Barges
When I was at school, I discovered and loved Cargoes, a poem by John Masefield:
Quinquereme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.
Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.
Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.
(Salt-Water Poems, © 1902).
How could you not love the images. A cargo for distant Ophir with ivory, peacocks, sandalwood, sweet white wine. A galleon returning with diamonds, gold and other jewels – probably plundered for another ship, out there on main. And then that lovely British coaster, dirty, carrying dirty industrial materials – and fighting its way up the English Channel. Nostalgic, vivid, and somehow pulling off the trick of making that British coaster just as noteworthy as a quinquereme or a galleon.
The sailing ships of old were romantic and exciting., especially when they appeared in films packed with swashbuckling sailors. There’s the Black Pearl, the pirate ship from the Pirates of the Caribbean film series, captained by Jack Sparrow. The Black Pearl was originally a merchant vessel named the Wicked Wench, sunk and resurrected by Davy Jones, renamed, and with its new name became infamous for its black sails and hull. It was a symbol of freedom for Jack Sparrow, known for being “nigh uncatchable, and a symbol for freedom on the high seas.
The Black Pearl was far more exciting than the captain of that legendary ghost ship The Flying Dutchman, who once found himself struggling to round the Cape of Good Hope during a ferocious storm. He swore that he would succeed even if he had to sail until Judgment Day. The Devil heard his oath and took him up on it; the Flying Dutchman was condemned to stay at sea forever. Even the Hispaniola, the ship on which Jim Hawkins sailed to Treasure Island, plays a minor part in that adventure. In contrast to these, the Black Pearl was rather more exciting as it kept sinking and reappearing!
Against such alternatives, Masefield’s short poem provides us with a brief but vivid commentary on the history of ships, shipping, consumption, and empire. Much had changed. If Masefield is to be believed, once ships had exotic names and sailed through idyllic climes to and from faraway destinations with strange and marvellous cargoes. However, by the turn of the 20th Century, dirty, polluting ships made their way through bad weather in the English Channel, with a cargo not only produced in the same country it was shipped to, but was cheap and plentiful—a cargo for the masses instead of the kings and queens of yesterday. These three snapshots offer us both the lushness of poetry, and an insight into change.
I suspect that even that British coaster is just about lost to change. Today, if you travel by sea, one of the more familiar sights among the huge cruise liners are container ships. Massive, slow-moving, they always seem top-heavy. Cargo ships provide the essential underpinning for trade, and these ships can be separated into two broad categories by the goods they transport: bulk cargo and break bulk cargo. Bulk cargo refers to material in either liquid or granular form, and includes such goods are crude oil, grain, coal, and gravel. Bulk cargo is usually dropped or poured into a ship’s hold. Break-bulk cargoes, in contrast, are transported in packages, and are generally manufactured goods.
Much has changed since Masefield’s day. Up until the 1950s, break-bulk items required manual loading, lashing, unlashing and unloading from the ship one piece at a time. The only interesting variations prior to this time came through the development of standardized load units, which I learnt were first used in the late 18th century for shipping in England. In 1766, James Brindley, an engineer, was asked to assist in the transportation of coal, and designed the box boat “Starvationer” with 10 wooden containers, which operated between Alford and Manchester via the Bridgewater Canal.
The idea was slow to catch on, but by the 1930s ships were used to carry the baggage of luxury passenger train customers in containers from London to Paris on flat rail cars. In February 1931, the first container ship in the world was launched; the Autocarrier, owned by the Southern Railway, with 21 slots for containers. Slowly the idea progressed, and the earliest recognised container ships appeared after the Second World War. They were converted oil tankers. In 1951, the first purpose-built container vessels began operating in Denmark and in the USA between Seattle and Alaska. Wikipedia records the first commercially successful container ship was the Ideal X, developed by Malcolm McLean, which on its first voyage on April 26, 1956, carried 58 metal containers between Newark, New Jersey and Houston, Texas.
It marked the beginning of a revolution in modern shipping, and from then on, progress accelerated. By 1964, Adelaide Steamships had launched the world’s first fully cellular, purpose-built container ship. This was the critical step in eliminating requirements for the individual hatches, holds and other storage dividers. The hull of a typical container ship is similar to an airport hangar, or a huge warehouse, which is divided into individual holding cells, using vertical guide rails. These cells are designed to hold cargo containers, typically constructed of steel, though some are made from aluminium, fiberglass or plywood.
Today, about 90% of non-bulk non-worldwide goods are transported by container, with around 50,000 container ships. Containers vary in size, carrying anything from, 1,000 to 3,000 cubic feet (28 to 85 m3) of cargo, with the result each can move up to about 64,000 pounds, (29,000 kg), at a time. Global maritime container traffic is now around 160 Million TEUs (estimated to be more than 3 bn tons of goods). TEU, the Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit, is the standard unit of measurement used for cargo capacity in shipping, particularly for container ships and ports. It is based on the volume of a standard 20-foot long container.
