Hi Lawrence and Paul,
with my family having worked for all the companies mentioned here at
some point I feel I can comment on this. My family always called the
boats, boats and never barges and my grandfather in particular took
great offence at the names barge and bargee, he always corrected
anyone who used the wrong term when talking about them. This may of
course be because his mother and all her family before her were born
and raised on long distance boats and he was the forst generation to
be 'day boaters' although he did for a time work both for Barlows
carrying coal and on the cement run for BW.
He had Princess Anne as his motor for quite a few years and this was
both before and after she was shortened, although after she was
shortened she was generally used as a tug and planked over whereas
before she was a carrying motor for Elements, used on the GEC Whitton
run a lot. Ernie also had some motors used for carrying as well as
shortening some for tugging, it might depend on the traffic they were
working on as you summise Paul, the trips from Angelsey to the Power
station usually involving one of the tugs and a train of 5-6 joeys
with the return trip towing the empties.
I dont know if you ever read my grandfathers personal story Lawrence
but if its acceptable I can transcribe it onto here at some point, I
await your opinion.

Andy

www.ammodels.co.nr





--- In CanalScapeBCN@..., "Laurence" <lhpvideo@...>
wrote:
>
> The answer to the style which Thomas's chose may seem a little odd.
> Thomas were very powerful in the canal transport hierarchy,
sparring
> almost continously with the other big fleet of Yates bros, both
> companies leased boats to other firms. The tug sesign, style of
> painting etc was simply a move to impress the competion. Huge
Gardner
> engines, bright paintwork which included hullside bands in yellow
> were all very flash. the Thomas style didnt stop there, there was
the
> American cars and lorries, they owned the former S&W Co directors
> house, had an areoplane etc. When carrying slowed they were
plannibg
> to have a new "Enterprise" yug built, complete with 6 cylinder
Rolls
> Royce engine!After the cessation of carrying they built the lavish
> water gardens at Calf Heath with hire craft and so on, this complex
> still exists with plant tubs in concrete as minature joeys.
> T&S Element used anything that was handy, even using knobstick
buttys
> as joeys toward the end, they did shorten one motor, "Princess
Anne"
> formely "Plato".
> The term "Barge" and "Bargee" was and is common in the Black
country,
> I can never remember our local coal merchant referring to "joeys"
> when I was young. Many boatmen also referred to joeys as barges.
Tug
> steerers "drove" the boat too not steered it.
> Certainly local conditions influenced the Stewarts and Lloyds boats
> but if you look further afield 45-50ft was the norm, Thomas's and
> Yates producing the most eye catching boats.
>
>
> --- In CanalScapeBCN@..., "paulchunter" <paul@>
> wrote:
> >
> > Reposted as apparantly it didn't work properly last time:
> >
> > What I was particularly intrigued by is whether the length of the
> > tug was determined by the working route. Stewarts and Lloyds and
> > had their tugs shortened to around 40ft from former long distance
> > carrying boats so they could be employed in "shunting" duties
> around
> > the works. T and S Element didn't bother to shorten their boats
at
> > all. So why did Ernest Thomas, along with a few others choose 50-
> > 55ft? A longer boat is obviously much easier to handle but I was
> > wondering if say at Hednesford or Anglesey it was not possible to
> > turn a 70 footer hence the need for shortening. The original
open
> > day and hampton boats on these runs were in general double ended
> and
> > therefore didn't need "winding."
> >
> > And as an aside, whereas today the term joey tends to be applied
> > erroneously by many to all BCN day boats, when I've talked to a
> > number of BCN "characters" they've tended to call them barges,
> > sometimes "correcting" themselves to say narrow boat to appear PC
> in
> > front of a modern day enthusiast.
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> > Paul Hunter
> >
>