3000 MILES (and 3000 LOCKS) AT 3 MPH

I am a member of the Cruising Club of America, which is an association of gentlemen who consider themselves to be hairy­chested blue water sailormen (this does not apply to our cherished lady members). Much of my own cruising has been aboard my 42­foot x 7­foot “narrowboat” TAMALPAIS, on the inland ​ waterways of England, where we lived for four years. In 42 feet we had a piano, a fireplace, a better shower than at home, a complete galley, television, stereo, forty feet of bookshelves, and guest quarters for two. In the attached photograph you will notice a brass hanging lantern. John Sanford SAF has the record for the number of times he hit his head on it. When various CCA members came to share this experience, their implied question was: “Why do you spend your prime cruising years ditch­crawling?” When they leave, the actual question is: “When can we come again?”

Many are aware that there is a substantial canal network in Europe, encompassing France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany. Even Russia. Tristan Jones wrote of taking a trimaran through all of these canals. However, few are aware that there are nearly 4000 miles of canal in ENGLAND. Birmingham actually has more canals than Venice. These canals were the industrial transportation system before the railroads. In those days one horse could pull half a ton over the existing roads. The same horse could pull fifty tons in a canal boat, and faster. Barley in, ale out. Clay in, Wedgwood out. Most of these canals are narrow canals with the beam of the boats limited to 6'­10”, as this is the size of the locks (there is plenty of passing room in the canals themselves). This size was chosen as some engineer in the 18th century figured out that this was the ​ most efficient use of water. The legal speed limit is 3 MPH, which is seldom exceeded because if you try, your stern goes down, your skeg hits the bottom, and you go slower. Curiosly, in the canals you keep to the right. We have traveled the entire length of the Thames from Lechlade to the North Sea, also the rivers Medway, Trent, Soar, Wey, and Severn. On the Severn our insurance company insisted that we take a pilot, even though my crew was Bob Van Blaricom SAF, who has navigated SEA BEAR from San Francisco to New Zealand and back. At one point the pilot had us headed downstream against the seven­knot flood so we proceeded backwards to Gloucester.

I was myself unaware of the English canals until my brother organized a cruise which included my mother (85) and her younger brother (83). It was as well that the boat we chartered was 65 feet long, as we had to put those two siblings at opposite ends of it. Mother was always dressed to the nines, and on the day that a friend of my brother's came for lunch she was wearing a white knit suit with blue piping. The friend came with his black labrador, who had been in the canal. It was not a happy meeting.

Some of the canals have double width locks, such as the Grand Union Canal (“Silent But Sure”). I was in the down lock on the GUC at Berkhamsted, chatting with the skipper of the other boat in the lock, and I said to him “I think British Waterways does a good job keeping these canals up considering the amount of money they're given”. He gave me a long look and then said “Do you know who I am?” “No.” Then he handed me a business card: Bernard Henderson CBE, Chairman, British Waterways. I kept the card and later put it to use: I was in Oxford, and my guest, not a great helmsman, ran into the side of another boat, giving it a glancing blow. It promptly discharged a young long­haired fellow with earrings who proceeded to give me hell and five percent, announcing his intention to report me to British Waterways. I gave him the card and said “This is the chap you want to contact. I'll write him and tell him to expect your complaint. And I'll have him send you an application for a new Tax Certificate, as I see yours has expired”.

With the exception of the River Thames, all locks are operated by hand. Your hand. But the Thames has much larger locks which will encompass many boats, and they are operated by uniformed lock keepers. We were in such a lock when the last boat squeezed in, crewed by two young ladies who were wearing sun hats. Period. With a totally straight face, the lock keeper opened the lower paddles to let the water out, and then opened the upper paddles to let the water in. As a result, while there was much threshing of water, there was no movement ​ of the boat (or its crew) for several minutes.

There are many attractions on the Thames. We had a ringside seat (or mooring) at Henley during the rowing regatta. We moored at Mapledurham Lock and went to Mapledurham House which is adjacent. Mapledurham House is actually Toad Hall, which is apparent when you look at the drawing on the inside cover of my ancient copy of The Wind In The Willows. We saw the Water Rat (but no Mole). ​ You will recall that when Toad escaped from prison dressed as a washerwoman, he hitched a ride on a narrowboat. Then he stole the horse. In a pub near Eton I sat at the very table where Jerome K. Jerome wrote Three Men In A Boat. At ​ Windsor Castle the Queen waved to me as she came out of the rear gate in her Daimler. I think she waved at the fifty people behind me as well.

We always flew a large American flag at the stern (one passerby shouted “Are you invading us?”) and as we passed one of the large Salters excursion boats we noticed a group of school children aboard with their teacher. She said “Now children, what nation has a flag with stars and stripes?” With one voice they replied “AUSTRALIA”. We had the name TAMALPAIS on both sides, and under it San Francisco Yacht Club. Frequently people would ask “Did you sail her across yourself?”, to which the answer was “Had to go 'round the horn. They wouldn't take a check at the Canal.”

