Railway boats

Night shot of day boats in the canal arm at the Black Country Living Museum. These narrowboats were used around the Birmingham Canal Navigations and the Great Western Railway owned boats would have been employed moving goods to and from a number of interchange basins owned by the railway company. These are referred to as day boats as they were not lived on as a matter of course unlike the long distance narrowboats. The cabin is smaller than on the latter vessels and provided some shelter and a stove for warmth. The boatmen would usually go home at night as they would never be far from there on the Birmingham Canals. Occasionally they would spend a night on the boat but this was not the usual practice.

The initials TB & Co on the rudder or elum are thos of Thomas Bantock & Company. Bantock became boatage agent to the recently completed Oxford Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway in 1853 and then to the Great Western Railway in 1855 dealing with canal wharf to rail transfers. In 1858 he set up a business as Thomas Bantock and Company with offices within the Great Western Railway station at Wolverhampton. He was appointed as ‘carrier’ for the Wolverhampton District. The agency was for: ‘carriage of rail-borne goods by road less than 40 miles along a route taken between places within a 25 mile radius of Wolverhampton Low Level Station’. He was paid a percentage of the GWR charge to customers. The cartage agents, as later referred to, were required to provide suitable vehicles, in an approved livery, horses and harness and employ civil, energetic men to the GWR Company’s satisfaction.

In 1860 Bantock owned 51 canal boats working from GW/OWW transfer wharves on the Birmingham Canal Navigations (BCN). In 1861 he was still the Duke of Bridgwater’s Trustees District agent too. Bantock boats were based throughout the Black Country including 5 boats at Stourbridge (1858 to 1956) and 3 at Stourport. The Great Western had its own narrow boats working on the BCN and in 1866 Bantock hired 16 boats from the GWR at £15 per month. Thomas Bantock and Company expanded their interests becoming an ironmaster, coal mining (Ettingshall Lodge Colliery, Springvale 1865-90), and boat builder at Ettingshall Dock, Millfields. They built for themselves and the GWR completing 116 boats by 1895. They were said to have built their own railway wagons at the same works. The Company offices were now based at the rear of Albion Wharf at Herbert Street, Wolverhampton.