in New York by Dodd Mead & Co in 1912.

This US edition is identical to the first British editions apart from the early ‘Art Deco’ cover illustration which was changed to include an illustration of a boat more in tune with the average American’s conception of a canal barge.

First US edition 1912.

Second hand copies of all the editions are fairly readily available but most canal and waterway enthusiasts will want to read the modern reprints of 1968 & 1972 for the inclusion of the author’s photographs & LTC Rolt’s memorable introduction which prefaces the book in a manner I envy.

For dyed in the wool collectors like myself (I know I am a sad case) – the first edition is a must, as it is such a joy to see and handle, as, the book production values have, like the characters in the book, completely disappeared.

'Weir with movable bridge' from 'Life on the Upper Thames' 1875. Author –H R Robinson.

Strangely Robinson does not use the term ‘Flash Lock’ in his description of this primitive contrivance for altering the levels of rivers in order to primarily facilitate navigation by boats and barges, although he does describe the operation as ‘flashing a weir’.
I will let Robinson describe the whole procedure …. ‘ The most primitive way of overcoming the difficulty (of shallows obstructing navigation) has been to erect a movable dam all across the river, below the shallow; the boards of the dam,being of course, high enough to keep back sufficient water to enable a boat to float over the shallow. By this means the boat descending the stream meets with no impediment till it reaches the dam or “weir”, (pronounced “wire” by the riverside people. The boards composing the dam are then removed and the boat proceeds with great rapidity, owing to the increased volume of water by which it is carried along. The temporary depth thus produced by the body of water descending enables the boat to descend over many shallows below the weir.
The different parts of the weir are first the cill or fixed beam , laid securely across the bottom of the stream; then, directly over this, but considerately above the surface of the water, is placed a second but movable beam. Against and in front of these parallel beams a set of loose boards is placed upright and close together like a door. These loose boards are called paddles, and the long handles with which they are furnished rest against the upper beam, the pressure of the stream serving to hold them in their places. Between the paddles are placed upright supports termed “rimers;” and when a second set of paddles is employed above the first to obtain a greater depth of water,this set is called the “overfall”.
As the largest barge is far from occupying the fall width of the stream, it is practically found that only a portion of the bridge is required to be movable. In the illustration the man who is putting down the paddles is standing on the movable part called the “swing bridge”. It revolves on a pivot close to the edge of the water and the weight is balanced by the increased thickness of the beam at the landward end on which is often placed a great stone or other heavy substance. The upper beam and hand rail across that part, are of course, removed before the bridge is swung round and it is for this purpose that the two handles which may be noticed are added.........'
The weir in its most primitive form was just a dam and there is evidence that the Vikings dammed the river in order to ease navigation. Later they were used by millers and fisheries and then adapted to the movable type discussed by Robinson to aid navigation.
Many rivers had flash locks and on the Thames ,some lasted into the 20th century –particularly above Oxford where the last at Eaton Hastings survived until 1938.The last surviving capstan used for hauling boats up river against the flow was found at Hurley recently and restored in 1999. Pictures of this and other interesting stuff can be found under locks at http://www.the-river-thames.co.uk

The Water Gipsies by A P Herbert. 1930. Firstedition with its colourful art deco dust wrapper.

There are in fact three works of fiction entitled The Water Gipsies whose contents are based on the English canal system. All three were successful books which interestingly and entirely coincidentally were produced at the very beginning, in the middle of and at the very end of a 100 year period of English Canal Fiction.

     ‘The Water Gipsies or The Adventures of Tag, Rag & Bobtail’ by L T Meade first appeared as a serialization in an English magazine in 1878 and in fact can boast of being the first work of fiction in England devoted solely to a canal theme. Up to this time canals had only enjoyed brief mentions in novels devoted to other subjects.
      Meade’s book was the first of many books to publicise (In the years 1880-1900) , the subject of the moral & social conditions of the canal working population. For more on this book & others see my article at http://canalbookcollector2.blogspot.com
   Frontispiece illustration from L T Meade’s – ‘The Water Gipsies’

For a good read of an interesting period piece you could do worse than find one of the innumerable copies of this book which are available and which is really the subject of this article.
A P Herbert's book came out in 1930 and was an immediate hit with the public. It spawned a musical and then a film starring Anne Todd which although like the book –long forgotten, is I am told, possible to see online.
The book tells the story of Jane Bell a working girl in service who dreams of joining ‘the bright young things’ of 1930’s London. From her home on a Spritsail barge on the river somewhere in west London Jane becomes an artists model and finally begins to enjoy the parties,fashion and fun of her dreams. Only after many adventures does she find what the reader has long suspected, that this world is not what it seems and so she finally returns to long suffering boy friend Fred (A boatman on the Grand Union Canal) and finds true happiness as she sails off into the sunset on a working boat.
Set against the contemporary world of the depression years of the 1930’s the book is really a social comment of the times albeit written in a humorous and very readable manner. A comment on the title page describes the book –‘as a sympathetic and intimate study of the lives of poor people’ . A comment that today might raise the eyebrows of those concerned with political correctness, one feels.

