YORKSGEN-L Archives

Archiver > YORKSGEN > 2005-04 > 1112552087


From: John Rouse <>
Subject: Re: watermen
Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 19:14:47 +0100
References: <00bf01c53650$88126e40$08de4e51@computername>
In-Reply-To: <00bf01c53650$88126e40$08de4e51@computername>


In message <00bf01c53650$88126e40$>, Stella
Hargreaves <> writes
>Is anyone out there an expert on Northern waterways in the 19th century,
>please? Or can someone give me some sources to look up? I spent 2 hours
>trawling the web for some info about what the boatmen and watermen of
>Castleford sitrict actually did from the 1820s on, and found an article on
>Tyneside keelmen (I've been singing a song about em for 40 years without
>ever wondering exactly what a keelman was, so that was educational) but I
>can't find anything else, except trade directories telling about passenger
>carriage by water in various locations.

Castleford is on the Aire and Calder river navigation, so it would see
traffic from the Calder and Hebble, which would include traffic from
across the Pennines on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, the Rochdale
Canal, and the Leeds and Liverpool. Downstream boats would travel on the
Knottingley Goole canal to Goole docks, or up the Selby canal to York.
Really the whole of the waterways system was linked up by then, so
waterways ancestors can be found anywhere from Bristol to Beverley and
Lancaster to London.

> I remember Fred Dibnah on canals and the men who carried away stone from
>some quarry and only ever slept when they were tied up waiting to collect
>more stone, and off the top of my head I think the heyday of canal buiilding
>was 1830 to 1860, but I just want a picture of what all these Castleford
>watermen actually did; how far they travelled, what they carried etc.

No the heyday was 1750 - 1850. By the mid nineteenth century the
railways were eating into the canal company's profits - where they
weren't buying up the canals to stifle the competition.

>
> One thing about Family history, makes you realise how much you don't
>know. Any help/ideas much appreciated.

I believe there is a watermans list on Rootsweb?

John
--
John Rouse


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.9.1 - Release Date: 01/04/05

This thread: