As the Shropshire Union Canal Society busily restore the Montgomery canal and close the Shropshire Gap, they are not only bringing the waterway back to life, but also uncovering long forgotten local stories, for as a digger shaped the canal channel at Crickheath Tramway Wharf, it came across ironwork from a narrowboat deep in the earth. All the woodwork had long since rotted away but the iron skeleton remained bent but not broken.
It turns out that the sunken vessel was, almost certainly, the Usk, a ‘Narrer-narrer’, slang for narrow-narrowboat, and she is said to be haunted by the boatman who skippered her and was killed in an accident nearly one hundred and fifty years ago.
However, the story doesn’t start at Crickheath on the Montgomery canal but at Hadley Park Lock on the Trench Arm of the Shrewsbury and Newport canal in what is now, Telford. (The canal was abandoned many years ago.) The Trench arm built as a small coal canal with the lock being only 6’ 7” (2 metres) wide, so could only take tub boats or ‘narrer-narrers’, no wider than 6’4” (1.93 metres).
The dreadful accident happened as dusk was falling on Monday 26th July in the year of our Lord 1887, as the last boat of the day, the Usk, was slipping gently into Hadley Park Lock. The locks on the Trench arm, just south of Wappenshall Junction, were unusual as the bottom gates had a guillotine mechanism with the gates going up and down with a counterweight box, rather than swinging side to side. The top gates were the usual ‘mitre’ arrangement. They looked like something from the French revolution.
George Benbow was skipper of the Usk with thirteen-year-old, William Evanson as his crew and it appears that as the boat passed under the lock gate, George did not duck and was hit and killed by the counterweight box.
William later said at the inquest into George’s death, “We were coming through Hadley Park Lock, and George shouted to me to drop the gate. I was by the horse at the time, but I ran to do as requested. As I lowered the gate George did not stoop at all and so caught his head against the weight box. George then got onto the cabin and cried ‘murder, murder’. I asked him what was wrong, but he did not speak again, and it was then that I saw the blood coming from his ears and he dropped down on top of the cabin”.
The Lockkeeper, John Chilton looked after the locks south of Wappenshall also gave testimony, “I was following the Usk as she was the last boat of the day, and I needed to see that the locks were left in the right position. I was close to the boat when the accident happened and saw that George was looking behind to see how the boat was coming on – he ought to have stooped but instead he stood straight up and as the gate was lowered I heard a strange noise and the boy said, ‘He’s hurt, he’s bleeding’, and I asked George to lie down but he fell onto the deck and died within ten minutes – before assistance came”.
From that very day, the Usk was doomed, an unlucky, haunted boat that many boatmen would not work aboard, so she was sold and traded on the smaller canals on the Shropshire Union system, but the luck did not improve so she was finally abandoned and sank on the Montgomery canal near Crickheath, probably in the early 1890s, and there she lies to this very day, a ghostly reminder of a tragedy long ago.
The Usk and George Benbow may have long since sunk beneath the earth, but it is fascinating that restoring the Montgomery canal has given us a glimpse into the past and allowed this story to re-surface so that George, and his ghostly boat, the Usk, can be remembered.
With thanks for the research by Sue Ball and Jan Johnson
A ghostly dusk (Graham Mitchell).
A declaration and permit for the Usk from 1954. (Courtesy Mike Webb & Pearson’s Canal Companions).
Hadley Park Lock guillotine lock gate recently. Partially restored but very overgrown. The winch mechanism can be seen at the top left. (Chris Bryan-Smith).
A later, and probably the last, incarnation of the Usk with butty, Mole on the Shropshire Union canal near Chester in 1954. This Usk was built in 1939 and was probably the third boat to carry the name (Courtesy Mike Webb & Pearson’s Canal Companions).