Herbert for all that, had his heart in the right place, as he loved the river and portrays it absolutely authentically. He was an MP for many years and a member of the Thames Conservancy and was a very early president of the Inland Waterways Association. He could always be relied on to represent the views of those who loved the waterways and wrote for instance No Boats on the River in 1932, The Thames in 1966 and Singing Swan (About Thames Barges) in 1968.

Water Gipsies. First American Edition 1930.
All the many editions over the years, with Penguin paperback editions appearing in 1960 and 1973, have proved the popularity of this book so do read it if you get a chance.

One last note – If such bibliographic details mean anything to you and you want to acquire the book in first edition form then look out for the tiny printers collation number 330 at the bottom of the last page of adverts at the rear of the book. Such pedantic details are I am sure wearisome to those unafflicted with the book collecting disease but for those sufferers like myself any other number than 330 is not a true first edition (there were several other printings in 1930). Anyway whatever edition you read either one picked up for pennies at a flea market or charity shop or a true first edition with its lovely art deco dust wrapper and signed by the author (Available on the web as I write for £50) I am sure you will enjoy it.

Last and by no means least, and I suspect a lot of canal lovers will have read this one if only because so recently published, Annie Murray’s book which came out in 1992 tells a wartime story of a boatwoman, who after her husband is injured, goes on to run a pair of boats with other women in a manner suggested by the experiences of women in the Grand Junction Canals wartime training scheme.

‘Camping out’ from –Life on the Upper Thames by H R Robinson. 1875

Robinson and his companions had some dire views on the virtues of camping out alongside the river and much preferred wherever possible to stay in riverside inns. He says…..’The risk of rheumatism and concomitant evils is, in our opinion too serious to be encountered for a whim….’
Whilst acknowledging that ‘….when the days are at their longest and the moon is full, then, indeed, if the weather should be perfectly fine, we will grant that the river is most beautiful after sunset. To take a boat then, and lazily drop down the river, listening to the measured splash of the oars, has given us a sense of tranquil enjoyment , in its way unrivalled.’ However the merits of camping out amongst all this beauty are not even to be considered unless ‘…especial attention is paid to the selection of a suitable piece of land (that on a slight incline is preferable), but, above all, the exclusion of damp, the forerunner of acute rheumatism, should be carefully studied. A most terrible result may arise if this be not carefully attended to.’
The author also recommends ‘…a plentiful supply of travelling rugs for coverings…’ as otherwise ‘….without plentiful covering, the (tents) occupants would possibly receive a chill that might be productive of evil results’.
The answer to all these dire warnings was of course ‘Croggan’s Roofing Asphalt’ , which it would would appear should be an indispensable part of any riverside campers kit. For ‘….although rather large in bulk, is very light, and forms, when laid down, a most comfortable substitute for a mattress, and is thoroughly waterproof.’
So the next time you encounter riverside campers carrying rolls of roofing felt along the tow path you will know that Robinsons words of wisdom are still being adhered to even today 135 years later. However a word of warning for those of you intending to try a little incautious camping for yourselves - You may be tempted to evade the carriage of the said felt to your chosen camping site, so you should be reminded that substitutes will not do for ‘…the ordinary mackintosh, though smaller in bulk, is not so well suited for the purpose.’
It seems that only Croggan’s will do!!!

Compliments of the season to everyone and a quick blog. I have not been able to ramble on about my books since the summer as I sold my beloved boat in July and my collections had to go into storage. Life has been pretty hectic since then and I have been mainly preoccupied with finding somewhere to live. I have at last found a tiny secluded cottage not too far from family and friends and still in the countryside. I move my books in sometime in the new year.

I will miss the ‘cut’ but compensations include having a garden and a bit more space. I can still boat as all my 3 kids have boats so its not too bad.

October was an eventful month as I journeyed to Holland to bring back a Dutch ‘Tjalk’ which my youngest son had just bought. A really great trip from Utrecht down the Lek and Maas and estuaries to Stellandam and from there out into the North Sea and an adventurous trip down the Dutch and Belgium coasts in beautiful October sunshine. Off Dunkirk we turned to make the crossing to Ramsgate but bad weather after a couple of hours forced us to retreat and seek shelter at Calais which after battling some really rough seas all night we finally made at 5am in the morning.We had really left it too late in the year for any continuous spells of good weather so we had to leave the boat at Calais for a couple of weeks before a day produced calm enough seas for the boat to finally complete her trip to ‘Blighty’.

Again Best Wishes for Christmas & the New Year to everyone and to anyone who enjoys reading my stuff you can look forward to more of it sometime in the New Year!

