Boat

 

As long-time readers will know, I love things that are a bit more quirky and odd. What we've got here is England's largest ship in non-navigable inland water. What's it doing here? It's about sixty feet long, perched on the side of a river in the middle of a small town, and a build-up of silt has caused it to lean slightly to one side, making it look rather precarious.

It was for a brief period of time a seafood restaurant with about eighty seats. I did wonder at first if it was just a replica of a boat, but no, this thing is real. Not only is it real, but it's got a story to it, too!

This cute little wreck was built as a fishing trawler in Denmark in 1974, and it's a veteran from one of the UK's most embarrassing skirmishes, the Cod Wars.

 

There's also this cute little archway next to it, which I presume was a means of entry to the boat or perhaps an outdoor seating area back when it was a restaurant, but I honestly don't know. It doesn't seem to go anywhere.

 

 

The Cod Wars didn't really meet the standard requirements of a regular war, and could be best described as a series of skirmishes really. Basically, the UK had been sailing to Iceland for centuries in order to catch fish, and in 1952 Iceland's economy was starting to suffer for it, so they expanded their territorial waters to four miles, and then to about twelve miles in 1958, banning foreign fleets from entering. The UK weren't having any of that, and carried on going there anyway.

 

What followed was a series of confrontations where British fishing vessels would show up at Iceland, and the Icelandic coast guard would attempt to shoo them away, sometimes firing warning shots, but mostly just sneaking up behind them and cutting their fishing nets.

This led to British fishing vessels being accompanied by naval warships. And while they were given orders to not open fire on Icelandic ships unless it was retaliatory, they soon realised that the loophole to this order was just flat-out ramming the other ships. The sea around Iceland became one of the most intriguing of battlegrounds as ships just slammed into each other, or narrowly avoided getting slammed into. It does sound fun, but people were getting seriously injured and killed.

There were three Cod Wars in total, the third one in 1975 and 1976, no doubt the one that this little trawler was involved in. Each one was started by Iceland expanding its territorial waters, eventually to 200 miles, pissing off the UK and eventually Germany and also Denmark, who took an interest because they had ownership of the Faroe Islands, and wanted to make sure Iceland's ever widening territory wasn't going to give them any trouble.

I haven't been able to find what exact role this little Danish fishing trawler had in the Cod Wars. It's fun to imagine it being kitted up and turned into a gunboat, but given its size it's likely it was just trying to fish, and was accompanied by larger naval vessels, and was possibly rammed or at the very least, had its share of near misses.  

 

Iceland won every Cod War. Despite international favour being with the UK, all Iceland had to do was threaten to leave Nato. See, Iceland sits on the GIUK gap, the passage of water between Greenland and the UK, a crucial strategic anti-submarine chokepoint that Nato couldn't afford to lose during the Cold War, and that was the real issue here. The potentially world-ending tension with Russia took priority over the UK's entitled attitude towards fishing.

With the Cod Wars over, five hundred years of unrestricted British fishing in Iceland came to an end, and this little boat went on to live at Grimsby, and sail the North Sea in search of fish. 

One might wonder why, if it was built in the 1970s, does it resemble a 1920s steam boat? Well it had a lot of additional modifications to the superstructure when it was moved here. In fact I think the hull itself is the only original part of the boat. Everything above the red portion of the hull is new. 

That hasn't stopped me trying to hunt down vintage photos of this cute little thing from its glory days! Check it out!

(Picture not mine, obviously)

It looks completely different, doesn't it? But there are archives where one can look up various fishing vessels, and that little thing in the picture has a corresponding name, location, as well as matching dates of manufacture and retirement, so while it has had a lot of modifications, and a new paint job, I'm 90% sure it's the same hull.

The boat was decommissioned in 1994 and ended up in a boat yard in Anglesey. There it was due to be destroyed. But its destruction was postponed by the opportunity to appear on Challenge Anneka, a show where the hostess, Anneka, was repeatedly challenged to do different creative projects to help local communities. I'm not sure what she would have done with this boat, because that show never happened. But it served to delay its destruction just long enough for a man called Joe to spot it, fall in love with it, and transport it to his home town to be a seafood restaurant.

The main road was closed while the boat was lifted into place via a huge crane, and then in 1996 a whole new superstructure was attached to the hull, resembling the 1920s Steamboat that locals know and love. It's not known how much all this cost him, but it's believed to have started at £150,000 and gone up from that.

 

Slipping inside the boat was a fun little scramble.  There was a wasp nest in the entrance which made things doubly exciting.

I found that the top floor didn't really have much going for it. This would have once been a seating area, and it would have once had a nice view out over the river for the people eating to enjoy. Now it's littered with clutter and rapidly falling apart.

 

 

 

The seafood restaurant opened in 1998 after Joe told the papers that he predicted a major shake-up in the local restaurant sector. He seemed very excited and a bit overly ambitious, but at first it did seem to do quite well!. Its menu included the likes of shark, crocodile and ostrich stew. It was open from 9am til 6pm and also had a "Millennium Menu" on Wednesdays, Thursdays Fridays and Sundays. Everything on the Millennium menu was guaranteed to cost £9.99 and would not change until the year 2000.