All very interesting, but my fascination isn’t with ships of old, pirate ships, British working ships or with container ships. No, it’s with barges.
Just recently, I saw some Rhine barges. Many of these are flat-bottomed, non-self-propelling vessels that are pulled (and can be pushed) by tugboats. The ones I saw were the powered versions, the flat bottomed design allowing them to deal with falling river levels. Many of these barges are very large, far from easy to manoeuvre, and often rather slow moving. They don’t share the immediately attractive features of many other varieties of shipping, but they are curiously hypnotic.
However, my enjoyment in looking at barges is really an exercise in nostalgia. My childhood home was close to the Grand Union Canal. Barges, known in those days as ‘narrowboats’ were the vehicles for commerce on the canal from the late 1700s until the 1970s. Initially horse-drawn, they were one of the most important ways to transport raw materials and finished goods . It was competition from railways and the growth of road traffic in logistics that led to the decline of traditional commercial barges in the mid-20th century, but when I was young I was just in time to see the horses disappear, and the transition to motorized and steam-powered vessels take place
That transition had begun in 1934 on the Grand Union Canal, when a company was formed to modernize the waterway, allowing the introduction of new, larger boats and modernizing locks to accommodate these wider barges, an initiative supported by the government in the hope of making the canal more competitive with railways. There was some respite from the. decline in usage when the canal and its barges played a vital role in transporting war supplies during WWII. Women even took on the work of operating the barges, as many men were in the armed forces. Despite this, traffic continued to decline after the war ended. The last regular long-distance cargo service ended in 1970. While some traffic continued into the 1980s, mainly sustained by the transport of aggregates, the rise of containerization and growth in road transport led to the commercial decline of the Grand Union Canal.
Today Britain’s canals are no longer the functional working canals of former centuries. Instead, these water highways provide visitors and holidaymakers an opportunity to enjoy the tranquillity of the countryside, taking a barge holiday. A few professional boatmen still live in communities on canal boats throughout Britain – gliding easily through the locks, keeping their self-decorated boats in good nick and going about their daily lives. This is documented in Life on Britain’s Canals and Waterways : a history of the canals of Britain and their people, (denhamhistory.online).
A part of my childhood, I wasn’t aware back then that waterways and canals had been a lifeline for British industry and agriculture for a very long time. Indeed, canals can be traced as far back as Roman times when the Romans used canals for irrigation purposes and to connect existing waterways with one another. Indeed, Romans built the Foss Dyke in Lincolnshire for drainage and navigation and the Caer Dyke around AD 50, shortly after the Roman invasion of Britain in 43AD by the armies of Emperor Claudius.
What did I see? I was watching the so-called “slow” boats on the canals, which often worked twelve to fourteen hours each day, and only in some cases tied up on Sundays. On the narrow canals these boats were operated by one man and a boy, occasionally two men, and later one man and his family. Slow boats were slow in another sense, as they didn’t operate on a strict timetable and would often wait until they had a full load before starting out. They were distinguished from from the faster, lighter so-called “fly” boats which were first introduced in Scotland in 1830 to provide and “express” service for some commodities. No, I liked the slow boats!
The narrowboat was less than 7 feet in width and could be pulled by a single horse. They were designed for the waterways, traditionally 21 m (70ft) long, just short enough to fit in the locks, which were usually 22 m (72 ft) long. Most carried a load of approximately 25 tons. They were usually horse drawn up until around World War I, and the steam engines which some boats used were considered to take up too much space. However, diesel engines began to take over boats in the 1920s, and after the Second world war, horses were hardly ever seen. The fly boat trade tended to be concentrated in the hands of big public carriers such as Pickfords who operated large fleets of boats and employed many men and horses. After 1840 much of this trade was lost to the railway companies, and the last company, Fellows, Morton & Clayton failed in 1948 – though its name and livery can still to be found, rather nostalgically, on boats on the canals today.
To protect and deliver the cargo safely and as quickly as possible, the boatman captain needed to steer a barge and keep a horse moving on the towpath. The faster he got the cargo to its destination, the quicker he got paid. The boat captain could earn extra money if he (and/or his family) could unload the cargo as well. A woman who lived on board the barge would be expected to steer the boat occasionally and sometimes lead the horse on the towpath. Reformers sought to remove female and child labour from the boats, concerned with sanitation, morality and education rather than working conditions. The number of women working on canal boats increased during the First World War to make up the gaps in the labour force which were created by men leaving to join the armed forces. The number of men working independently on their own account appeared to double after the first World War. At the same time the female labour force increased by 50 percent, and the proportion of women remained high until after WWII.
For a boy, the barge and life travelling along the English canals seemed attractive (and perhaps I thought it would have meant I could avoid going to school. Did I think about the downside – no Meccano, no Eagle comic, little free time, and cramped living quarters? I think what attracted me was the idea of freedom, always travelling. I never whent on a barge, not even when barge holidays began to become available, but I suspect that sense of wandering that appealed to me was part of the source of the desire to move often in my adult life.