Paperback edition of ‘Isabel & the Sea’

Publisher- Century 1983.

A few years ago whilst selling books at a book fair in Penzance', I was approached by an obviously nautical ‘character’ and asked if I had a copy of Isabel & the Sea for sale. I had never heard of the book but eventually managed to find him a copy. The guy told me that he lived in Penzance during the winter and spent his summers exploring the Mediterranean in his boat after having sailed it over from England and down through the French waterways. He wanted a copy of Millar's book because the author had made the same journey through the French canals many years before but in vastly different circumstances. It was ,he said, ‘ one of the most entertaining accounts of travel through the French canals ever published’. My interests were aroused and I was not disappointed.

I suppose the unique character of the book lies in the extraordinary circumstances in which the journey took place, for Millar’s canal trip took place in the immediate aftermath of war torn Europe. There is as far as I know, no other book remotely like it. It seems to have everything – excitement, adventure and social reportage being just three elements in a book written by an acknowledged war hero.

The author had just published his war memoirs when at the age of 35 and in 1946 he bought an old Cornish lugger with the proceeds from the sale of his book. In June 1946 after some initial fitting out difficulties in the continuing wartime conditions of rationing and emergency laws he set sail for France with his wife who knew nothing about boats and suffered from constant sea sickness. He himself had sailed dinghy's as a child and had taught himself navigation whilst a prisoner of the Germans during the war.

Provisioning of the boat was accomplished with a cooked chicken, 6 lbs of strawberries and many cartons of cigarettes which they intended to barter for food on their journey.

Millar’s boat must have been one of the first boats to attempt a journey through the French waterways after the war. The conditions were appalling! They made Le Havre safely only to find the harbour full of sunken wrecks and only a handful of houses left standing in the town. On their canal journey they were shocked by the half gutted villages and the general privations of the population. The book abounds with conversations with the locals and especially the working boat community. Common topics were the food shortages and the black market. Passing through the Canal de Loing, Briare , Loire lateral and Canal du Centre canals they were surprised at the amount of horse drawn boat traffic they encountered. Evidently this was as a result of the German requisitioning of all the ‘automoteurs’ during the war.

Encountering barges full of German prisoners he comments that the prisoners were not being treated very well by the French, in marked contrast to the treatment afforded to the prisoners in American hands they saw at Le Havre. Not unsurprising one would have thought considering the devastated landscape through which they were passing.

Difficulties in obtaining supplies,spare parts and fuel are all discussed in some detail. They visit famous people of the time including Somerset Maugham and Lord Beaverbrook. Millar is called to Paris for presentation of a war medal by General de Gaulle. On their arrival in Marseille they progress into the Med where ports of call include Antibes and San Remo. Every harbour is found bomb blasted and littered with wrecks. The journey through the canals occupies a large part of the book before they journey onto Italy and beyond.
One little incident serves to inform us of the constant reminders they had of the all too recent war. The wine that accompanies their meal in an Italian restaurant ‘comes with the compliments of the Wehrmacht’ their Italian waiter informs them with a wink.
Throughout the book the author gives occasional hints of his involvement in the war. When I researched further I found that he was in fact a well decorated war hero.George Millar was a journalist living and working in Paris before the war. On the outbreak of war he returned to England and enlisted. He was captured in North Africa and sent to Italy. When Italy surrendered he was sent by the Germans to a POW camp in Germany and it was on this journey that he jumped from a train and started back across France where he encountered a POW escape line to Spain. After much hardship and many adventures he made it back to Britain where he was promptly enrolled as a secret agent and parachuted back into France. All of these exploits are described in his two books ‘Maquis’ and ‘Horned Pigeon’. For a fuller account of his life go to www.independent.co.uk/news/obituariesAfter the war he farmed in Dorset, sailed and wrote more books about his sailing adventures.
In the 1948 edition ,’Isabel and the Sea has a photograph of the Lugger as a frontispiece but no other illustrations.The book was reprinted by Century in 1983 as an unillustrated paperback.After the authors death in 2006 the Dovecote press published a hardback edition with 4 pages of photographs found at P Millar's home.
A really great read.

Those of you who read my blog of Nov 2110 – Isabel and the Sea may remember that its author George Millar was a recognized WW2 war hero who after the war sailed his boat across France and into the Mediterranean.
I mention this only because Merlin Minshall the subject of this present blog seems to share some of the same characteristics as Millar. They both for example set off on their voyages from Southampton,both had exciting and adventurous war careers and above all they were both ,that very rare thing today ,larger than life characters with a strong sense of individualism and self reliance.
Apart from his epic voyage across Europe Merlin Minshall’s chief claim to fame and the one by which he his more popularly remembered is that he was the inspiration for the character of James Bond the fictional spy created by the author Ian Fleming.

