The first battalion Grenadier Guards, upwards of 700 strong, commanded by Lieut-Col Barclay, arrived here on Thursday last, from Dublin, and have since proceeded by canal, in Messrs Pickford’s fly-boats, to London.
Gore’s Liverpool General Advertiser
14 August 1823
Posted in Canals, Extant waterways, Foreign parts, Ireland, Passenger traffic, Sea
Tagged canal, Dublin, fly-boat, Grenadier Guards, Liverpool, London, Pickford, soldiers
I have mentioned Isaac Weld before., in the context of his sailing the Lakes of Killarney in a boat made of brown paper. He was also one of the first people, at least in Europe, to take a long sea voyage in one of the newfangled steamboats as a passenger rather than a crew member. Even better, he left an account of his journey.
One George Dodd was taking a steamer, originally called the Argyle, from the Clyde (where steamers came from) to the Thames, after which he renamed the boat. This was in 1815, only three years after Henry Bell‘s Comet began the first commercially successful steamboat service in Europe. [The first such service in America was inaugurated in 1807 by Robert Fulton, who was mentioned here the other day.]
Dodd took the steamer into Dublin en route to London and Isaac Weld, greatly interested, decided to travel on board for the rest of the trip. Weld’s wife, née Alexandra Hope, decided to accompany him; she may have been the first woman, at least in Europe, to take a long sea trip on a steam boat.
Here is a version of Weld’s account of his trip, as published in the Belfast Commercial Chronicle on 24 April 1816. It may have been translated from English to French and back again.
Posted in Engineering and construction, Foreign parts, Historical matters, Ireland, Passenger traffic, Sea
Tagged Alexandra Hope, Argyle, Dublin, George Dodd, Isaac Weld, London, steam, Thames
… for the Grand Canal Docks.
Posted in Canals, Economic activities, Extant waterways, Foreign parts
Great quantities of salmon have been recently exported from Limerick to England, and the abundant supply of eels in the Shannon is furnishing a new and productive traffic in the English market. There are ten tons of this prolific fish now in tanks at Killaloe, awaiting a conveyance to London, and a vessel adapted for the trade will take on board from Limerick in the ensuing week forty tons of eels for the London market.
The Dublin Monitor 23 October 1844
Some folk have been sailing on the Thames in a boat made of cardboard.
Over two hundred years ago, Isaac Weld navigated the lakes of Killarney in a boat made of brown paper:
Whilst engaged in illustrating the scenery of that beautiful locality, Mr Weld derived additional pleasure from the occupation, in introducing a young and amiable wife to scenes so familiar to himself. To facilitate their rambles, and profiting by his Canadian adventures and his skill as a “voyageur“, he constructed with his own hands the model of an Indian canoe. In the absence, however, of birch bark, he had recourse to successive layers of stout brown paper, creating a sort of papier-maché boat, sufficiently roomy for two. In this paper skiff he actually had the hardihood to intrust himself and fair companion in sundry adventurous voyages on the Lakes.
That is from “Mr Foot’s Memoir of the late Isaac Weld, Esq” in The Journal of the Royal Dublin Society Volume I 1856–57 Hodges, Smith & Co, Dublin 1858. Wikipedia offers a shorter account of the life of the remarkable Mr Weld. His Statistical Survey of the County of Roscommon, Royal Dublin Society 1832, is an invaluable source of information about the Shannon and the Royal Canal, but Mr Weld is also notable for his voyage, along with his equally adventurous wife, on the steamer Thames [originally Argyle] from Dublin to London in 1815. There are brief accounts of the journey here and here; the captain, George Dodd, wrote a book An Historical and Explanatory Dissertation on Steam-Engines and Steam-Packets; with the evidence in full given by the most eminent engineers, mechanists, and manufacturers, to the Select Committees of the House of Commons; togerther with the Committees’ reports, distinguishing and defining safe and unsafe steam-engines, and their proper management: comprising particulars of the fatal explosions of boilers at Norwich, Northumberland, Wells-street, and in America: concluding with a narrative, by Isaac Weld Esq, of the interesting voyage of the Thames steam-yacht, from Glasgow, in Scotland, to Dublin and London [published for the author, London 1818] available here, and Isaac Weld’s account is available here. Mrs Weld may have been the first woman to take an extended sea voyage in a steam vessel.
Posted in Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Foreign parts, Historical matters, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Passenger traffic, People, Sea, Sources, Steamers, Tourism
Tagged Argyle, brown paper, canoe, Clyde, Dublin, George Dodd, Glasgow, Isaac Weld, Killarney, Lakes of Killarney, London, Roscommon, Royal Dublin Society, steam, Thames, voyageur
I have written here about a series of misfortunes suffered by DUKWs in Liverpool and London. On 16 June 2013 I put up some photos of DUKWs in Dublin and Liverpool; I pointed to what seemed to me to be two differences between practices in the two cities:
First, before they enter the water at Grand Canal Dock, Ringsend, the DUKWs are fitted with extra buoyancy in cylinders that slide into racks along their sides. I saw the VikingSplash crew removing the cylinders from the yellow DUKW; it took only a couple of minutes, and I presume that it didn’t take much longer to put the cylinders on.
Second, the Dublin passengers are issued with buoyancy aids before they take to the water. I can’t see any buoyancy aids on the Liverpool passengers, although it’s possible that they are out of camera shot.
