J. H. Taylor & Sons was a company that primarily built wooden canal boat

Canal boat

There are three articles associated with canal watercraft:* The Volunteer - A replica 1848 canal boat docked on the Illinois and Michigan Canal at LaSalle, Illinois* Narrowboat - a specialized craft for operation in early narrow canals...

s on the Shropshire Union Canal

Shropshire Union Canal

The Shropshire Union Canal is a navigable canal in England; the Llangollen and Montgomery canals are the modern names of branches of the Shropshire Union system and lie partially in Wales....

 at Tower Wharf, Chester

Chester

Chester is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77,040 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100 according to the...

. Joseph Harry Taylor set up the business with his son Wilfred in 1914 in the Dee Basin

River Dee, Wales

The River Dee is a long river in the United Kingdom. It travels through Wales and England and also forms part of the border between the two countries....

. The company was in Wilfred's name as his father was an undischarged bankrupt

Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....

. During this time the company built and repaired an array of water craft from traditional Dee skiff

Skiff

The term skiff is used for a number of essentially unrelated styles of small boat. The word is related to ship and has a complicated etymology: "skiff" comes from the Middle English skif, which derives from the Old French esquif, which in turn derives from the Old Italian schifo, which is itself of...

s and salmon

Salmon

Salmon is the common name for several species of fish in the family Salmonidae. Several other fish in the same family are called trout; the difference is often said to be that salmon migrate and trout are resident, but this distinction does not strictly hold true...

 fishing boats to passenger launches

Launch (boat)

A launch in contemporary usage refers to a large motorboat. The name originally referred to the largest boat carried by a warship. The etymology of the word is given as Portuguese lancha "barge", from Malay lancha, lancharan, "boat," from lanchar "velocity without effort," "action of gliding...

, narrow boats and tug

Tug

Tuğ is a village in the Khojavend Rayon of Azerbaijan....

s. Joseph Harry died in 1924 and his sons carried on the business until 1970.

Overview

Today, J. H. Taylor boats are largely remembered for their pleasure boats built for the inland waterways of the United Kingdom. The first boat of this series was commissioned by the Manchester Ship Canal Company. The boats were constructed using a round bilge style with mahogany

Mahogany

The name mahogany is used when referring to numerous varieties of dark-colored hardwood. It is a native American word originally used for the wood of the species Swietenia mahagoni, known as West Indian or Cuban mahogany....

 on oak

Oak

An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...

 frames. The beam of the vessels is 6 ft. 11in., allowing the boats to pass through all locks on the canal system of England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

. The boats were not cheap to build. An invoice for the Canal Cruiser 'Ottilie' dated the 31st of October 1957 states a final cost including all fittings and labour came to £1924.12. The number of hours labour in the invoice was as follows; journeymen - 6077½ hours; apprentice - 456 hours.

Preservation

Some of the boats can still be seen on the Canals of the United Kingdom and one boat is held at the National Waterways Museum, Ellesmere Port

National Waterways Museum, Ellesmere Port

The Ellesmere Port site of the National Waterways Museum is situated at the northern extremity of the Shropshire Union Canal where it enters the Manchester Ship Canal at Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, England...

.