Dry Land Sailor is a book which will fascinate all those interested in the history of Britain’s canals and the carrying trade for which they were built.  It is a captivating insight not only into the business of cargo carrying by narrowboat but into the lives of the people who lived and worked on the waterways.

Fred Hobbs was not a born boatman – he grew up ‘on the bank’ in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, close to the Grand Union Canal, and spent much of his free time as a child exploring the towpaths near his home.  Over a period of years, he got to know many of the boating families who, though they had little time for most land-based folks, always had time for youngsters they met.  On leaving school in 1948, he found himself at a loose end until he was offered work with one of them.

He stayed on the canals until 1956, with a short break for his army service, working as mate in a number of crews.  Among those he writes about are figures now thought of as iconic of those seemingly-distant times:  Bill Humphries, Jack Skinner, John Knill, Jack Munk; and other well-known names appear fleetingly in his stories – the Granthams, the Peaslands, the Garners, the Whitlocks, and others.

Told from the perspective of a newcomer, his story is one of discovery as he learns the ways of the boaters and the skills of handling a pair of heavy-laden narrowboats.  Working on boats belonging to Barlows and Willow Wren, among others, he saw and tells of the carrying of steel, timber and canned goods as well as the eponymous coal, travelling the entire route of the Grand Union with forays onto the Oxford Canal and around the Birmingham canals.  Much of their coal was loaded from the Warwickshire collieries, taking them regularly along the boaters’ old ‘bottom road’ of the Coventry and the Birmingham & Fazeley Canals.  He describes the joys of boating in fine weather as well as of the back-breaking work of shovelling fifty-plus tons of coal by hand.

His story is a fascinating insight into those almost forgotten times, and into a way of life that is gone forever.  Tales such as his serve to remind us of all that the canals and those who worked on them contributed to the trade and industry that once made Britain great.

A brief foreword by well-known canal novelist Geoffrey Lewis, who also edited the text, introduces this tale, which it is hoped will be the first in a series of books recalling life ‘on the cut’ as it used to be, by the people who knew it best – the men and women who were there.

‘This delightful book is a must-have for anyone interested in the working life of the waterways’

Chris Daniels, Waterways World magazine

Availability:

‘Dry Land Sailor’ was published in June 2009. In hardback at a cover price of £12.99.  Copies can be ordered through any good bookshop by quoting the title and author or ISBN 978-0-9545624-9-6, or direct from this website.  Most canalside shops, boatyards and chandleries have our books in stock, as do the National Waterway Mueums at Ellesmere Port, Stoke Bruerne and Gloucester.

Trade orders may be placed through any wholesaler via Bookdata, or contact the publishers at sales@sgmpublishing.co.uk

DRY LAND SAILOR

by Fred Hobbs

hardback

£12.99

ISBN 978-0-9545624-9-6

published by
SGM Publishing

DRY LAND SAILOR by Fred Hobbs