Memories of the Canal.
To try and convince someone today what it was like on the Gloucester Sharpness Canal in the early 1950’s is unbelievable, the response is bewilderment or you are making it up. But I will try not to.
For the first twenty years of my life everyone referred to it as the Berkeley Canal which is where it should have ended up before they called it a day at Sharpness
Modern Commercial status made it the Gloucester and Sharpness Ship canal. All day wherever you went there was a chance of seeing a boat or a train of barges in sight, approaching or going away. Every bridge was a double wooden structure which required the resident bridge man and one travelling bridgeman who rode the tow path on a bicycle. Their territory would depend on the volume of returning traffic and at busy times several mobile bridge men would be required over the sixteen mile length.
Tugs, these were the workhorses of the canal I may recall at least six Addie, Iris , Mayflower. Primrose, Resolute and Stanegarth . They would tow anything from a single barge to a string of four or five. These strings were usually all the same, four or five timber barges from Mousell and Chadbournes, lighters stacked so high with deals that the helmsman needed an added platform to see over the top. “Need a bit of timber for a project?” “we will leave a couple below Parkend for you.” Mud Hoppers carrying the endless quantities of silt from Gloucester to go back into the Severn. The dry good barges like Severn Conveyor with aluminium ingots for Worcester or Seedless Raisins for Gloucester and wheat for the docks. Timing of these strings was vital. The age old battle of canals continued with the first at the bridge gets the route the loser waits and the barges go all over the place in the wind. Amongst the melee the winner puts on full power to come through and adds to the confusion. In bad winters the tugs would have extra thick steel bow plates added and used as icebreakers.
Two small regular canal craft were the “Pisgah” taking grain right upon the River Avon to Partridge’s mill at Pershore. She was last seen as a Restaurant Boat on the Seine and The “Kyles” built on the Clyde in 1872 was 80 years old when working the canal. Still afloat today she is part of the Scottish Heritage Fleet. In the 1950’s she was taking gas oil waste from the gas works at Hempsted and dumping it in the Bristol Channel. You would not do that to-day. Waterways had their own fleet of “Severn “ Boats one of more recent was “Severn Stream” used for Grain carriage to Reynolds Mill in Gloucester.
Coasters appeared on a weekly basis from The Reginald Keeron taking Austin cars to Ireland in component form. Loading on the North Quay in Gloucester the cargo was a tax dodge with it being cheaper to import cars into Ireland in bits rather than as a whole car. Hugh Shaw’s Arlingham based “Eldorita” came occasionally as well for surveys in the dry dock at Gloucester. Granite road sets came by the thousands of tons to Llanthony Quay. A few coasters were still steam powered although oil fired. A big beast was SS Condority with graced the canal infrequently.
But the real kings of the Canal were the tankers predominantly Harkers with their Knottingley registered boats all with the suffix “H” after their names which were almost all “Dales”. “Nancy H” being one of the exceptions. Following them were the Regent Fleet of much smaller Tankers , Bristol Registered and some built by Charles Hill to go right up river to Stourport. These boats were all prefixed “Regent” “Regent Jane”, “ Regent Linnet”, “Regent Swallow”, “Regent Jill” etc. etc. .Much later BP introduced tankers to the canal and later still Bowker and King took much larger tankers to Quedgeley and Monk Meadow
At no point along the canal can I remember pleasure craft being moored, that would have been far too dangerous. The bit of the Stroudwater Navigation at the Junction had couple of Motor torpedo boats moored together with a couple of yachts, a few narrowboats and some famous residential moorers. Peter Scott kept his narrow boat”Beatrice” at Slimbridge as accommodation for researchers visiting the Wildfowl Trust
A popular place some of us would frequent was the “Cowsdrink” a sandy inlet on the Frampton side of the canal about halfway between Saul lodge and Frampton church. If no boats were in sight then you needed to know if one was coming. Forget your AIS Automatic Identification System, your Satellite Navigation or Marine Traffic app on your mobile… two sticks is all you need. As the wave lapped up the sand, place stick one at the high point………give it five minutes and do the same operation again with stick two. If the second stick is higher than the first stick then a boat is coming if the second stick is lower the boat is going away…go on home. The canal was such the displacement caused by the boats was easily read.
The memory is of a very busy canal that provided so much to the community and work for so many, How Many? Well lets do a rough count:
15 bridge men plus reliefs 20, six mobile bridge men 26, Two maintenance gangs of six 38, fifteen on the tugs,53 lightermen ten 63, workshops six 69, Office staff ten 79,
Harkers would have at least forty 119, Regents twenty 139, and many more I have missed. Today they are all missed.