Victorian & Edwardian Boating from old photographs
£9.95
This book is out of print. The copies available are second hand, in near-as-new or very good condition. Published by B T Batsford Ltd.
In these days before the motor car and in the early decades of the steam train, boats were one of the main ways of moving goods or moving people. We are fortunate that some of this era overlapped with the invention of the photographic plate, and Victorian and Edwardian Boating‘s photographs record some of the best of this admirable, arduous and often amusing aquatic activity.
Only 1 left in stock
Our ancestors are recorded in punts and rowing skiffs, on paddle steamers and chain ferries, or whammeling (fishing for salmon with nets) in small working boats. From 1887 there are photographs of the crowded river seen on the Isis in Oxford on a sunny summer’s day in Eights Week, and of tea-time at Henley Royal Regatta one day in July, with overdressed spectators, with boaters and parasols, taking to the water in punts, skiffs and even a gondola!
The wearing of boaters (hence the name) was almost de rigueur, though, and they weren’t just worn for pleasure; there is a picture of a member of the Stratford-on-Avon Boat Club in a single scull wearing full rowing uniform: regulation shorts, rowing zephyr (athletic vest) and straw boater in club colours. But the professional watermen are not neglected. There are pictures, for example, of the last Severn sailing barge, man-powered dredging on the River Thames at Abingdon, lugg-rigged craft of the North Shields fishing fleet and narrowboats unloading bricks on the Caldon Canal in Staffordshire.
With a text that is lively and informative, Neil Wigglesworth shows us the importance and diversity of boating from this half forgotten world, and now with new traditional wooden boats being built, and the joys of boating are slowly being rediscovered, it is pleasant to be reminded of the sorts of traditions we are following.
Author: Neil Wigglesworth
Binding: Hardback
Published: 1987
Pages: 128
Size: 255 x 190 mm
ISBN: 0713455101
Publisher’s Price (in 1987): not known