Merlin Minshalls autobiography. 1st Edition published in 1975.
The son of a wealthy newspaper owner and educated at Charterhouse and Oxford University, Minshall soon tired of his initial career as a trainee architect and in 1932 after reading a magazine article about ‘Water Gipsies’, decided to buy a boat and explore the waterways of Europe. Sperwer was a small motorised Tjalk Boeier,10 tons and 27ft on the waterline and with her 1000sq ft of sailing gear still intact when the author found her. So together with his first wife Minshall set off on what was to become a legendary and unique voyage in more ways than one.

Minshall intended to take his boat right across Europe by way of the Seine,Marne Rhine Canal,R Rhine, Ludwig's Canal (still just navigable at this time) and then to voyage the whole length of the Danube to the Black Sea. This trip had been accomplished many years before in an English boat with an American crew and the results published in book form as Across Europe in a Motor Boat by Henry C Rowland.

Title page of Across Europe in a Motor Boat. 1st Ed 1907.
Rowland’s boat the Beaver had been built especially for the trip which followed almost exactly the route to be taken 30 years later by Minshall with the Sperwer. They had intended a round trip of over 7,000 miles returning from the Black Sea via the Mediterranean and the Canal du Midi across France but a storm in the Black Sea wrecked the boat and put paid to that idea.
Literary accounts of travel down the Danube are in fact quite common and for some unaccountable reason the authors are usually Americans.Longer trips across Europe are much more rarely described.Negley Farson (another American) did one such trip in 1926 His book Sailing Across Europe describes a journey with a departure point in Holland. The accolade for pioneering trips by Englishmen must surely go to Donald Maxwell who took his boat Walrus from a Dutch port to the Black Sea in 1906 the voyage was published in book form as A Cruise Across Europe.First Ed 1926
English Author Donald Maxwell's book of 1906.
Merlin Minshall’s journey of over 4,000 miles on Sperwer in fact took 2 years to accomplish and the result was published in the National Geographic Magazine in May 1937. At a time of rising tensions in Europe and the 2nd World War imminent, the journey was naturally and to say the least very adventurous. It is an almost unbelievable account of meetings with the top Nazi Goering, of seduction by a glamorous German Counter Intelligence spy and his subsequent entrapment in a Nazi spy ring. Interestingly the 16 page article in the National Geographic omits all the above excitement and just deals with a factual account of the voyage .This article is, as, as you would expect for the N G magazine profusely illustrated with photos of the voyage.

Two photographs from the National Geographic Mag showing Sperwer in the Ludwigs Canal. One of the smallest Continental canals.

Map inside cover of ‘Guilt Edged’ 1975
Minshall’s accounts of his exploits with women including the glamorous German spy would lead one to believe that he was the possessor of a huge ego and that he was almost certainly guilty of exaggerating events that had occurred during his life especially in retrospect and in preparation for his autobiography Guilt Edged published in 1975.
Subsequently he became a member of the Royal Navy’s Intelligence Division and during WW2 ran Operation Shamrock which monitored German U Boat traffic in the Gironde estuary and later fought with Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia as a member of the Allied Naval Mission.
Ian Fleming the creator of James Bond had Minshall taken on by British Naval Intelligence who promptly sent him back to the Danube to investigate the possibilities of blocking this route for German Oil Barges. Later he was said to be the first secret agent to be sent to France by submarine. He was closely involved with both the Bismarck and Graf Spee actions and the Japanese whilst he was with the Royal New Zealand Navy. With al this glamorous and exciting clandestine activity it is little wonder that Fleming based his James Bond character on Merlin Minshall.
Guilt Edged is an unusual book full of daring do as is Isobel and the Sea. For me the latter book has the edge being a factual and sober account of a journey by boat across a Europe ravaged by war. However if glamour and excitement is your thing then Minshall may be your man. Both books are available inexpensively as paperbacks but if you want a first edition of Guilt Edged be prepared for a quite expensive purchase as Minshall’s connection with Fleming and his identification as the real James Bond has meant that his autobiography is well sought after by collectors of Ian Fleming and James Bond artefacts,books and ephemera.
Incidentally the 100 year old Sperwer finally found a home in the Dutch National Maritime museum at Einkhouzen in 1975.
If you missed my blog on George Millar's book Isabel and the Sea I am republishing it to follow this present blog.

Forgotten pictures from 70 years ago.

This well known and popular photo illustrated weekly magazine ran from the mid 1930’s until the mid 1950’s.
Two weeks after the war began in September 1939 the magazine – Picture Post ran a 7 page article on the state of Britain's canals. The article briefly surveyed the past and present state of canal trade here and contrasted this with the conditions found on the continent. The emphasis was placed on the ‘family nature’ of canal carrying and a Picture Post photographer was sent to record the conditions in which the ‘bargees’ lived and worked.
The resulting article with its intimate shots of family life on the boats of the Grand Union Canal Carrying Co makes for interesting viewing today. The views of the boat children helping with boat & lock work are especially valuable, since they are an aspect of boat life often overlooked & are precursors of the wonderful photography of Robert Longdon a little later (His work can be seen in Sonia Rolt’s book A Canal People).
The timing of the publication of this article was quite important and was probably prompted by the publication of the Committee of Imperial Defence’s report on the usefulness of British canals in wartime.

