Wyvern Shipping boats fly the flag

Every time Granny reaches a different canal, I seem to see a different set of local hire fleets.  This is charming.  It'll be a dull canal system that has the same boats everywhere. 

(We are stretching that way with the near-national Alvechurch and Canaltime fleets; puhlease can you localise them, guys?)

The most noticeable fleet in the Milton Keynes area are the bright-blue boats of the Wyvern Shipping Co.  I've not been inside one of these boats, but the outsides are always immaculate and shiny, which certainly behoves confidence.

The other thing I notice about Wyvern boats is how almost every single darn one of 'em sports a flag, either front or back.  Does the company sell flags in their shop, or is it a compulsory condition of hiring? 

Inevitably (sigh) the most popular flag is the St George, now a football emblem, but some have had the Union Jack or the 'red duster'.  A few more have sported the Jolly Roger - I suspect those are the most law-abiding people.  Villains by nature don't draw attention to themselves  (hmm - click here to enlarge the picture at top, and see a suspicious character lurking inside the cabin amidships!).

(Update:  According to this page, Wyvern Shipping supply 4 1/2ft flagpoles and 'a small selection' of flags.  It's said to be 'especially popular with overseas customers', but I've yet to see anything except British flags of various stripes.  And that includes the Jolly Roger, the emblem of the Briton abroad for over three hundred years.)

It might be quite fun, though, for the Griffin family (who run the Wyvern Shipping Co.) to tally the statistics at the end of the season and seen if there's any correlation between the type of flags flown and misbehaviour, damage, cleanliness or tardiness in returning the boats.

Incidentally, according to the company's history page, the Griffin family only took over the business several years after its founding.  But I recall that the wyvern is a winged dragon very similar to the griffin, except with two legs instead of four.  Was it sheer coincidence that the Griffin family bought a business similarly named to themselves? 

Given the connection, I'm surprised Wyvern Shipping don't offer hirers heraldic flags; these are usually stuffed full with griffins and wyverns.  Most of us can probably claim descent from one dragon or another, I'll bet. My old school flag had a wyvern rampant as the emblem too, but they've demoted it in importance and made the colours most unheraldic since I left. Now it looks like a 'logo' and fit only to fly in jest, like when you are on holiday.

Comments

[John Griffin]

Yes it was coincidence that my father bought Wyvern Shipping. As a Wyvern and a Griffin are similar mythological animals we kept the name.
John Griffin.
Director Wyvern Shipping Co Ltd

[Andrew Read]

Every time I see a Wyvern boat, it reminds me of my very first narrowboat holiday in 1978 on their nb "Willow". I would trackpad but Blogspot doesn't support trackbacks. Maybe it's time to move.