Dave Harris

Fifty at 50

After half a century of boat-building, Dave Harris is about to retire having just completed his 50th narrowboat. Andrew Denny tells his story…

Builders of seagoing vessels tend to be large companies, or at least have sufficient staff to create a pool of expertise. But in the cottage industry that is the inland waterways, there’s a very small circle of ‘one-man band’ boat-builders. Such businesses will occasionally call in support for specialist work, but ultimately they deliver a boat that is the product of a single mind and lifelong skill. 

One of the most interesting is Black Country boat-builder David Harris, who is about to retire after 50 years. 

An early interest

Dave Harris grew up in the suburbs of Wolverhampton and his interest in canals began when he started canoeing the Wyrley & Essington in the late 1960s with his brother. 

Exploring the dwindling miles of the Black Country waterways further, he and his brother discovered Dudley Tunnel and soon became members of the Dudley Canal Trust. 

Volunteering was “a big thing” for teenagers in the 1970s, David recalls. He vividly remembers clearing the canal arm that started off the Black Country Living Museum, as well as the landslides in the basin that had shut Dudley Tunnel, plus restoring Parkhead Locks at the other end. 

In at the deep end

Dave’s career path was settled by an impulsive decision of his mother’s in 1973 when the house they lived in was condemned. 

“Without much thought as to what we were doing, Mum bought an old wooden joey boat for us to live on, at first at Ashwood Basin,” he recalls. 

There weren’t many liveaboards at that time on the Staffs & Worcs Canal, and they had to move regularly – not simply at the insistence of British Waterways but to avoid hassle from the local authorities, who must have frowned on a schoolboy having such a free and exotic lifestyle. 

“At 15 years old I had to learn pretty quickly how to keep a 1923-built wooden boat afloat,” he says. “I remember, over Easter 1973, drydocking it at Stourport. We asked advice from Bob Allen [of the Les Allen boatyard], who had motorised the boat previously.” 

Bob took the keen teenager under his wing and his early training was invaluable. The veteran boat-builder showed Dave how to firm up the caulking of the seams and put some patches into the worst of the rotted planks. The fore-end planks were getting loose into the stempost, so, with growing confidence, Dave taught himself to fix those as well as he could, although he knew they were always at risk.

A year later, Dave and his mother moored at Autherley Junction, where the old stables had been converted into boat-building workshops for Water Travel, a new hire company. The business had a shop and a club too, bringing a little life to the neighbourhood that helped entertain the young teenager.  

Like so many of the early hire companies, Water Travel was itself still learning, and the hire fleet there was initially “a ragbag of Springers and other small, cheap boats” that needed a lot of attention from willing staff. 

But the company had ambition, and had set up its own boat-building side to produce a brand-new fleet. In addition, it began taking on private boat orders. 

In August 1974 Dave had just left school and was offered a temporary summer job that would end up continuing long after the season. “I worked there on and off for the next five years,” he recalls. These were heady days for boat-building, with no shortage of work – Dave recalls Water Travel had a three-year waiting list. 

The following year, the new Labour government imposed 25% VAT on ‘luxuries’, which included boats. It was a shock to the industry and paralysed the private boat-building side for a while. Luckily, the hire business remained buoyant, and Water Travel was still building hire-boats – not just for itself but with bulk orders for other fleets. This ensured that Dave would continue learning the skills of steelwork. 

Meanwhile, the old wooden boat was proving increasingly hard to maintain. Losing patience with the work required, his mother sold it and moved the pair of them back onto the bank. She then decided to have a steel boat built and, putting her trust in her son, commissioned him to build it. 

First boat

So, in the summer of 1976 Dave left Water Travel, having learned enough steelworking skills to be confident of building a boat of his own. He had agreed with his older mentor Bob Allen to rent part of the family’s yard at Valencia Wharf, Oldbury. 

“That was my boat number one – a 47ft traditional boat with a Sabb diesel engine, called Cotswold and built for my mum!” 

Having completed the shell, he returned to Water Travel again for a couple of years, this time learning woodwork skills on the hire-boats and completing Cotswold in the process. 

In 1979 he returned to Valencia Wharf, helping to build the now legendary company’s steel shells. Having left home at this point, he also needed somewhere to live. So, he again rented part of the yard to build a new boat for himself in his spare time. “I must have had a lot more energy then, aged 21!” he marvels now.  