One year we joined ten other narrowboats from the St. Pancras Cruising Club to go down the Thames past the Thames Barrier to the Medway River. The tides in London are twenty­one feet, and the currents are swift. I knew that if we got broadside to one of the many mooring buoys we would probably get rolled, so I had Old Cold Nose rigged with every bit of line aboard bent on, ready to let go. As we came to the end of the Thames Estuary we saw a rectangle of eight yellow buoys surrounding a sunken ammunition ship from WWII. Let sleeping dogs lie. We left the River Swale to port and headed up the Medway.

Bifel that, in that seson on a day At Conyere, in the Swale, our good shippe lay; At noon was come into that hostelrye Three shippmen gently in a companye; But from that hostelrye they wende. Noisome and disorderlye they were sende.

­ Chaucer ​

We stayed two weeks in the Medway, and visited our family's ancestral castle, Allington. I expected no less than lunch and a pint, but the thug at the gate, who spoke no English, turned us away. And there was a moat. My ancestor, named Sir Thomas Wyatt, was bunged into the Tower for hustling Anne Boleyn. Bad judgment, that. But Elizabeth I let him out again.

On the Ashby Canal we visited Bosworth field, where Richard III was slain. There is a small stone cairn on the exact spot, and on the day we were there there were three bunches of fresh white roses on that cairn. On the Coventry canal we visited the ruins of the cathedral with the big cross made of scorched rafters and the inscription “Father Forgive”. It was this massive raid by German bombers of which Churchill was warned in advance by the Bletchley Park codebreakers. He made the agonizing decision not to warn Coventry for fear that the Germans would deduce that the British were reading their Enigma code. At Rugby we were on the field where the immortal player picked up the ball and ran with it, thereby inventing the game of Rugby. This event is commemorated by a large plaque in the field wall. At Oxford we visited the track where Dr. Roger Bannister first broke four minutes for the mile. My crew that day, himself having a Blue in Track & Field from Oxford, had been there to witness this feat. At Worcester we moored right beside Oliver Cromwell's headquarters. At Guildford on the River Wey we visited Lewis Carroll's home. On the village green there is a bronze statue of two little girls and a rabbit with a pocket watch going down a rabbit hole. Those who know about Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice In Wonderland, would recognize Alice Liddell, the real Alice, in the statue. Incidentally, the Old Sheep's Shop (in Oxford) still exists. At Stratford we moored 100 yards from the Shakespearian theater, and saw Macbeth that evening. Stratford has a museum where you can do brass rubbings. There is a sign on one door saying BRASS RUBBINGS (except someone has crossed out the BR). On the other door is a sign saying BRASS RUBBINGS (except someone has crossed out the SS). At Bristol we explored Brunel's liner GREAT BRITAIN. The final drive to the propeller is a massive roller chain with 48” links. Can you imagine trying to sleep through that? In Bishop's Stortford we went to the very room where Cecil Rhodes was born, and in Enfield we visited the factory where the gunpowder for Nelson's navy was made. Signs everywhere: TAKE YOUR TIME.

There is no telling what you will stumble into. Coming out of a lock near sunset we moored next to a meadow upon which were eleven Field Organs. A field organ is like a very large player piano, mounted on a flatbed truck or trailer, with little figurines that twirl or play wooden instruments. My crew repairs organs and speaks Organese, and soon we were invited to dinner and to play in the evening concert. I played a Scottish tune, an Irish tune, and a French tune. “Play an American tune”, they said. So I played My Country 'Tis Of Thee. I mean, ​ what is more American than that? We actually got our pictures in their monthly newsletter. Another evening after we had moored I thought I heard bagpipes. And so we did. We had come across the annual gathering of the British Bagpipe Society. I had my own pipes on board, and we were again invited to dinner and to play in the evening concert. I played McLeod Of Mull and The Mist Covered Mountains, as I recall. ​

One evening after dinner I began to feel very unwell. It was like someone was poking the lining of my stomach with a stick. I had already had a heart attack, so I knew it wasn't that. But I knew it wasn't good. I dialed 999 and within ten minutes there was an ambulance on the towpath next to the boat. They took me to the Royal Leicester Infirmary, where they told me that there was nothing wrong with me and gave me cab fare back to the boat. The next evening the same thing occurred. This time they kept me several days and separated me from my gall bladder and several thousand dollars. My surgeon (called “Mister”, not “Doctor”) was the actual fellow who had devised the modern non­intrusive procedure. I saw poor creatures in their hospital dickies dragging themselves painfully outside to have a smoke. Horrible things, cigarettes. I smoked half of one when I was 13.

