Basingstoke Canal houseboat wreck

In my earlier posts about the BCN narrowboats which became Basingstoke Canal houseboats, Ray Oakhill mentions one old boat which had sunk when on its way out of the canal and rumoured to headed to London.

Now Ray has kindly sent a couple of photos of that poor old boat resting on the bottom.  He writes: 

It is now on the Wey Navigation at Woodham Junction and I expected that it would have to be scrapped by the National Trust.

Talking to the lengthsman this week, it seems that it is going to be towed away by the Basingstoke Canal Society, so it won't be a drain on our licence fee after all - it makes a change!

I'm not sure that just sitting there in the mud is 'a drain on the licence fee' - whichever navigation authority is charging the fee.  But I guess its position under a pipe bridge means it must be moved at some stage, if only for safety or maintenance reasons.

Ray Oakhill's photos here clearly show how the 1960 superstructure was wider than the gunwale of the original hull, helping to create that greater sense of 'space' inside.

I used to turn my snobby little nose up at seeing such old wrecks, but these days I'm rather pleased to see them. For one thing, they make my own boat feel smart.  And anyway, they are picturesque and charming.  

If I owned my own canal, like the 18th Century Duke of Bridgewater, I'd install sham wrecks, a bit like this one, only without all the tarpaulins or plastic sheeting.

The 18th Century saw a fashion for 'sham ruins' in the landscape.  From the Macclesfield Canal near Scholar Green you can see a good example at Mow Cop, built by the owner of the nearby Rode Hall, and for little other reason than to view from his garden and in summer to ride up and look back down on his house.

Actually, for greatest amusement a sham wreck needs to have a story behind it.  I'd first make my wreck a genuine liveaboard boat and hire a hermit to stay aboard, for a year and a day, or maybe seven years, just to give it a 'lived-in' feel.  And they'd be forbidden from maintaining it or from speaking to my staff.

(That's what the landowners of old would sometimes do with their follies.  It took a special sort of character to undertake that kind of contract, but in desperate times they had no shortage of takers.  If the hermit had some sort of distinction - say he was deaf mute or a dwarf - it would add to the charm for the local squire.) 

Then, over the years as my wreck fell into ruin it would bear within its shell the ghost of a genuine life.  I could point it out to guests proudly as we cruised past on our yearly inspection of the canal. 

"That wreck?  Oh that!  That's where my hermit used to live," I'd say.  "What a character.  Never spoke to a soul for three years, would hide whenever someone approached. 

"Then one day he just disappeared.  We never found what happened to him.  But local children say the wreck is haunted, and my lengthsmen won't go near it.  So there it stays."

Comments

[Roger]

The boat has now been dealt with. Today it has been raised and its contents and superstructure removed for disposal. Tomorrow it is being craned out and cut up.

See: http://www.riverweynavigations.co.uk/news/news01.html

[Will Chapman]

My favourite 'wreck' is the one that has been occupied for many years between, I think, Richmond and Twickenham bridges on the Thames.

I've been meaning to take a photo for years (we used to live in Twickenham) but but have so far not done so through a mixture of not wishing to invade on the occupant's privacy and not having camera at the ready when we cruise by.