For those in 1939 however, this was not just a cosy article on the boatpeople's life but was a reminder of the strategic role that canals and transport generally were to play in the coming struggle.
There is also one of the earliest mentions of what was to become the Ministry of Labours training scheme for new ‘bargees’ as the magazine kept calling them.

There are over 20 evocative photographs taken mostly on the boats of the GUCC’s fleet in and around London.

With the recent announcement of the demise of the EncyclopaediaBritannica in printed form (It will be available on line); I was reminded of a seemingly inauspicious item in my collection which at first glance might be passed over as ‘just another childrens book’
As a 1947 American publication by the Encyclopaedia Brittanica it is not often seen here in the UK and was I think not issued here, being primarily intended for children in the U S.

With over 40 photographs of boat life on boats of the Grand Union Canal Carrying Companies fleet, this book is a ‘must see’ for anyone interested in social history on Britain’s canals.

The photographs – mainly of kids on the boats, also show boats at work including some unusual shots of wide beam boats on the southern Grand Union.

Very interestingly, the title page describes the illustrations as being taken from the Encyclopaedia Brittanica film ‘The Canals of England’. Has anyone ever seen this film? I cant remember coming across it before.

As you can see many of the shots are quite unusual in their scope and seem to have been taken on the G Union between Bulls Bridge layby and Stoke Bruerne.

If you know anything about the film please let me know.

With current news headlines in mind I thought readers of this blog might like to see an early example of a form of tax avoidance which only goes to prove that there is really nothing new under the sun.

Printed on incredibly thin hand made paper and now rather fragile this document was issued at Braunston 10 years after the Grand Junction Canal had opened as a through route to London.

Pickfords (Today still carrying by road) were at this time major users of the canal and had offices ,warehouses and wharves at Braunston.

Canal Bills of Exchange were bank drafts issued by a shipper for general services or goods. At this time shortly after the Napoleonic Wars,gold was scarce and it was not uncommon to make payments by bankers draft. However in order to avoid government revenue payable on their own drafts ,payees often endorsed the bills of exchange they had received on the reverse and used them to make further payments.

So turning the bill over…….

The signatures of Richard Vann, William Alcock, T S Marriott, William Whittles, Jones & Mann, Thomas Whalley & Sons , James Mitchell And Richard Williams have been endorsed on the rear of the draft.

The draft issued in 1815 by Pickfords at Braunston was for the not inconsiderable sum of £72 11s 1d and was made out to Richard Vann.

Vann is an unusual surname and I wonder if any of his descendants (or any other of the endorsers of the document) are living in the Braunston area today.

With recent jollifications on the Thames in mind I was prompted to look again at a small and unassuming book which happens to be one of the first books to describe a journey to be made purely for pleasure on English waterways. Indeed the skiff that made this particular trip could be said to be one of the originators of that class of boat that comprised a good portion of the Royal jubilee fleet , that is – the pleasure boat.
Waterways from time immemorial had been used for trade and travel but the idea of using a boat purely for pleasure on Britain’s waterways doesn’t really appear to have been very common before the early years of the 19th century.Certainly people with the opportunity,time and money had probably always used boats locally for fishing etc, but with industrialization and the rise of the middle classes whose wealth and increasing amounts of leisure time allowed them to pursue new pastimes; boating became the new vogue.
Initially on Britain's rivers and particularly on the Thames people rowed,sailed and canoed. Excursions were made locally and gradually progressed to holiday trips in camping skiffs but books describing longer holiday trips do not appear before 1850 and these were trips made on Continental waterways by wealthy Englishmen with sporting inclinations derived from boating whilst studying at University.

‘The Waterway to London as explored in the ‘Wanderer’ and ‘Ranger’ with Sail, Paddle, and Oar in a voyage on the Mersey,Perry,Severn and Thames and several Canals.’ was published anonymously by Simpkin Marshall in 1869. It describes a three man trip by skiff and canoe on the rivers mentioned in the title and on the canals – Bridgewater, Chester,Birmingham & Liverpool Junction (Shropshire Union),Ellesmere (Llangollen) & Montgomery. Its interesting that these ‘several’ canals are not mentioned by name in the title – an indication of the lower status for pleasure boating purposes afforded to these waterways at that time.

The trip was accomplished in three weeks and included travel through the Stroudwater and Thames and Severn canals the proprietors of which demanded extortionate fees for travel over their waterways, as opposed to the Ellesmere Canal where they travelled freely. Highlights of the trip included paddling through the Sapperton tunnel and not so memorable a horrible traverse of mud banks on the Mersey and getting stuck on a weir.

