Queen

Let’s Save our Graceful Queen

Queen is one of our most important boats as far as historical interest goes. She is now probably the oldest surviving wooden motor boat, built in 1917, and her hull is of a style that went out of fashion in the 1920s and 30s as boats started to be built more for carrying capacity than for speed.

She’s a bit of a mystery. We don’t know which boatyard built her. We know she was gauged as Walsall Queen on 23rd June 1917. Her butty was called Queen of the Ocean, an odd name for a boat based in Walsall!

Walsall Queen was built for a company called Hildick & Hildick, malleable iron fittings manufacturers, along with a small fleet of similar boats. It seems that they carried coal to Brentford, but we don’t know why.

Originally her engine was a single cylinder semi diesel British Kromhaut. Kromhaut were a Dutch company but they set up a works at Southampton to assemble engines for sale in Britain, thus evading some customs charges.

In 1924 most, if not all, of the fleet were sold to Harvey Taylor of Aylesbury. Queen was collected from Walsall and taken to Aylesbury by 22 year old Jack Monk. The original engine was replaced with a ‘water drip’ Bolinder and the name shortened to Queen.

In about 1980 I got to know Jack when he was running camping boats on the River Soar. He had fond memories of Queen, his first motor boat. He liked the engine, which, he said, went like the clappers when you turned the water on. The ‘water drip’ or E type Bolinder is the original design, dating back to 1908. It injects water into the cylinder along with the fuel to smooth out the combustion.

Most of the Bolinders in use today are of the later BM series which have an adjustable injection nozzle and dispense with the need for water injection. 

Later in her career at Harvey Taylor Queen was skippered by Arthur Bray. Jack and Arthur were great rivals, always trying to be first to load, first to empty and willing to carry a ton or two more than anyone else. Either of them would run all night if necessary to make sure they stayed ahead. Jack once showed me a photo of his butty, Dabchick loaded so deep that the flush from the motor is flowing over the foredeck and hitting the deckboard. In 1947, with trade dying after the war, Queen was laid aside. She was rescued in 1949 and became a pleasure boat, owned by Bernard Barker for 38 years and kept at Ashwood Basin on the Staffs & Worcs.

When I heard in 1994 that Jack’s old boat was sunk and abandoned at Denham I was determined to save it. At the time Forget me Not was still on the bank at Guide Bridge, but nearly ready for her launch that summer. British Waterways were happyfor us to take Queen away as it saved them the trouble of smashing her up and disposing of the bits.

With pumps borrowed from everywhere we camped in the woods overnight, then pumped her out in the morning. Luckily there turned out to be no major leaks. She’d simply sunk through neglect. Over the following 6 weeks relays of volunteers hitch hiked her North to Runcorn, where most of our boats were then kept. 1997 saw her towed to Ashton by Forget me Not and in 2001 we got a grant from The Waterways Trust to encase her sides in chalico and tin. Since then she’s been waiting for us to get our act together. Hazel, which we’d had since 1988, took priority. Lots of concrete, clay, rags and expanding foam have been used to deal with leaks and solar panels help to keep her bilge pump batteries charged. Armchair experts have often been critical of the Wooden Canal Boat Society for collecting so many boats. The fact is that if we hadn’t intervened there would be nothing left to restore. Another criticism is that our boats don’t always look pretty.

The fact is that we’ve got good at saving boats and stopping them falling apart. Pretty paint and brasswork comes later. I get rather fed up of the negativity that hangs around traditional boats, always criticising rather than lending a hand.

Rant over!

So. what’s needed to get Queen back into service? We have the boatyard, though it needs a good sort out. We have tar, pitch, oakum,

bottom spikes, a Bolinder E type engine and a Bolinder fuel tank. We need several big oak trees, a couple of boatbuilders (I’m probably only available on a consultative basis) and about £100-150,000.

Of course, some will say that’s impossible. The same was said when I started rebuilding Lilith back in 1974.

Chris.

