A ship graveyard

• History

As we are still moored at Sharpness waiting for the (hopeful) go-ahead to head down towards Bristol, we took a walk today and discovered this fascinating site at Purton.

Plinth names all the vessels

This turned out to be a graveyard where old, no longer used ships were “beached”. Presumably their hulls were holed so that they would no longer float.

The ships still serve a purpose though, even now, as they help protect the shore of the Severn River from eroding and undermining the canal which runs right along side the river.

There is a fascinating collection of relics here, ranging from old, timber hulls to slightly more  recent (as in 1940s) concrete barges.

Old, wooden hull

F C B 75

Old concrete barge

Quite a few of the hulls had completely disappeared and just had name plates in their memory.

To see more detail on all the images, just click on them

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Bridge Holes

• History

If you occasionally view our Bowcam page, you will probably have seen a few bridges like this:

Bridge on the Shropshire Union canal

Iron post

You may even have walked through a few if you have ever strolled alongside a canal. But – have you ever noticed these iron posts on the corner of the bridge?

Grooves worn in the post

Horses on the end of a long rope were used to pull early narrow barges. As they went through the bridge holes, the rope would rub against the corner of the bridge and wear the stone away. So, these posts were installed to reduce the damage. The grooves in the pillars are where the ropes have worn the iron away over the years. Some of the indentations are quite deep, which rather shows how effective they were. Click on the image for a bigger view to see the detail.

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