A traffic jam in Boulter’s Lock near Maidenhead, c.1910, watched by a huge crowd on the towpath and bridge.
A group of local men watch visitors in rowing boats pass through a lock at Goring (c.1907).
The British love affair with boats is as old as boats themselves, but in the late nineteenth century, with an increase in leisure time, people took to the water in huge numbers.
Many canals, lakes, lochs and rivers sported pleasure steamers (illustrated elsewhere in this book) but also offered small craft for hire to the more adventurous. A few hours, or perhaps day out in the fresh air vigorously rowing, travelling at the leisurely pace of a few miles an hour, was a highly attractive proposition.
For the rather more affluent members of Edwardian society, the opportunity to own one’s own boat, and sail it through many of the locks which made large stretches of the Thames navigable, often created traffic jams that would make today’s motorways seem relatively quiet!
The image of Boulter’s Lock at Maidenhead (opposite) is a typical example. Indeed, long queues and crowds of people were so much a feature of the river at Boulter’s Lock that several rival postcard companies produced coloured views of the place.
Municipal parks had boats for hire on their serpentine lakes, and small skiffs could be hired by the hour on several of the English Lakes well before the end of Victoria’s reign.
Even the queen herself was not averse to the occasional boat trip, as long as the weather was fine. Expeditions on steamers on the Scottish lochs figure from time to time in her diaries, including one planned sail on Loch Lomond, which she abandoned at the last minute due to heavy rain, leaving Albert to sail alone!
Years later, in 1869, with her daughters Beatrice and Louise, she sailed the length of Loch Katrine on the steamer Rob Roy, recalling in her diaries that ten years earlier she had sailed on that same vessel with Prince Albert when she had opened the Glasgow Waterworks, which drew (and still draws) water from the loch. That day, with the boat safely at anchor, they had taken tea on the deck, before returning to their coaches and the journey back to Invertrossachs where they were staying.
Six passengers about to set sail in a small steamboat at Teddington Lock in 1906.
Further diary entries in 1877 recall a short crossing in a rowing boat at Gairloch in the Highlands. ‘It was delightful’, wrote the queen, ‘rowing through these wooded and rocky islands, with the blue, calm loch – not another sound but the oars. One might even believe the queen herself had been at the oars!’
The popularity of boating, on lakes, lochs, rivers and canals, was reflected in the popularity of postcards illustrating the pastime. Using that measure, boating was, in Edwardian times, very popular indeed!
This superb ‘Photochrom’ print from the late 1890s depicts a timeless scene at Bannantyne on the Kyles of Bute, with a small sailing dinghy being prepared for a sail around the bay. The Photochrome Company, originally from Zurich, produced what it claimed were ‘real colour photographs’ of many resorts and beauty spots in Britain. In reality they were monochrome photographs printed in up to fourteen colours to create a very colourful effect – sometimes more natural than others. This view, heavily retouched, is perhaps more like a painting than a photograph, but still offers us an evocative glipse of an enduring pastime.
A small rowing boat at the jetty at Eccleston Ferry on the River Dee near Chester, c.1910, while a small passenger steamer takes on passengers.
Women are rowing all three boats in this view of the canal at Hythe, Kent, from a card posted in 1907.