When Hazel sank and had to be raised during the Tameside Canals Festival in 2007 a certain gentleman in a very posh boat went on an online canal forum making out that we were all a lot of drunkards and declared that if we got that boat restored he’d show his whatsit on the town hall steps. In 2013 the restored Hazel splashed down into the Huddersfield canal. He kept very quiet. Sadly, the gentleman has since gone to meet his maker, so we’ll never have the dubious pleasure of seeing his exposed whatsit.

Anyone who would like to help in any way please

The Queen - Chapter 2 - Sept 2026

In about 1980 I got to know Jack Monk who, in his late 70s, was running a pair of camping boats based on the River Soar. He told many tales of his life on the cut, such as how he was sold to a steamer crew when he was barely more than a toddler, or how he worked barges carrying supplies on the French canals in the Great War. Jack earned a place in canal lore as being unstoppable, able to carry a ton or two more than anyone else dared and always staying ahead of everyone else, even if it meant running all night One boat that had a special place in his memory was Queen. She was his first motor boat, and he took to engine power enthusiastically. In 1924 he  collected her from Walsall and delivered her to Aylesbury for his employers, Harvey Taylor. They replaced the original engine, a British Kromhaut, with an E type (water drip) Bolinder. Jack loved that engine and reckoned it was better than the later models. Most of the Bolinders in use today are the later BM model. These have variable nozzle injectors to control the combustion, whereas the E type, a design dating back to 1908, has water injection to smooth the burn, hence the name water drip. Jack reckoned that Queen went like the clappers as soon as you turned the water on. A few years later I read an article in Waterways World by Bernard Barker who then owned Queen. He was clearly finding the upkeep of an aging wooden boat challenging and speculated about the possibility of forming an organisation to preserve some of them. I was having similar ideas and in 1987 me and a few friends started what was then known as the Wooden Canal Craft Trust.

It puzzles me now that I made no attempt to contact Mr Barker. I suppose my time was too taken up with preparations to start restoring restoring Forget me Not. I know I thought about it, but, I never made the move.

Mr Barker reluctantly made the decision to replace Queen with a new steel boat. The old craft was allowed to sink, back where she started, in Walsall. A white knight came to the rescue, promising to take the old boat away for restoration. She was towed to Rickmansworth for a docking to cure the worst of the leaks. The conversion was removed and replaced with imitation cloths. The back cabin was painted in early Fellows Morton & Clayton colours.

There’s a false narrative that follows Queen around. It claims that she is the old FMC steamer called Queen. I imagine that this was perhaps thought to increase the boat’s value. FMC Queen was broken up in 1911, 6 years before this Queen was gauged. You only need to look at the shape of the bow to see that she’s not a Josher. Rather prettier in my biased view!

I’m told that there is a photograph in circulation of the boat ,when new, sporting a funnel. I’ve not seen the photo but it has been given as evidence that she was once steam powered. In fact it was not uncommon for early motor boats to have a steamship type funnel, though they usually didn’t last long. Even the modern image conscious Grand Union fitted some of their motors with funnels, albeit of a streamlined shape.

Personally I think the fact that she’s one of the earliest surviving motor boats is far more interesting. Some time in the 1990s Queen was sold again. Rumour has it that she was exchanged for a camper van. The new owners did something that a wooden boat owner must never do! They went on holiday. There is no more certain way of upsetting a wooden boat.

Just to demonstrate how lonely she was feeling, Queen sank. She went down in deep water a little way above Denham Deep Lock in Buckinghamshire. Her owners tried to raise her but, with the gunnels well under water they had little chance. That was in the autumn of 1993. During the winter gales a tree fell on her. More ominously, British Waterways started fixing section 8 notices to her. The towpath telegraph eventually got the message to Guide Bridge where Forget me Not was in the final stages of her restoration. When I learned that Jack’s old boat was in danger of an unpleasant encounter with a dredger I got in touch with the BW office at Tring. A few days later a British Waterways official met me at Tring station and drove me down to Denham in his car. The old boat was a sorry sight, and was clearly not going to be an easy job to raise. The BW man was quite keen to donate her. This was probably not altruism or a concern to save a valuable piece of canal history. It was going to cost money to break up and remove the wreck. Theoretically BW could call on the owner to pay for this, but, the chances of finding them and getting them to pay up were virtually zero. If a bunch of young idiots from the North could get her up and take her away, so much the better.

