Two Weeks on the English Canals--day 13

Day 13
Thursday
8/01/02

We were underway by 8:00 the next morning. The weather was alternating between gray and gray drizzle. Tom was at the helm. The rear cabin door popped open and Sara's head came through.
     "Gracious good morning, sir," she bubbled.
     "Good morning," Tom answered, trying to be cordial but still give nearly all his attention to navigating through Birmingham's heavy canal traffic. We made a right turn almost immediately and left the Worcester and Birmingham Canal and entered the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal. Within minutes we were at the first of the 13 Farmers Bridge locks. They were close together, within yards of each other, and there was little time to rest. We had just finished the fourth lock when we passed under Saturday Bridge, so named for the day of the week that the dockworkers would gather at this bridge to receive their wages.
     We finally defeated the Farmers Bridge locks. We chugged down the channel for another 20 minutes and crossed through Aston Junction. Then we encountered the Aston string of ten locks.
     I poured myself into the work of cranking the paddles (sluice gates) and pushing on the balance beams that opened and closed the lock doors.   After an hour or so of this, Tom sent Caroline to relieve me. I sat on the bunk in the rear cabin, looking out the cabin door and watching Mary work at the helm as we navigated a lock.
     Mary saw me watching her work. With a broad smile, she motioned to me. My turn at the helm, she asserted. Even though it was close to the end of our trip, this was the first time I had driven the boat while in the locks.   My main concern was the sill. A sill is a ledge of concrete at one end of the lock that extends in a foot or so into the lock while stretching across its width. This leaves only inches to spare both in front and in back of the vessel. If you are too close to the gates near the aft end, the boat's stern will hang up on the sill as the water level drops. If this occurs, the bow will continue to fall while the stern, stuck on the sill, will not. The boat will tilt bow-down and soon water will no longer support the vessel at the stern. The boat may well be badly damaged or worse, her passengers put in harm's way.
    As the water drained from the lock, the resulting currents pulled the boat forward.   I pulled on the throttle lever, throwing the engine into reverse, trying to force the boat back to the center of the lock. But the craft was 70 feet long with lots of inertia. When the vessel finally obeyed and returned to the center of lock, it kept on backing as if by its own will. The boat was suddenly too near the rear of the lock and was in danger of hanging up on the sill. I flipped the throttle to forward. The motor roared but the boat did not move. Nothing happened. The sill was dangerously close. Finally, sluggishly, the craft responded, moving away from danger. I exhaled with relief and tried to figure out what I had done wrong. Soon I learned to use forward and then reverse in modulated twin pulses, compensating for the drift of the vessel while canceling each other out and holding the boat in the center of the lock.
     During the longer stretches between the lock groups, I stood at the tiller in the rain and sang, fulfilling a musical promise to myself that I had made months ago. I sang most every maritime song that I could remember. The usually dour gods of my memory were very kind to me that day. Not infrequently, we would pass another boat, either moored or traveling in the opposite direction. As we putted by, my loud bass voice announced our musical arrival. The initial expression on the faces of the other boaters was one of puzzlement, then turning to a smiling amusement. The only negative response was from a disgruntled angler who complained that I came too close to his line and that both the boat and the boater were making entirely too much noise.
     It had rained, on and off, all day. By the time we docked at 4:00, we were very wet and very tired. Sara had worked every lock, pushing on the lock door balance beams and cranking on the sluice gates. We had vanquished 36 of them that day, the most of any day during the trip. I no longer felt deprived by missing the experience of struggling up the Hatton flight of locks three days ago.
     We docked at a pretty spot at Cheatle's Farm Bridge. Cheatle's Farm raised "prized" Holstein dairy cows. They were indeed pretty animals. In fact these cows were obviously outstanding in their field. Not too long after we tied up, I noticed that the cattle that had been on the opposite side of the canal grazing in the pasture began to cross the bridge. With udders swollen, they came in an ever-increasing stream, often trotting as if in happy anticipation of the imminent milking. They acted as though they were being driven, guided.   I grabbed the video camera in time to film the farmer bringing up the rear, urging on the stragglers. He was not on horseback but was expertly dodging here and there in an all terrain vehicle. A herding dog, the longhaired black variety with a white neck, excitedly ran in partnership with the man and his machine.
     The farmer made another loop around, coming canal side in order to take up the rear of the herd once again. As he passed, he looked at me in puzzlement, seemingly wondering why I should be photographing him.
     We were all going to the Black Diamond Song Club that evening, but we stopped by the Dog and Doublet Pub, which bordered our moorage, for a pint to use up a little extra time before we were due to board the van.
     A few minutes ride delivered us to the Turk's Head Pub in Birmingham, the basement of which served as home for the Black Diamond Folk Club and their excellent weekly productions.

Click here to go to the Black Diamond Song Club website

http://www.btinternet.com/~radical/diamond/

This night's lineup was characteristic of the high quality entertainment that we had enjoyed during the whole of the trip. The evening included The Black Diamond Geezers, our own Mac and Leslie, hard-to-believe concertina player Tim Laycock, and Tom Lewis closing out the evening with Bunts, a humorous tale of a shipboard Dachshund that explains why there are now short-legged Afghan Hounds throughout France. Perhaps the accompanying sound clip will explain a bit more. By the way, the entire hilarious tale is available on one of Tom's albums: SEA-DOG, SEE DOG! All Tom's recordings are available at his web site:

http://gamgee.acad.emich.edu/~tomlewis/