Just in case your interested & feeling flush!!!
This boat side panel is for auction at a U S Auction house in Maine –30th Jan. Estimate $500.
Prompts the obvious question how/ why the US. An interesting story here perhaps. From the registration No – anyone know the boat?
3 comments:
That will be Chiltern:
CHILTERN 09/1946 W/U 352 BHM 1627
As her original 9 hp Bolinder engine was not powerful enough to tow a butty, she worked as a single motor. She was later, possibly after nationalisation in 1948, fitted with the 3 cylinder Russell Newbury Engine. In 1950 Chiltern was inspected, at East 9, for the Docks and Inland Waterways Executive (subsequently renamed British Waterways). At the time her master was J. Bradley of Marple in Cheshire. The boat was registered for 3 adults in the aft cabin but, at the time, was only occupied by the master. The Ashby coal run was her last commercial journey. Chas Hardern, aged 17, purchased the boat in 1971. Growing up by the Llangollen Canal, Chas had, from a relatively young age, had his heart set on working with the old commercial boats. He had learnt to competently steer Dick Edgley�s boat (the ex Mersey/Weaver boat �Dorset�) around Henhull Bridge and expertly manage its hot bulb engine. Under the company heading of Chas Hardern & Co. (his parents were the �Co.�), Chiltern was converted, at Beeston Castle Wharf, to a camping boat accommodating 12 customers. For a while, she worked in tandum with �Dorset�. In 1978, Chas brought Chiltern to Ellesmere Port for the Easter gathering of commercial boats. Used again for transporting cargo, she left the port loaded up with newspapers that had been collected by the Wirral Branch of the Friends of the Earth from various centres throughout the area. Her destination was the TPT Paper Mill on the Peak Forest Canal at Romily. Within a couple of weeks, Chiltern was purchased by the North West Museum of Inland Navigation for �4,000 and in 1985, with grant funding, Chiltern had an extensive rebuild to her stern end and cabin. At Ellesmere Port Boat Museum, where it currently resides in a disgusting state and is slowly rotting away to nothing, so much for a museum being there to protect our national heritage. Pics FMC photos
You did ask!
Andy
Thanks Andy.What a shame.I knew Chas and his love for the old boats he must be really p----- off about that. Still wonder about the panel being in the US.
Rather late, but this looks to be a wrong 'un if its being presented as a genuine cabin side.
Reasons -
FMC never had roses on the cabin side - there was an underline with dots in the middle where the roses are, thus ---- o0o ----
FMC had the Registration number on a black background
The scrolls are wrong - Gen FMC were more powerful and simpler
FMC never registered boats at Oldbury. Thomas Clayton did, but the highest Oldbury registration was their Adder in 1952 (Oldbury No 25)
Chiltern was registered at Birmingham No 1627. Her Fleet number 352 would have been on the engine room side.
Post a Comment