British Pathe newsreel archive is worth exploring

Max Sinclair drew my attention to a short clip of the IWA's national Stourbridge Rally in 1962. 

It's part of the amazing British Pathe News film archive, available to browse online. 

Max says nostalgically:

I am an archive relic now.  Jocelyn and I nearly polished Vesta's tiller away.  A happy but wet Stourbridge memory.

Blink and you'll miss it, as they say.  In the clip they appear 10 seconds in, polishing brass frantically for about 3 secs of screentime.

The caption says:

Various shots of canal boats being cleaned, chrome being polished and ironwork being painted.  Boats are decorated with fake flowers and bunting. 

The highly decorated boats mooch up and down the river [sic].  Local mayors are taken for a trip.  Narrator mentions the Inland Waterways Association and their bid to keep the canals open. 

... Game is played where men in two rowing boats try to knock each other into the water - a jousting match.

The 'jousting match' is played in swimming trunks, and without lifejackets.  They seem awfully underdressed by modern standards, and I daresay if such a performance was allowed at all now, they'd have to wear helmets, life jackets and googles, and have their stomachs pumped afterwards.  The death rate in those days must have been worse than the Burma Railway.

Once you've seen that, you might like to explore 'related records' in this trove of old newsreels.  

I also enjoyed the 2 minutes of the 1961 National Aylesbury  Rally, which also features someone I took at first to be Max himself on the vintage inspection launch Lady Hatherton - ushering a donkey inside!   Max reminisces:

No, that was the magnificent David Hutchings... They lived a chaotic life on board Lady Hatherton.  He was a great help to me in starting the Droitwich restoration.

(Today Lady Hatherton sits serenely in a covered dock at Penkridge on the Staffs & Worcs Canal.  A more improbable donkey stable you'll never see.)

Two other fascinating clips show an amphibious caravan from 1955 - a predecessor to the Caraboat - and a boat show in Little Venice in 1963, which includes sailing and speedboats in Browning Pool!

My, that last clip gave me pause.  In fact they all do.  They really make me wonder how tight-bottomed and intolerant we are nowadays about boating, and how much freer it all seemed then.

Thank you, Max!

Comments

[Paul Savage (NB Adreva)]

What did you think was not possible Geld?

[geld]

Hammer! Das hätte ich gar nicht für möglich gehalten ;-)

[Hugh McKnight]

I am one of "the two men" in the jousting match: the one on the left. We believed in extreme measures if they were calculated to save the canals. In fact, I cut my foot quite badly during this activity, but I was very brave, hardly complained at all and did not want to bother the local hospital. But then I was 19 at the time. I had travelled in a 12ft open boat all the way from Shepperton on Thames to Stourbridge to this, one of the most exciting events of my far from unexciting life. See my recollections of early IWA Nationals in the August 2010 issue of "Canal Boat & Inland Waterways " magazine. HUGH McKNIGHT

[Amy]

Is it just the film being speeded up slightly, or do those boats seem to be going *REALLY* fast? Perhaps that was the norm?

[Dave Edwards]

I love the reference to "car-choked roads" in the Aylesbury clip. My recollection of 1961 is that about one family in ten had a car - now it's four cars per family...

[Alice]

Ah, those were the days, all you needed was a Bedford van welded to half a pontoon and there it was... a boat! Everyone mucked in and it's not just 'rose coloured spectacles'...people WERE nicer :-)

[Martin Ward]

Treasure indeed - thanks. Did you see the BW working pair featured on
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=710

[Brian]

I think you may have your links wrong, try http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=42622 for Aylesbury