The next thing to do was a lot of telephonic begging, directed at anyone who might own a pump. The Ashton Packet Boat Co agreed to lend us their Coverntry Godiva fire pump. Braunston Marina said we could borrow a small but incredibly powerful Honda pump, and Simon Greer came up with two propane powered 2 inch pumps. Enough to raise the Titanic!

Early one morning, in the first days of March 1994 my rattly old Lada set off down the motorway, packed with people and towing a trailer laden with pumps, pipes, scaffold boards and plastic sheeting. We detoured to Braunston to collect the extra pump, then on to Denham Country Park, who had kindly consented to overnight parking for us. We had been promised the use of a gazebo to sleep in, but when the owners saw our motley crew they changed their minds! Our equipment was quickly unloaded and set it up in the dusk. Luckily it was a dry night so we wrapped ourselves in sleeping bags and bedded down in last Autumn’s leaf fall.

At first light in the morning we were up, some more eagerly than others. The scaffold planks and plastic sheeting were used to make adam round the forward well where the gunnels were 8 inches under water. More plastic sheeting was tacked along the sides to be drawn into any holes that might exist, thus blocking them. We started the pumps and soon water was flying everywhere. Somebody had brought a wet suit, so he jumped into the fore end and started bucketing. The little Honda, perched on the roof, was pumping too well for its own good as the equal and opposite reaction of the exiting water nearly dislodged it.

The Coventry Godiva, powered by a Hillman Imp engine, was shifting more water than all the rest, until it stopped. I desperately cranked it until it started, primed, ran for a while, then stopped again. After repeating this procedure a couple more times I noticed that the boat was rising. The gunnels were now above water and we could leave the small pumps to empty the rest. The next concern was that there may be troublesome leaks to attend to.

However, as the small pumps cleared out the last of the water it became clear that she was pretty watertight. Any leaks were small enough for a little electric bilge pump and float switch to deal with. The problem now was to get Queen moved the 200 miles to Runcorn, where we kept boats at the time. While some of us loaded equipment back into the trailer, Mike and Legs, who had volunteered to start the journey, began clearing mud from the interior. We had brought a crude stove, made from an old gas bottle, so this was installed and was soon roaring away in an attempt to dry out an area to sleep in. The trusty Lada made it’s way back North up the M1, leaving Legs and Mike to cadge tows in the same direction.

In those pre mobile phone days communication was difficult. The next I heard from them they’d reached Croxley but there was a problem. Legs had a nice newish Honda generator which we’d left on the boat to charge the bilge pump battery. While Mike was refilling it with petrol it burst into flames, engulfing Mike’s legs with burning petrol. Legs extinguished him with wet towels and he was uninjured, but the generator was a write off. How this conflagration started is a mystery as Mike was adamant that the generator was not running at the time and he was not smoking (honest). Nevertheless, relations between the two friends were strained and they wanted to go home.

We had no spare generator, but my dad had an old 2stroke one that he bought during the power cuts of the 1970s. I called at my parents house near Daventry to collect it, then went to relieve Legs and Mike at Croxley. Hitch hiking with a 70 foot boat is surprisingly easy. There is still a cameraderie among boaters that means that most will help out their fellow ditch crawlers when requested. The best place to ask for a tow however is near a lock. This gives the opportunity to meet the potential towing crew, help to work the lock and ask politely. For some reason Queen had stopped between locks. Traffic was light on the Grand Union so early in the year, so I was stuck for a few days. A friend, John, came to join me, so we decided to bowhaul on and work through the next lock. Gluttons for punishment we decided to carry on bowhauling. Part way through Cassiobury Park darkness fell and we stopped for the night. Next morning, after another lock, we were approaching Lady Capel’s bridge when we heard the sound of a distant motor behind us.

It turned out to be a steel boat of about 50 feet in length called something like Ellie May. It’s crew were a middle aged couple, big bloke, little wife. They were enthusiastic about the idea of doing some towing and said they could probably get us to Stoke Bruerne. The boat’s powerful engine had no trouble towing the old Queen. I was new to this canal, which steadily climbs away from London up to the chalk ridge of the Chiltern hills. The big man on our borrowed tug promised to get us to the summit at Cowroast that day.

