Weaver shipping
Keywords....   Northwich, River Weaver, Navigation, Waterways, British Waterways, W.J.Yarwood & Sons, shipping, Brunner Mond, Brunners, ICI, Mersey, shipbuilding, shipyards

Coastal Shipping on the River Weaver

Rather like with steam trains in the 1960's, it was a case of catch it now or it will be gone forever. Winsford generated no traffic although the American owners of the Salt Works there were keen to explore the possibility of runs to Garston Docks with rock salt for transhipment to Scotland and Ireland, but the transhipment cost we worked out was more than the carriage, and then BWB wanted a big chunk, and the Manchester Ship Canal wanted a lot, and the Mersey dues were not small either. Oddly, the only economical way to get salt to the docks is on a tipper lorry...., shoot it on the quay and drive away. Simple! Three thirty ton loads a day for one driver. The track is subsidised by us car drivers so they pay no tolls or dues, and nobody up that way seems to care about all the wagons on the roads, or the carcinogenic fumes blown into their homes, or the noise and dust and danger....

Yet, you try to run 1000 tons on a ship, and there are warning bells at British Waterways about having to spend money being forced to obey the Waterways Act and keep the line dredged and the locks working. They are now a grant-collecting agency, with nice sterile offices, and no interest in providing a transport route. Finally the Government realised that Waterways was a male environment, hardly odd since it was a mechanical and civil engineering concern, and so installed an area Waterway Manager who was female and totally unqualified in this field, and totally inexperienced. Her attitude was "If you don't like it....". She was bombastic and unhelpful, so in every respect we dealt with the section foreman who at least knew what he was talking about. The next little girlie manager was better looking and nice to talk to, but bombast was still the order of the day. And of course these little girls had no real authority. So we gave up on BWB, which was probably the Regional Manager's strategy all along. You get a lot of photos in the paper for spending £1m on little canal towpaths, but £1m on the Weaver is just routine maintenance and when you fix Town Bridge, then Newbridge gets done, then Nav.Bridge gets sorted....now its Sutton Weaver...or Vale Royal lock island... or will it be Saltersford which is about to divide in halves. £50m would just about put the Weaver right. So forget it. The Anderton Boat Lift is nice, but it does not go anywhere any more.

So, coffer-dam the big locks, close the swingbridges permanently, fully automate the sluices from the section yard office, and let the boaters operate the small locks themselves. Lock staff have never been terribly pleasant except Salty and Marsh, and should be removed and the houses sold off. Get real. The traffic will never return to the Weaver. If it was at all possible, I would have done it when I had the ship and a masters ticket. Really, this would have been like Pete's trips on Mountbatten with coal from Manchester to Northwich, a pleasant way of taking coal for a ride....

Here is pure history, never to be repeated. Actual day-to-day shots  of a working river around 10-15 years ago. The last ship was Saint Kearan who was purpose built for the Calcium Chloride Liquor traffic to Scotland, was stopped short at Garston Dock in Liverpool to load, before Waterways suffered a big claim when she had rubbed her bottom out on an undredged Navigation. So that was it. The end. Pontificate as much as you like, but the Nav. will never attract grants like the narrow canal system, or Lottery Heritage money like the steam railways do. Give 'em the cash and they will...perhaps build a nice new office. And they hate me too!! Peter Bentham was Northwich Area Engineer, who was trained to be a professional, but the rest of them know NOTHING!! Especially in the Top Office.

Witton	Tora	Vasa Sound	Wincham
Wincham in town	Gardners' Saint Kearan	Stortewella largest hull ever on the River	Tora
Tora with our narrowboats Ant & Axe	Gardners' Saint Oran	Saint Kearan squeezes Winnington Bridge	Petit Folmer
Residu arrives
Residu sinks off Llandudno (RAF photo)		The Navy's here	NorthernStar at Weston Point
	Goldcrest	James Jackson Grundy, sea cadets boat annual outing to Anderton	Joan T at Anderton
Kaiserberg	Bressay Sound	Conformity at Saltersford
Conformity next day laden	Commodity	WittonII working before being sold

One last word....if you want to download these photos and keep them for posterity, then do it. I don't know how long I will be able to keep the website going. It is costly, but also made the mistake of marrying....in haste....and am repenting at leisure. Perhaps I do hear the Call of the Open Cut after all.

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