Working Waterways Series

by Emma Smith.

She describes her experiences of the war-time scheme under which women were recuited 'off the land' to crew canal boats. Only a teenager at the time, she captures how it felt to be young and working on the boats, sometimes with more enthusiasm than efficiency.

Soft back, 208 pages, 14.8cms x 21cms approx. 2008 edition.

by Margaret Cornish.

First published over 40 years after the war, it provides a balanced account of the war-time canal scheme, tackling aspects which no-one else raised. Predictably, those who volunteered were by no means run-of-the-mill; faint hearts were unlikely to apply, and certainly could not stick the privation and physical demands of the job.

Soft back, 208 pages, 13.7cms x 21.1cms approx, 17 photos.

by Emma Smith.

She describes her experiences of the war-time scheme under which women were recuited 'off the land' to crew canal boats. Only a teenager at the time, she captures how it felt to be young and working on the boats, sometimes with more enthusiasm than efficiency.

Soft back, 208 pages, 14.8cms x 21cms approx. 2008 edition.

by Susan Woolfitt.

This book describes in unadorned detail the life of a 'trainee' working on canal boats during the Second World War.

Softback. 223 pages. 14.8cms x 21cms approx. Black and white photographs. 2008 edition.

by Eily Gayford.

Eily Gayford started boating during the Second World War, and went on to become the only trainer of the wartime all-women crews to write her memoirs. First published in 1973, this 2008 paperback edition contains extra text and illustrations.

Soft back, 160 pages, 14.8cms x 21cms approx, black & white illustrations.

by Tom Foxon.

This book describes the exciting and colourful life of a teenager who gave up office work in 1950 to crew a canal boat. His fascination with every aspect of life on the canals makes this a wonderfully evocative book, full of authentic detail about narrow-boat carrying.

Soft back, 168 pages, 13.8cms x 21cms approx, 10 illustrations.

by David Blagrove.

This book describes the colourful experiences of a young man who worked as a Thames lock-keeper, while also running a narrow-boat carrying company. His recollections of the Thames Conservancy, Salters' Steamers, and taking the Skinners to the re-opening of the Stratford-on-Avon Canal vividly recapture the waterway scene in the early 1960s.

Soft back, 248 pages, 13.6cms x 21cms approx, 19 photos.

by Tim Wilkinson.

Re-published in the 'Working Waterways' series by M & M Baldwin, this book tells how the author and his wife hired a pair of boats from the Docks & Inland Waterways Executive in 1948, and spent a memorable year carrying cargoes on England's canals.

Soft back. 192 pages. 13.7cms x 21.1cms approx. 16 b/w photographs.

by Tom Foxon.

In this, the sequel to 'Anderton For Orders', Tom is demobbed from the RAF and sets himself up in business as an owner boatman or Number One. Before doing so he takes a memorable trip with a horse boat from Tardebigge to Cannock and back to Worcester.

His first few trips are plagued by engine troubles but, after replacing his National engine with a Ruston he settles down to recouping his fortunes by a winter spent on local work around Birmingham before starting to carry coal to Oxford.

Soft back. 136 pages. 14.8cms x 21cms approx. Illustrated with black and white pictures by Brian Collings.

by Tom Foxon.

The third, and last, volume of Tom's boating trilogy finds him ranging widely over the waterways system as an owner boatman before selling up and working for British Waterways on the Birmingham Severn route. With the loss of this contract imminent, Tom goes to work on a general cargo barge trading between Bristol, Avonmouth, Lydney and the River Severn.

Soft back. 138 pages. 14.8cms x 21cms approx. Black & white photos.