The early March weather kept changing. Bright unshine would give way to vicious gales laced with hailstones. Queen’s imitation  cloths would catch the powerful winds and it became difficult to keep her out of the mud on open stretches. Lock after lock we climbed, breasting in the wide chambers. We passed the paper mills at Frogmore and Apsley where Forget me Not used to deliver loads of coal from Coventry. Sadly, at about this time the paper mills were being sold off to asset strippers. Now the only mill making paper is Frogmore and that mainly functions as a museum.

John needed to get home, so he jumped off near the station at Berkhamsted. Still we kept climbing. I started to feel guilty as the little woman was doing most of the work. At each lock I steered Queen in alongside Ellie May then hared up the lock ladder to shut a bottom gate before drawing a top paddle. With the lock full I would open a top gate and drop the paddle before stepping back on to Queen’s counter ready to be drawn onwards by the motor boat. The lady would then close the gates behind us and hurry on to the next lock. It got dark and she began to look tired. Part of me thought I should suggest we stop, the other part wanted to make the most of this generous tow.

I think it was about 11pm when we tied at Cowroast. Next morning bright and early we threaded the deep cutting of the summit and began descending the other side. As we passed Tring reservoirs a towpath walker asked what I was carrying. “Breeze blocks” I replied.

At Leighton Buzzard the man indicated that I should pull into the towpath. A ‘phone call had informed him of the death of a relative and they would both have to leave the boat and attend to matters. We weren’t going to get to Stoke Bruerne but, never mind, it was a good tow and I was very grateful. Legs and some others were now ready to take over, so we agreed to change over at Leighton Buzzard. When they arrived I made my way home.

Communication was far from perfect, mostly involving ‘phone boxes and the boatyard ‘phone at Runcorn. As the boat moved North I began to worry about the route she would take from Braunston. The obvious route would be to go via the North Oxford and Coventry canals before following the Trent & Mersey to join the Bridgewater at Preston Brook. However, Queen’s top plank was very high and I was not sure that it would get through Harecastle tunnel. I tried, but failed, to get a message to the boat to turn left at Braunston and go via Birmingham and the Shropshire Union.

I took over for another leg of the journey at Great Haywood. Queenwas towering over all the other boats. I decided to divert up the Staffs & Worcs and soon got a tow as far as Tixall Wide.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that old boats get wider, whereas old locks get narrower. This is a particular problem on the Staffs & Worcs canal. Queen was exhibiting a severe case of midriff bulge. I set to work with chains and barrel screws to pull her sides in a bit. I bowhauled the short distance to Tixall lock and worked through. She fitted snugly in the lock, but I noticed that, since tightening the chains, the pump was going off more often.

Gradually, lock by lock, I worked up the canal. I got tows easily but no-one wanted to hang around while I worked Queen through, so, at each lock I had to wait to get a fresh tow.

At Teddesley I got a tow from a tiny Springer, with a huge engine that got Queen almost water ski-ing! The Springer worked up the next lock, Longford, then sped off while I emptied the lock for Queen. The bows stuck in the tail of the lock, so I scrambled aboard and tightened the chains. I tried again. Inch by inch, as I strained at the towline, she moved, until the stern end jammed.

I tightened the chains some more, so you could almost play tunes on them. I began to worry about the fixings pulling through the sides of the boat. She still wouln’t budge. I tried to move her back, thinking to take a run at it. She wouldn’t budge. I stood on the lockside and stared despairingly at the boat.

A young man ran up the slope, windlass in hand. “How long you gonna be” he asked “We’ve gotta get a move on, gotta get round the ring”. “I’ve got a bit of a problem, I wonder if you could help”! “Just bring your boat up to mine and give it a push while I pull on this line” Rather than gently pushing, the hireboat rammed Queen’s counter, and she moved. They backed off and rammed again, continuing this brutal treatment until the old boat was inside the gates and we were able to shut them.

I drew the top paddles gingerely and watched, with some anxiety, to check that the boat was actually rising with the water. Rise she did, in a series of jerks, until I was able to haul her out and help work the rushing hireboat crew through.

