Leeds & Liverpool Canal Boats

Leeds & Liverpool 'short boats' - by Tony Lewery.

The cargo boats that developed on the cross-country canal from Leeds to Liverpool are in an interesting category of their own. The canal was started in 1770 and opened in stages (although it was not properly completed for over 40 years,) but it was built to an unusual gauge, considering the areas it linked together. The locks were only built large enough to accommodate the Yorkshire 'Keels' of the Aire, Calder and Humber rivers and were thus too short for the average size Mersey 'Flat' or any Midland narrow boat. It is a long navigation and climbs steeply into the hillsides of Lancashire and as water supply to the summit was always going to be difficult, it was built for vessels drawing no more than four feet. The canal barges that evolved from all these constraints were the Leeds and Liverpool 'short boats', about sixty feet long and fourteen feet wide combining styles of construction from both east and west of the Pennines.
Abopve Right - George of Wigan, the only surviving transom sterned short boat, now preserved and displayed at the Boat Museum, Ellesmere Port.
Most short boats were carvel built wooden craft, fat but efficient with a fine graceful run aft bringing the water smoothly up to a big wooden rudder. Some were 'round sterned' with all the planks pulled in and fixed to one vertical sternpost, but many of the horse boats especially on the Yorkshire side were built with a large square transom stern. The wooden round sterned motor boat Jumbo photographed near Liverpool in 1971 when it was still in traffic.
They did not swim quite as well, but they could carry more and afford a slightly bigger living cabin below the deck. Unfortunately there is only a single example of these once common workhorse in existence, and even that is not on its home water for the George is now preserved at the Boat Museum at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire. Steel short boats were being built into the 1950's and most of these survive, although scattered around the system. One is even near London after a coastal passage, but several are to be seen in or near Manchester, where the Leeds and Liverpool canal proper is joined to the Bridgewater Canal by the Leigh Branch. Steel barge Ambush, built for the Liverpool end of the canal in the 1930's and still in commission as a carrying boat, photographed at Worsley on the Bridgewater Canal in 1999.

These Leeds & Liverpool short boats also developed an elaborate and unusual style of decorative paintwork, quite distinct from that of other canal craft.

Panels of strong colour with contrasting borders carried intricate painted scrollwork and deeply shaded lettering, and even the guard irons at bow and stern were painted with repeat patterns of stripes, triangles and little fleur-de-lis. Pictures appeared as well but not as constrained in subject matter as the 'castle' convention of the narrow boats.

Cottages, sailing ships, vases of flowers, horses, windmills - anything and everything that appealed to popular taste could be incorporated within the strong visual framework of the painted panelling, with each corner filled in as a quadrant. Most of all however, it was the insistent painted scrollwork that gave the short boats their special regional character, a tradition that is in grave danger of being entirely lost.

Traditional Leeds and Liverpool paintwork on a wooden barrel carried on deck and used for storing fresh water.

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Leeds & Liverpool Canal Boats

Leeds & Liverpool 'short boats' - by Tony Lewery.

The cargo boats that developed on the cross-country canal from Leeds to Liverpool are in an interesting category of their own.

These Leeds & Liverpool short boats also developed an elaborate and unusual style of decorative paintwork, quite distinct from that of other canal craft.