There are 11 illustrations and 2 maps described as ‘by our special artist’ but by their amateur nature I would rather think they are by one of the crew.

The book is now very rare and costly if you can find it. Interestingly the first copy I saw for sale about 20 years ago (which sold immediately for £350) had the following book dealers comment in their description of the book –‘An extremely scarce book inscribed on the title page ‘ A Madam Pittu de Mr A Schofield,Tweedale Street, Rochdale, May 1869’. On the next leaf where the dedication is printed and signed ‘The Author’, there follows another inscription (in the same ink as before) Alfred Taylor Schofield, then in print again (Cook and Skipper). So now we know the identification of the author!
Actually the honour of being the first book to describe a voyage made purely for pleasure on an English Canal should go to a voyage which took place in July 1867. ‘The Thames to the Solent by Canal and Sea or the Log of the Una boat ‘Caprice’ describes a journey made principally through the Wey and Arun canal which was closed to navigation 4 years after the voyage was made. So we have to be thankful to the author J B Dashwood for giving us the only known description of a voyage through this long closed waterway.

If you wish to read more about these two pioneering books describing English Canal journeys I would recommend Pleasure Boating in the Victorian Era. by P A L Vine published by Phillimore in 1983 which describes many early journeys both here and on the Continent. An excellent book which you should be able to find on ABE or EBay or Amazon.
As far as I know The Waterway to London has never been reprinted but The Thames to the Solent was reprinted by Shepperton Swan in 1980 and again should be available on the second hand market.

Cruises for pleasure were initiated in the mid 19th century by an emerging middle class . On English canals these early voyagers were usually University educated with the time, money and an inquisitive instinct for the unusual. Initially voyages were made on home territory but soon progressed to the waterways of Europe .
Across the ‘pond’ things were similar with a gradual discovery of European rivers and canals. For some unaccountable reason I can discover no accounts of Americans travelling on British canals prior to the middle years of the last century. I am sure it probably happened but it would seem that the account of Emily Kimbrough’s English canal trip in 1957 was the first to be published in book form.
In post war austerity Britain and until well into the 1950’s the glamour and affluence of American society was well known in the UK propagated mainly by films from Hollywood. This affluence also manifested itself to British eyes with an increasing stream of American tourists crossing the Atlantic to ‘do’ Britain and Europe. In the 1940’s and 50’s foreign holidays were almost exclusively the province of the American and English middle classes and Emily Kimbrough emphatically typifies this category of tourist.

Miss Kimbrough steers her boat into the bank.
Emily Kimbrough was a well known editor of American society magazines and author of many books detailing her foreign travels. Born in the mid west and educated at a US university and the Sorbonne she would have been in her mid 50’s when she came to England in 1955 for a holiday on the Thames. The results of this trip were detailed in ‘Water Water everywhere’ published in 1956. In 1957 she visited the UK again for a four week canal trip,this was turned into the book which is the subject of this essay.
When I first encountered canals in the early 1960’s canal travellers of any sort were a rare breed and foreign visitors even rarer. There was however a myth around of the ‘wealthy,loud and flamboyant’ American tourist .I have to say straight away that in all my travels I never actually encountered anyone like this and they certainly don't exist today.However , in many respects Miss Kimbrough and her party do fit the bill perfectly although I don't think they were particularly loud. Indeed I think they were probably well aware of the image portrayed by the average American on vacation abroad at that time.

Miss Kimborough plans her trip.
As a precursor to the main trip which was to be from Stone to Thames Ditton ,Emily Kimborough and a friend charted a cut down wooden narrow boat from Wyatt's boatyard at Stone. Wyatt a very early member of the IWA ran the ‘Canal Cruising Company’ – one of the earliest hire boat companies on the cut and started just after the war. It is famous today as the dock to where Tom Rolt steered his boat Crecy on his last trip and where the boat was subsequently broken up.
Whether the authors fame had preceded her or whether it was just that they were wealthy American tourists and as such represented the beginnings of a hopefully increasing stream of the same in the eyes of the British Transport Waterways of the time I don't suppose we will ever know but in any event they were met at the rail station by 2 British Transport Waterways employees with 2 vehicles (one for passengers,one for luggage). At the boatyard they were welcomed by the local IWA and introduced to the man who was to steer their boat –Mr Walley an ex boater now employed on a maintenance gang on the bank. The journey to Llangollen is punctuated with details of the Americans scouring English shops for improbable things like ice and ice buckets, usually under the uncomprehending gaze of the shop keeper. Ice it would seem was an essential part of the cocktail regime which they assiduously followed each evening.
In the event the boat never got to Llangollen being abandoned by the two Americans at Ellesmere who returned to London leaving Mr Walley to return the boat to Stone.