Above Penkridge lock I went in search of a ‘phone box, from which I learned that another crew was eager to come and relieve me. I stayed to wait for them. A passer by gave me £5 towards Queen’s restoration. We still have it, though it’s worth rather less now. When my friends arrived I walked to Penkridge station to get the train home. From Penkridge other people guided Queen to her temporary haven at the Boat & Butty yard in Runcorn. The whole trip took about 6 weeks of people working in relays.

Some people questioned why we were collecting so many knackered boats. Looking after them has certainly been something of a burdenover the years, but, if we hadn’t, they would all be gone without trace.

From 1995 onwards, in response to an invitation from Tameside Council, we started moving our fleet from Runcorn to Portland Basin. Queen’s turn came in 1997, by which time Forget me Not was available to tow her.

Around the turn of the century there was great optimism that massive lottery funding was going to be available for historic boats. Somehow it didn’t happen, but in 2001 The Waterways Trust gave £1000 to do conservation work on Queen. This involved sandwiching the original, deteriorating, planking between galvanised sheet on the outside and hardwood shearing on the inside. The whole lot was screwed together through the old planking and sealed with chalico. (Chalico is a noxious traditional sealant/filler made from pitch, tar and horse manure. Better than anything you can buy from B&Q).

We’ve never docked Queen. She’s so dramatically hogged that if she went on dock she’d probably never float off again. Her bottom is probably the original 1917 bottom and is the main cause for concern nowadays. When Hazel sank and had to be raised during the Tameside Canals Festival in 2007 a certain gentleman in a very posh boat went on an online canal forum making out that we were all a lot of drunkards and declared that if we got that boat restored he’d show his whatsit on the town hall steps. In 2013 the restored Hazel splashed down into the Huddersfield canal. He kept very quiet. Sadly, the gentleman has since gone to meet his maker, so we’ll never have the dubious pleasure of seeing his exposed whatsit.

Frequently I’ve had the following conversation with gongoozlers regarding Queen. “What yer going to do with this one?”. “Restore it”! “You’ll never restore that”. “Well”, indicating Hazel,”we restored that one, which was just as bad”. This was normally followed by a look of disbelief. I got so fed up of not being believed that for a long time Hazel sported pictures of her restoration on her cabin sides, just to prove it.

The biggest barrier to achieving anything is disbelief. Queen is one of the most important surviving boats as far as historical interest goes. She is now probably the oldest surviving wooden motor boat, built in 1917, and her hull is of a style that went out of fashion in the 1920s and 30s as boats started to be built more for carrying capacity than for speed.

She’s a bit of a mystery. We don’t know which boatyard built her. We know she was gauged as Walsall Queen on 23rd June 1917. Her butty was called Queen of the Ocean, an odd name for a boat based in Walsall!

Walsall Queen was built for a company called Hildick & Hildick, malleable iron fittings manufacturers, along with a small fleet of similar boats. It seems that they carried coal to Brentford, but we don’t know why.

It would be really nice if we could find a volunteer with the time and the interest to research he histories of these boats. What little research we’ve been able to do has usually thrown up as many questions as answers.

It’s a great shame that waterway enthusiasts have never got their act together like the railway people have when it comes to preserving the mobile history. The railway enthusiasts have run out of scrapyard wrecks to restore and are now spending millions on replicas of engines that were scrapped decades ago! OK, there’s plenty of historic boats about, some nicely painted in original colours, but they’re nearly all metal. I understand why, they’re easier to maintain, but there is a whole heritage and tradition of wooden boats, dating back to the birth of the canals, that is in danger of dying out.

We have the boatyard. We have tar, pitch, oakum, bottom spikes, a Bolinder E type engine and a Bolinder fuel tank. We need several big oak trees, a couple of boatbuilders (I’m probably only available on a consultative basis in view of age and knackeredness) and about £100- 150,000. It would be really nice to hear from people willing to help, be it with money, promotion, hands on work or whatever.

Let’s give the old Queen another lifetime. Of course, some will say that’s impossible. The same was said when I started rebuilding Lilith back in 1974.

Anyone who would like to help in any way please get in touch