 

Poor Joe didn't know it, but his boat restaurant wasn't going to make it to the year 2000. 

 

It's a shame that such a business would flop. It's certainly quirky enough to be a success. It has a fun, unique gimmick. Some say that Joe already had a reputation for being quite abrupt when he previously ran a local pub, and apparently he was one for expressing strong, unpopular views in the local paper, and this reputation damaged his chances of success from the moment the boat opened. 

But Joe blames the council for the failure. 

See, in 1998 there was a colossal storm causing the river to burst its banks. The water levels rose quite dramatically, and the boat rose with it. Joe insists that the boat was safe. It's apparently designed to move up and down on metal rings around two steel poles. However in these particular storms the boat rose by about twelve feet. Joe was actually on it at the time, and began tossing ropes to people on the land so that it could be tied to trees in order to prevent it sailing away. Ultimately he had to be rescued by the fire brigade, and in the morning the council had told the local papers that the boat had indeed come loose from its mooring mechanism, which Joe claimed was a lie.

 

But with the rumour now out that Joes boat wasn't safe, business dropped, and Joe told the papers that he was thoroughly cheesed off.  

The boat restaurant closed in 1999, and Joe went to live on St Helena, an island near Brazil.

 

 

Here's the remains of the boats kitchen.

 

 

There's very minimal vandalism, with much of the graffiti being dated 2017. 

 

 

And now onto the best part of any abandoned building, the toilets. 

 

Still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs. 

Seriously, why didn't they make this place into a pub? It would have done loads better.

 

So apparently Joe sold it, and its new owner was then served with an "untidy site notice" by the council, due to it rapidly falling apart and becoming an eyesore. The new owner put it on Ebay for £50,000 in 2006 but eventually sold it at an auction for £40,500 in 2007. So far nothing more has been done with it.

 

Stairs lead to the lower deck.

Down here is really nice! It still retains some resemblance of a restaurant, with its seats and even the bar still extant. Once, albeit not for long, this place was full of happy people enjoying crocodile meat and other odd delicacies. 

Just look at it. Isn't it fucking adorable?

 

But most importantly, this is the oldest part of the boat. Upstairs is just a facade constructed in the 1990s.

Here's the bar.

 

And look! They totally served alcohol here! Why didn't they just make it into a pub? I would happily turn a boat into my local if one opened near me. 

 

I wonder how much it would cost to get this thing to Shrewsbury... 

 

Apparently in 2011 it was inspected for woodworm, dry rot, wet rot, etc. The Environment Agency also wanted to take a look. Following the events of the 1998 storm their biggest concern was that the boat could come loose and end up blocking the river, causing a flood risk. They asked the new owner to provide proof that it was adequately moored, and asked to see the boats restraining mechanism to make sure it was in working order. Providing the boat was safely secured, they would conclude that it was not a flood risk, and it would be allowed to reopen.

 

That was over a decade ago and nothing has happened yet.  

So what does the future hold for the cute little steamboat? Well, the locals call it an eyesore, although many consider it an amusing local quirk. The owners don't seem to want to do anything with it, and the council want it gone but seemingly lack the resources and finances required to move it. It looks like it's there to stay until nature has finished ravaging it.

It's also a gym in Pokemon Go, too, so you can leave your cartoon monster here if you really want. 

 

I did actually dabble in Pokemon Go for a bit, but some old man who lives near me declared that I was his arch nemesis, and started only booting me from gyms but nobody else... which was tolerable, but there was a gym near work that I used to take right before my shift, and he started following me to work to boot me out of the gym ten minutes after my shift started, and then waited for me so that he could boot me out of the gym again ten minutes after my shift finished. It became a bit too creepy. I don't know why I attract creepy pensioners. I feel like a teenage girl on Instagram.  But hey-ho. I'll stick to urbex, where old men can't follow me without risk of cardiac arrest.

 

Before I go, there is this cute little culvert right next to the boat that I was tempted to have a mooch down. The problem was, I hadn't come prepared for this. I still had to appear in public after this adventure, and culverts are filthy. A spare change of clothes is required. I was also barefoot in the river to get external shots of the boat, but I think culverts require wellies. One never knows what gets flung down the drains.

 

So perhaps I'll come back! 

 

To conclude, the boat is cute. I know I've done much bigger stuff than this, but the boat is honestly one of my favourite places. It ticks a lot of my boxes- It's unusual, it's a bit of a scramble to get in, and it has a story. It's just shy of fifty years old, and it's already got some history to it. I would love to see this thing restored and reopened, although if it were mine I'd probably be tempted to just turn it back into a regular boat and sail away. I have plenty of spots on my to-do list that would be more easily accessible if I had a boat. Maybe I'd go to Iceland and risk kicking off Cod War Four. 

It's definitely a shame to see it rot away though. Regardless of how it ends up, we can all agree it has potential to be something pretty cool.

That's all I've got. My next blogs will be a service station and a really pretty cinema. In the meantime, to keep up with my blogs you can follow me on Instagram, Vero, and Reddit, as well as the other social media cesspits, Faceboomer and Twatter. 

Thanks for reading!