There are links on that page to photos, news reports and a seriously scary video of the sinking of a DUKW in Liverpool. Then, in September 2013, a DUKW went on fire on the Thames; my brief report and links here. In October 2013 the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch issued a safety bulletin (my report here, with links) pointing to foam buoyancy as a common factor. The Liverpool DUKWs did not have enough buoyancy to keep them afloat if they started taking water and MAIB thought it would be impossible to get enough into them. On the London vessel,
… the most likely cause of fire was the action of the rotating drive shaft (or other moving parts) on the oil contaminated surfaces of the buoyancy foam blocks.
In November 2013 I noted that the wearing of lifejackets had been discussed in London and I commented on the policy of the Dublin operator, VikingSplash:
The point that strikes me is that, in both UK accidents, passengers had little time to don lifejackets and would have been trying to put them on in a confined space and under less than ideal conditions. It seems to me that Viking Splash’s policy [having passengers don lifejackets before taking to the water] is the right one.
In December 2014 the MAIB published its report into the two accidents. There’s a Guardian news report here [h/t gjb] and you can download the MAIB’s full report and annexes from this page. The London and Liverpool accidents are covered in the same report.
It’s well worth reading and pulls (as far as I could tell) no punches, even tearing strips off the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, both within the UK Department for Transport and both involved because the DUKW is an amphibian.
I took three main points from the report.
First, the Irish authorities seem to have thought seriously about the safety problems. My understanding of the buoyancy requirements was mistaken: the UK DUKWs had added buoyancy (although not enough, and adding more foam caused fire) and the Irish buoyancy cylinders are not designed to keep the vessel afloat. Here’s what MAIB says:
In Ireland, APV operators have been permitted to operate vintage DUKWs without having to provide any residual buoyancy. To mitigate the consequences of serious flooding, the Irish regulator required the operators to:
- Fit external buoyancy tubes designed to slow the sinking process and make the vehicle sink bodily [my emphasis].
- Retract the canopy roof and open the side curtains prior to entering the water.
- Require passengers and crew to wear PFDs while on the water.
- Provide a fast rescue craft, rescue crew and an inflatable liferaft at the slipway.
- Limit operations to a non-tidal area.
This approach focused on passenger survivability by reducing the risk of entrapment and drowning, rather than vehicle survivability, and introduced several of the interim measures recommended by the NTSB following the sinking of Miss Majestic.
The Irish model demonstrates that open topped APVs can be operated successfully in similar weather conditions to those experienced in the UK, and that passengers are willing to wear PFDs.
So big it up for the Irish Maritime Administration.
Second, if you’ve seen the video of the Liverpool sinking you may have been struck by its speed. In both Liverpool and London passengers had very little time to get out and the report’s synopsis says
In both instances, the crew had little time to co-ordinate the evacuation process and the confined nature of passenger spaces made it almost impossible for them to control or assist the passengers.
And in 4.3 Common safety issues:
8. It was extremely fortunate that all on board WQ1 and Cleopatra were able to evacuate into the water unharmed. In both cases the passengers were forced to act on instinct and exit the vehicles under their own initiative.
Any of several issues could have cut the time available and “the risk of entrapment and the likelihood of loss of life would have been considerably higher”.
So Figure 63 of a Dublin DUKW doesn’t just show the external buoyancy cylinders: the passengers are wearing buoyancy aids, there is a crewman already stationed at the stern and the side and roof canopies are open, all giving more chance of escape.
I’m not in any position to assess the overall safety of the Irish DUKW operation. What interests me here is a more general point about the evacuation of passengers from trip vessels: getting a large number of people out of a small space in a short time is not easy. And the recent problem of getting people off the Norman Atlantic didn’t make me feel any better.
Third, I am delighted that my photo of a DUKW in Liverpool was useful to the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch (see the report’s Figure 16) but they really should have asked for permission to use it.
Posted in Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Foreign parts, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Operations, Safety, Sources, Tourism, waterways, Waterways management
Tagged Dublin, DUKW, fire, Ireland, Liverpool, London, safety, sink, vessels, Waterways Ireland
Carpenters Road Lock in 2003
Here is a page about an art (craft?) project happening at Carpenters Road Lock on the Bow Back Rivers in London: the lock has changed quite a bit since I took the photo (above) in 2003.
I should warn you that the link is to a very long web page, but the section headings stay on top so you can move around. However, if you allow Javascript, you’ll find that two places on the page show those very annoying sequences of photographs that change automatically.
What I thought was most interesting was the set of events organised at the lock. Canals of Dublin organises canal walks in, er, Dublin, but what about Waterways Ireland having lockkeepers doing talks and demonstrations?
Here are some links to sites with more information about the Bow Back Rivers in London:
London Canals and associated blog
An extensive Wikipedia article with schematic diagram
A political view from Mick Hartley
London’s Lost Rivers on pre-Olympic scenery (black background makes the text hard to read but the photos are good)
The most informative page I found: a superb piece of work. Well done Richard Thomas, to whose Steamers Historical site I have a permanent link.
h/t celr
Posted in Ashore, Built heritage, Canals, Drainage, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Foreign parts, Forgotten navigations, Industrial heritage, Non-waterway, Operations, People, Restoration and rebuilding, waterways, Waterways management
Tagged Bow Back Rivers, Carpenters Road Lock, Lea and Stort, London, waterways
It seems they don’t live entirely on crushed babies, which is nice.
Irish waterways history 