CHERTSEY

BOATS, BRIDGES, BOILERS ... IF IT'S GOT RIVETS, I'M RIVETTED
... feminist, atheist, autistic academic and historic narrowboater ...
Likes snooker, beer, tea, rivets and solitude, and is strangely fascinated by the cinema organ.
And there might be something about railways.
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Friday 29 January 2010

Happy birthday old thing

When Jim saw the Historic Ships Register certificate yesterday, the first thing he said was '1937? I thought it was built in 1936.'

Well, maybe it was, mostly. How long did it take to actually build one from start to finish? But the date I have for Chertsey's delivery to GUCCCo is January 29th 1937, so I have taken that to be the year the build was completed. And this then, if boats had birthdays which of course they don't, is Chertsey's seventy-third birthday.

This set me thinking - how were the boats actually 'delivered'? Did GUCCCo boatmen go and fetch them from Woolwich (and Northwich), or did the builders have the responsibility of bringing them to a GUCCCo depot? Were they delivered in batches - indeed, were they built in batches, and if so, how many at a time? - or singly? How were butties delivered or collected?

1 comment:

  1. One thing is for sure, they didn't come on the back of one of Tucky's lories

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