Canals/ Narrowboats

A narrowboat or narrow boat is a boat of a distinctive design, made to fit the narrow canals in the British Isles. more...

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Traditional and modern boats

In the context of British Inland Waterways, "narrow boat" refers to the original working boats built in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries for carrying goods on the narrow canals (where locks and bridge holes would have a maximum width of 7 feet) built in the English midlands during the industrial revolution. The term is extended to modern "narrowboats" used as homes and for recreation, whose design is an interpretation of the old boats for modern purposes and modern materials.

Terminology

It is customary to use the term with a space (narrow boat) when referring to an original boat or a replica, and to omit the space when referring to a modern boat used for leisure or as a residence.

Although some narrow boats were built to a design based on river barges, it is incorrect to refer to a narrowboat (or narrow boat) as a barge. In the context of the British inland waterways, a barge is usually a much wider, cargo-carrying boat or a modern boat modelled on one, certainly more than 7 feet wide (actually up to 14ft wide).

It is also incorrect (or at least incongruous) to refer to a narrowboat as a longboat, although this name was sometimes used in the midlands in working-boat days. It is common to ridicule the use of the term longboat by commenting that the speaker has suggested that Vikings have re-invaded Britain via the Trent and Mersey Canal! However, the vessels used by the Vikings to invade England were called long ships, not longboats (which were a type of ship's rowing/sail boat used until the 19th century).

Usage has not quite settled down as regards (a) boats based on narrowboat design, but too wide for narrow canals ; or (b) boats the same width as narrowboats but based on other types of boat. To many ears, "Wide-beam narrowboat" and "Dutch-Barge-style narrowboat" are both terms which jar.

Size

The key distinguishing feature of a narrowboat is its width: it must be less than 7 feet wide to navigate the British narrow canals. Some old boats are very close to this limit, and can have trouble using locks that are not quite as wide as they should be because of subsidence. Modern boats are usually 6ft 10in wide to guarantee easy passage everywhere.

Because of their slenderness, some narrowboats seem very long. The maximum length is 75 feet (22m, the length of the locks on the narrow canals). However, modern narrowboats tend to be shorter than this, so that they can cruise anywhere on the connected network of British canals - including on the "wide" canals (built for wider boats). The shortest lock on the main network is Salterhebble Middle Lock on the Calder and Hebble Navigation, at about 56ft long. However, the C&H is a wide canal, so the lock is about 14 ft wide. This makes the largest "go-anywhere-on-the-network" narrowboat slightly longer (about 60ft) than the straight length of the lock, because it can (with a certain amount of "shoehorning") lie diagonally. Some locks on isolated waterways are as short as 40ft (12m).

Read more at Wikipedia.org