In the meantime, his mother remarried, sold Cotswold and asked him to build her a new 70ft boat to live on. Almost simultaneously he also got his first private order – for a 62ft narrowboat. With the need for extra working space, Dave decided that he had outgrown his little corner of Valencia Wharf and it was now time to find his own yard. 

The Alfred Matty years 

Meanwhile Dave had previously been gathering experience at other Black Country boatyards, briefly taking a job at the old Alfred Matty’s yard in Coseley, helping to rebottom a BCN tug. 

For some years the yard had been run by the Walton family, who repaired wooden joey boats, then later built wooden leisure cruisers. When they shut up shop, rather than switch to steel boats, Dave seized his chance and asked to rent the site. 

It was here, from 1981 to 1988, that Dave built 15 boats on a one-man production run, which included a striking pair of trip-boats for Dudley Tunnel. 

The Dudley Canal Trust had originally commissioned an electric tunnel trip-boat (from another builder). It was of a similar design to the tug used to pull boats through Gosty Hill Tunnel from the Coombeswood Tube Works in the 1920s. Named George, it was double-ended, had two motors, propellers and rudders, and was completed in March 1981. Unfortunately it proved to be uneconomical. 

So, Dave (as a loyal volunteer for the trust) was commissioned to cut it in half and refashion new bows to make two new trip-boats. The new pair, George and William, were launched in 1983 and are still in service. 

Boat-builder for hire 

In 1988, having already built a stylish narrowboat for a deep-pocketed customer, Dave was commissioned to construct a second one – a ‘planked’ Josher. With a style partly copied from the 1934 historic motor Lamprey, and fitted with a vintage Lister HR2, the new craft was called Duteous. 

The customer, a successful businessman, already had his own factory in Burton-on-Trent, and invited Dave to build it there. As a result, Dave surrendered Matty’s yard (the basin was infilled shortly after). 

Planking is the building of bows with curved ‘planks’ of steel to create a multi-curving shape. Scoring is done on the cabin sides to simulate plank joins and sometimes to highlight the gunwale.

“Planking, Josher bows, false rivets, recessed side panels and other design gestures aren’t intended to be absolutely authentic,” says Dave. “I don’t necessarily create my own style. Usually I try to recreate the look of classic working boat hull shapes in steel.” 

The other shape he has often used is the GUCCC Yarwood’s boat built at Northwich. These boats, built in the 1930s, had a fuller bow so as to carry more on a given draught. They are easier to build and can be replicated by a single plate of steel. Sometimes, as in Duteous, he combined the out-of-the-water elegance of a Josher with the more streamlined underwater swim of a Grand Union boat.

“I remember thinking at the time about a lot of things being new ideas,” he says. But other builders, such as Roger Fuller, Ian Kemp and Simon Wain, were suddenly doing the same thing. Who knows who started it? It was a time when using new materials to give a traditional look and feel was increasingly in demand.”

Pop-up boatyards 

During the next few years Dave moved around a lot. He built a couple of boats on Roger Fuller’s site in Stone, and even completely rebuilt an old working butty in the owner’s canalside garden in Solihull. 

He also fitted out a Dutch luxemotor barge and helped Ian Kemp with restoration work at (the then) Ellesmere Port Boat Museum. Later, he moved back to Stone to rent space at Stone Boatbuilding Co, fitting out four boats in the shadow of the famous Joules brewery warehouse.

The last boat 

In 1997 Dave took up an invitation to move to Dadford’s Wharf at Stourbridge. It turned out to be his longest-ever base, at 19 years. He built new boats there and lengthened two. 

In 2016, Dave needed an operation and, being a sole trader, he didn’t want to be tied down to premises. So he ended his 19-year rental. For many years his friend Phil Jones had been operating the boatyard at Hatherton Junction, originally built by Ernest Thomas. Recently Phil had a half-finished BCN tug in the workshop, and invited Dave to complete it. Dave jokily calls it “49½”. 

Recently, Dave’s health has stabilised. But with this year being his 50th in boat-building, he had already decided to retire. 

“Fifty years and 49 boats?” Phil Jones told him. “Don’t you want to make it a nice tidy, round number? Make one more and I’ll pay you and we’ll put it up for sale.”   

Dave’s number 50 has been created in the style he likes best. It reflects everything he has learned over the years, even if he’s not finishing it to completion. It will be finished as a grit-blasted shell, with spray-foamed interior. David says he can supply it with a back cabin fitted and with a Gardner 3LW as a sailaway, “but I don’t want to totally commit to any fit-out work!” It will still be a genuine Dave Harris, however.