I don't know whether you know but canals are just 3ft deep and canal barges are 7ft wide because the locks are 15ft wide and that allows two barges to use a lock at the same time
Don't you reckon that Fred was referring to the generality of man-made inland waterways for barge traffic, not sea-going cargo boats....
When you move onto river barges they are 9ft and over wide, with the canal barge there is only about a foot of it in the water and they have a flat bottom, i learnt all this of my brother who owned a canal barge for a few years and his son lives on one
I knew a guy at Gas st, who put the top of a bus on a barge, and you know it looked great, he had to fiddle with it a bit but it looked great,
That 'bus on a barge' sounds terrific! I'd love to have seen it - imagine the clippie calling out, ''no more room inside, upstairs only - plenty of room on top" etc
A barge is a flat-bottomed boat, built mainly for river and canal transport of heavy goods. Some barges are not self-propelled and need to be towed by tugboats or pushed by towboats. Canal barges, towed by draft animals on an adjacent towpath, contended with the
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Bugsworth Basin, Buxworth, Derbyshire, EnglandA narrowboat or narrow boat is a boat of a distinctive design, made to fit the narrow canals of England and Wales.
In the context of British Inland Waterways, "narrow boat" refers to the original working boats built in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries for carrying goods on the narrow canals (where locks and bridge holes would have a minimum width of 7 feet (2.1 m)). The term is extended to modern "narrowboats" used for recreation and occasionally as homes, whose design is an interpretation of the old boats for modern purposes and modern materials.
In Sally Oak just after the bridge on the right from thown, was a guy who had bought some old army bridge pontoons made out of marinply, he sold one to me for 25 quid, I made a two birth boat out of it, with a small cooking stove, and a porta potty, I had just 3 ft to make a deck with, covered it with a frame and plywood and canvas, painted it blue and white, sold it for 150.pounds, it was 12 ft x 6 ft and 1.5 ft deep, I was going to put two together and make one long boat, but the guy had sold the lot with in three weeks, and I could'nt find any more. there could have been a good business if I had stayed with it...J2..this was back in 1963..