Purchasing boaters requisites at Braunston!
A week later the two ladies together with 3 other American socialites gathered again at Stone this time on board a five berth wooden cruiser of the Maid Line fleet from Captain Munks base at Thames Ditton on the Thames. Their journey from Stone via Gt Haywood,Braunston and the Thames was again captained by Mr Walley together with another Waterways employee presumably to help with the locks.As hilarious as some of the account seems to us today with its recounting of quests for essential (in American eyes) items unknown or unattainable in England at that time it nevertheless shows a positive concern at times for those less well off than themselves particularly with regard to the working boat community. At one stage they stare with unbelieving eyes at the wife of a boater bow hauling a loaded butty up Audlem locks and at Oxford they are shown around the tiny but immaculately kept buttys cabin of a working pair unloading coal at a wharf. These working conditions of the English canal boat community are emphasised in the readers eyes by the fact that the Americans despite travelling on a five berth boat choose to stay in the best hotels around each night where of course they can dress for dinner and enjoy their cocktail hour, transported to and from by taxi of course.
Its interesting reading the book today how many of the characters that the tourists encounter on their trip can be recognized as well known canal personalities of the time. For instance the ‘shy canal painter unable to read and write’ from whom they buy their souvenirs at Braunston was probably one of the Nursers of boat building fame and the Muriel Ritchie travelling the canals of Shropshire that they meet at Audlem – could she be the wife of Colonel Ritchie of Stoke Bruerne an early artefact collector and canal enthusiast. Little details like this and the rich period atmosphere of the book keep the reader ploughing on through cocktail hour until journeys end at Thames Ditton.

The book was never published in England but copies can be found very cheaply on the net.
Some of my most read blogs are those concerning the rare war time Picture Post articles. I thought some people might like to know that one of these from 1939 –‘ Canals Are Coming back’ is being auctioned on eBay now .Its listed under Ships,Boats and Waterways.

I've just been trolling Ebay canal and waterway books and noticed a couple of rare items from World War2 for auction.
I mention this because some of my most popular posts are those that refer to the 'Idle Women' so if your interested there is a photo of Audrey and Evelyn and their boat on the cover of a wartime magazine and a Picture Post article on the boatwomen and Kit Gayford on one of their trips in 1944. I have both of these and can recomend them.

Give him a treat and maybe some of this...

Nothing like a nice SPAM fritter to take your mind off…………
So on to more serious things but remember !!!

With reference to yesterdays blog about the items on EBay I was prompted to look at my collection of wartime items and discovered that I had never blogged about this wartime Picture Post article (the one that is for auction on EBay at the moment).

All the above ad’s appeared in a 1944 edition of Picture Post which appeared a couple of weeks after the allied invasion of Europe started.
The magazines main preoccupation of course was with the invasion, with articles such as The First Man to Land in France and What it feels like to Invade but amongst the other news there is an interesting article on the training scheme for boatwomen or ‘Idle Women’ as they became known.
The article covers two pages with a small amount of text describing a typical working day together with seven photographs.

Daphne French isthe trainer and Mary Andrew and Susan Blood the trainees.

I’m not sure where the photos were taken but obviously on the G U – (London area ?)somewhere. The caption to the article states ‘Barges on the Midland Canal’ which confuses things a little. Could be on the G U towards Brum I suppose. I thought at first that the photo above might have been taken near the Globe Inn at Linslade but then realised that there is what looks like a winding hole or basin on the off side so that put paid to that theory. If anybody knows please leave a comment.

To those not familiar with the famous ‘Barge Ladies’ story ; my ‘Wartime Ephemera’ blog of November 2110 will tell you a little more or better still read the first hand accounts of the ladies wartime lives afloat in ‘Maidens Trip’ by Emma Smith and ‘Idle Women’ by Susan Woolfitt both of which are still in print I think.

‘A Tender Parting at The Grand Junction Canal’. c1801-1810.

I really love this early hand coloured print primarily I think for its early use of the comic strip concept of the ‘circled blurb’ of the utterances of the characters depicted in the boat and the rest above each of the figures. Bought at auction recently it shows a London merchant being entreated by his wife and daughter to avoid the dangers of travel to Uxbridge on the new fangled canal. As the building of the canal had got as far as Uxbridge by 1801 and parties of London society were enjoying the novelty of trips by barge from the capital out into the countryside, I think that the print must date from the first few years of the new century.

He Says-

She says-

The daughter blubs-

The boatman says-

This print prompted me to sort out some early views of the new canal which I will show in my next blog

John Hassell (1767 – 1825) was a Georgian artist, illustrator, author and publisher earning his living principally by producing what would now be termed a travel guide book. The guides of which he was the author and illustrator were an indispensible introduction to many of the great popular scenic sites in the British Isles which were there to be enjoyed by Regency society.