Canal cruising is about as relaxing as it gets. No tumbling into a dinghy in a state four sea: you just step from the deck onto the towpath which is at the same level. When the water level is low you might have to use the plank to get ashore to the pub. No problem going, perhaps some returning. Most pubs have mooring rings along the towpath. The canals have no tides or currents, and one side of the canal belongs to British Waterways. To moor you drive two steel stakes into the ground and tie up to them. There is a water tap about every five miles, and a rubbish tip, so one lives a civilized life. Your annual license covers the cost of these amenities.

Of course there are exceptions. The Llangollen Canal, which goes into Wales, has a slight current. Early in my canal days, before we owned our own boat, we moored our charter boat as described the first night out, to go to the pub. When we returned after dark, the more we looked the more the boat wasn't there. I ​ had not checked the moorings, and some boat had left a wash which rocked our boat, and she had pulled out the stakes and headed for the barn. We found her safely moored downstream. This canal crosses over the River Dee on a marvelous aqueduct consisting of a seven foot wide cast iron trench supported on stone pillars. At the middle you are 125 feet up, with no guard rails. There was a story about a doctor who had chartered a boat, and when he approached the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct he put the boat in Forward, went below to bed and pulled the covers over his head. The locals insist that no one has ever fallen off, but a ​ few have fallen in on the way home from the pub. While crossing, one wonders what the fatigue limit of cast iron is, and whether the next tap by your boat might be the one that breaches the side of the trench.

At the end of the Llangollen Canal is the town of Llangollen, presided over by an ancient fortification, Castel Denis Bran, on top of what passes for a mountain in England, from which you can see four counties. “Let's go up” says my crew. “OK” says me. We hadn't gotten very far before we both wished no one had mentioned it, but we used to compete against each other in college track, so no one would back down. We got there in the end, but no one got out of bed the next day.

It's a curious thing about pubs. I play the concertina, a small 7” hexagonal squeeze­box with fifteen buttons on each end. When you go into a British pub and pull out the concertina, the publican frowns and suggests that you not play very loudly. In an Irish pub, on the contrary, all of the patrons hush up and listen. Then they applaud, and the publican buys you a pint. I have been to well over two hundred pubs, some in Ireland. While cruising the Irish canals we came to VICTORIA LOCK (not called that, of course, but the name is carved into stone in two­foot­high letters). There were two border collies herding boats. When the upper gate was open they would bark at you until it closed, then ignore you until the lower gate opened, then continue barking until you were out and away.

Then there are the tunnels, all pitch black and some over three miles long. With a bend in the middle. In the dim illumination of your headlamp you see dark passages going off to the sides and you wonder if perhaps J.R.R.Tolkein (author of The Lord Of The Rings) was right about “middle earth”. Periodically there are ​ ventilation holes going up to the surface, all of which drip considerable amounts of water. If you have claustrophobia it's best to walk around. There are no towpaths in the tunnels. In the early days, the crew would lie on their backs on top of the cabin, and actually walk on the top of the tunnel to propel the boat. ​ ​

The locks (invented by Archimedes) are simple devices. But there are procedures that are best to follow. We were in an up­lock and I was ahead on the towpath opening the next set of gates. My inexperienced crew opened a gate­paddle before the water had covered it, and it shot enough water into the front door to leave 5” in the bilge. In an up­lock you sort of hang around at the downstream end of the lock until things settle out. But in a down­lock you must stay away from the lock sill on the upstream side. Otherwise you will get your rudder hung up on the sill. We had been doing up­locks for two straight weeks, hanging around the downstream end of the lock. We entered the Marple flight of down­locks, and out of habit I hung around the wrong end. We got hung up and ​ had about a ten­degree down angle before I could stop the water flow. It bent our 1­1/2” steel rudder post. I lowered the level and trapped the rudder between the lock gates and re­flooded the lock, which bent the rudder post back to where it was semi­operational. Some chap came by and asked “Been out long?”. I replied “Three months”. There's no defense against your own stupidity.

We were moored in Little Venice, close to Paddington Station in London, and across the canal from Richard Branson's houseboat on the day Princess Diana died. I lowered the ensign to half­mast (thereby dragging it in the water) and played a lament on the bagpipes. Flowers Of The Forest it was. The next day in Hyde Park thousands of people were queuing up between barricades to sign their names in books that no one would ever look at. There was not a sound, no shouts, no church bells, no buskers, no rooks cawing, no automobile horns, just silence. Eerie.

Well, this has been less a cruising story than a conversation in which I do most of the talking. A not unusual occurrence. I hope it will encourage some of you to charter your own boat for a delightful stress­free holiday. But remember, at 3 MPH you don't go very far in a week. You've been out four days and the head breaks down. You telephone the yard and they're there in ten minutes.

William Hickman SAF