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the starvationer and the larger 'container' boat showing similarities in construction
T2790. "This photograph is quite unusual, as it shows us the view seen by those leaving the Underground Canal through the entrance at Worsley Delph. The vessel carrying the men was known as a 'starvationer', possibly due to its design with exposed 'ribs'. Such vessels were used on the Underground Canal to bring coal up to the surface from the mines. The large mechanism being operated by one of the men controlled the water level, and was used to help flush boats out to the surface."
T1662. "This photograph, taken looking south across the Bridgewater Canal, shows one of the two dry docks in Worsley Boat Yard during 1969. The vessels inside appear to be box boats. They held specially constructed boxes which were used to transfer coal along the Bridgewater Canal. The dry docks were constructed in 1760 and are still in use today."
Both photographs taken at the same spot. which one is the earlier?
Probable clue- the railway bridge in the background. My own view is that the one on the left is before 1931, when the line was electrified, the reason, those poles on the line look like telegraph poles. The signs of grass growing and no crane in the photo on the right probably means it was taken in the sixties.
T2463: Barge on Potato Wharf, Castlefield, of a similar construction as in the picture above.
" In the 1890's the new docks of the Manchester Ship Canal offered new work for the Mersey flats, lightering goods out of the ships into the local canals.
A new class of motorised steel barge was built by the Bridgewater Canal Company as late as the 1950's for this work, and this 'Duker' fleet of power barges and dumb lighters only finished carrying to Kelloggs in 1974."
T2086: View looking back towards where the other pictures were taken.
The 5 large motorised barges were introduced around the 1950's.
Parfield, Parbella, Parcastle, Paradine, and the Iris Abbott presumably around the time at which the canals were nationalised.
The last outing for these barges was in 1974 when they did a run to Kelloggs. (Seen photographs in Manchester Ship Canal Archive at the Greater Manchester Records Office. ref no: B10/10/3/524 and 5360).
April 2009 : The Large dry dock at Worsley: repainting narrowboat 'Tyseley' (Micron theatre Co.).
Same dock as in photo of container coal boats T1662. (see above)
Extract from Sir Joseph Whitworth's published report on the US in 1854:
"Wherever education and an unrestricted press are allowed a full scope to exercise their united influence, progress and improvement are the certain results, and among the many benefits which arise from their joint cooperation may be ranked most prominently the value they teach men to place upon intelligent contrivance; the readiness with which they cause new improvements to be received, and the impulse they thus unavoidably give to the inventive spirit which is gradually emancipating man from the rude forms of labour, and making what were regarded as the luxuries of one age to be looked upon in the next as the ordinary and necessary conditions of human existence."
from : Sir Joseph Whitworth' The World's Best Mechanician' by Norman Atkinson. Published by Sutton Publishing Ltd. 1996. p.196. (a copy of this book is held in the Manchester Library)
an example of a wonderfully long sentence,