My battered but much treasured copy of his ‘Tour of the Grand Junction Canal’ is a large paper copy with the original paper name plate which unfortunately lacks 7 of the original illustrations.Nevertheless the missing plates seem to be of the London area and are I think mostly of views other than the canal. As all the ‘up country ‘ views of the canal are present I am not too bothered about it.

The book was published in 1819 soon after the canal was opened throughout. Priced at £1 with uncoloured plates and £1.10shillings coloured. Today it sells for £500 - £1500.

So compare familiar well known canal scenes from your watery wanderings with the same views in a somewhat rawer state in 1819.!

Grove Lock ?

Batchworth Lock at Rickmansworth.

Linford Bridge.

Blisworth tunnel.

Regarding Blisworth tunnel ‘Hassell states that Mr Barnes of Banbury who was engaged as surveyor and who superintended and completed the tunnel was ‘strong minded but very illiterate’. He made all his calculations by ‘the strength of his memory’ and was at a loss to explain any of this to anyone else. Also ‘from being lowly educated he had no means of conveying to paper his designs, yet would cast up the most intricate accounts in his head without difficulty;.

Today 200 years later the tunnel is busier than ever. Not bad for a ‘lowly educated man’. More Pictures next time.

Braunston. Admiral Nelson Lock ?

Reservoir on Braunston Summit Level.

Weedon Embankment.

Three Locks. Stoke Hammond.

Maffers.

Tring reservoirs.

I thought blog readers might be interested in some recent prices paid at auction for canal collectables.

Measham bargeware can be had at all kinds of prices.A typical Barge teapot usually costs around £100 -£150 depending on condition and there are always plenty of these around. However you need to have very deep pockets when it comes to buying rarer Measham items like the very rare Toby Jug which sold very recently at auction for twice the pre sale estimate of £500.

Despite the fact that so called ‘Bargeware’ is thought to get its name from the boaters who were supposed to use it, I must admit that I have yet to see one inscribed with the name of a boat. The nearest items I have seen were a group of 3 items which sold in the same sale for £700.

The larger of the two mugs was inscribed ‘Navigation Inn 1887’ which gets us a bit nearer to the cut ! Interestingly the large two handled loving cup bears the motif ‘ Cap’n Salt Polran’ – a captain at sea or the steerer or No1 of a NB engaged in the salt trade?? I suppose we will never know.

Other rare Measham appearing at the same auction house in the last couple of years includes the twin spout teapot ,chamber pot and vase shown below which fetched nearly 8 times the pre sale estimate of £300 (£2,300)

Apart from the more usual Teapots,jugs,kettles,tobacco jars,sugar bowls etc one of the most unusual jugs in the shape of an owl and estimated at £300 exceeded this by 5 times selling for £1500 in 2011.

On the other hand a spitoon which I’ve never seen before sold for only £50 which must make it the Measham bargain of the year.

Some of you may have noticed the old Buckby Can on EBay recently which sold for something in excess of £130. It certainly was an old can, the wrought handle testified to that but the painting in my eyes left something to be desired in terms of quality and age.

Elsewhere and also on EBay a superb Canal postcard fetched what must be the record price for a single card of £156. It has to be said that it had all the right qualities that the collector is looking for namely –Subject,Location and rarity. It showed a superb reasonably close up view of a wide beam barge or trow on the detached portion of the Stroudwater at the junction of the canal and the R Severn. The boat is waiting to enter the lock for its journey down river whilst a man and a boy operate the lock . In sepia and around 1906 there cant be many of those around. Whilst the Stroudwater is at present being restored, this portion of the canal is now disused and the site of the junction lock into the river is on private land.

On the other hand a lovely sepia card from around 1922 showed a Sunday School outing from Linslade crammed into one of L B Faulkners boats. This fetched only £12 and was a bargain.

At one time I had a good canal card collection myself but sold them all years ago. With the sort of prices described above you need to be extremely ‘well heeled’ to say the least to collect everything. Personally I stick to books!!!

Children’s Canal Books in England.(Part 7)

Engraving of the week

The Flower of Gloster.

Engraving of the week

The Water Gipsies. (1930)

Croggans Roofing Asphalt. (Engraving of the week)

A Merry Christmas to all.

‘Isabel and the Sea’ by George Millar. (1948)

The first Englishman to sail across Europe?

‘Canals are Coming Back’

Forgotten pictures from 70 years ago.

Children on Englands Canals (1947)

Pickfords & Braunston (Canal Bill of Exchange).

The Waterway to London. (1869)

An American on English Canals.

Rare World War 2. Grand Union Women Recruits .

‘Give Him a treat’ Barge Women of the Midland Canals.1944.

A Tender Parting at the Grand Junction Canal.

A Tour of the Grand Junction. (1819)

More Hassell.

RECENT CANAL EPHEMERA AT AUCTION.