 The snowdrops are over and the daffodils are out so it must be spring.
There are other signs of regeneration on the canal heritage front too, a
new magazine and a new exhibition, but it is a bit early to tell whether
this necessarily promises a glorious summer of success. Cold reality
might nip both in the bud.
The magazine is clumsily called NarrowBoat,-- yes,
spelt and spaced just like that, although the intention is actually to
cover a broader spectrum of waterway history and heritage. The first
issue has material about Severn barges and Ship Canal ships, an
historical survey of the Staffs and Worcester canal as well a detailed
article about the Thos.Clayton narrow boat company by Alan Faulkner and
an article about boat painting by me. For philosophical as well as
personal reasons I wish it every success. The more attention and
concentration that can be brought to bear on the surviving inheritance
from the age of real waterway history the better chance we have of
preserving that elusive inner spirit that inspired the early pioneers of
canal restoration sixty years ago. It is to be a quarterly publication,
selling at £4-95, and seems to my biased eye to be very good value
although the design needs tidying up. It hasn’t quite got the courage to
look strong, serious and sensible and its populist WaterwaysWorld
ownership is rather obvious with scattergun lettering all over the
cover. But God bless all who sail in her.
The new exhibition is the revamped display at the Boat
Museum, (soon to be renamed the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere
Port,) the result of an application to The Heritage Lottery Fund five
years ago. The plan is that this massive investment in new displays,
shop and café will generate a significant increase in visitors whose
numbers have been dropping badly in recent years as well as raising the
profile of the museum nationally. This will in turn generate more income
that will eventually find its way to the preservation of some of the
boat collection, those that can survive that long. It is a long term
plan with a scary number of variable unknowns along the way, but it is
the only plan we have at present so we have to bless this new launch
with our best wishes as well. The new exhibition should be substantially
complete by Easter, in time for the annual working boat gathering, so do
come and try the quality of the new goods.
At the time of writing the final effect is still
difficult to envisage. The majority of the work is done but few of the
actual exhibits are in place. What is clear however is the power of the
overall design, modern and clean limbed with lots of interactive
technology to play with. The design makes its own museum statement quite
unrelated to the old fashioned textual and historical qualities of its
subject and it will be very interesting to see how today’s audience will
react and interact with it. Indeed it is crucial that it does succeed.
The one major aspect that I have a personal difficulty
with is the inclusion of pleasure boating as a significant part of the
story, using valuable museum space to display private canal cruisers
when so much ‘proper’ water transport history remains to be documented
and preserved. The Amaryllis now forms very significant iconic display
in the upper gallery, a fine and well built example of one of a very
small class of pleasure cruisers designed and built at J.H.Taylor’s boat
yard in Chester in the early days of the Inland Waterways Association.
However she is very atypical of canal cruisers in general either of that
period or of the huge boatbuilding bubble of expansion that followed.
That story should more truthfully be told with Holt-Abbot plywood hire
cruisers or Springer steel hulls, but that sort of mundane truth is not
so attractive as varnished mahogany. So be it. I have to grudgingly
accept that the leisure industry is also now seen as canal history,
although I will never do it with good grace.
I suppose this tang of bitterness and despondency has
been heightened by another recent job of mine, working in the plywood
and plastic atmosphere of a modern hire boat base where historical
quality doesn’t have much chance against commercial expediency, all far
removed from the hallowed space of a museum or the nostalgic pages of a
heritage magazine. This is the real world of waterways as experienced by
most canal customers today, and the working environment for most modern
canal operatives, the boat fitters and hire boat cleaners, the staff in
the chandlers and the pen pushers in management. Long gone are those
early days of hire boats when we were trying to introduce our customers
to the peace, quiet and history of the canals in the hope that they
would become enthusiasts and help to save the waterway heritage. Now the
canals are there to service the survival of the leisure industry and all
these new jobs and commercial investment. The nagging worry is that the
old boats are now there to simply service the museum industry instead of
the museums servicing the boats. |
