Long Tom

A little history

Long Tom was once called White Swan and then Blue Swan. We have little information about its past but in late 2022 the idea emerged from conversations between Angel Community Canal Boat Trust and London Canal Museum that we should together buy a boat. Around the same time Blue Swan was offered for sale in Lancashire.

London Canal Museum had for some years operated tunnel boat trips from the museum through Islington Tunnel and back, using chartered boats from other charities in London. However this was becoming more and more dificult as there were too few boats and the cost of chartering them was sometimes too much to enable the trips to break even. Angel Community Canal Boat Trust (known more briefly as Angel Boat) has for many years provided affordable boating opportunities to community groups using their full-length narrowboat Angel II. Angel II is equipped for residentail trips and that lessens its availbility for other group in the summer. Angel Boat wanted another boat to enable them to offer more opportunities to get afloat. For both organisations the purchase of a boat was a big step and neither could be certain of success. The idea of a shared boat meant that the risks involved were shared and reduced and the capital cost shared too.

Angel boat has many years of experience operating canal boats and a full-time skipper is employed, who is also qualified to assess skippers' competence and award the Certificate of Community Boat Management, a qualification that is widely accepted as demonstrating competence to skipper a passenger boat for 12 passengers. London Canal Museum did not have similar experience or capacity as an organisation but brought different strengths to the partnership. The museum had the proven ability to sell tickets for public trips, nd an ideal starting-place for boat trips combined with a museum visit. We also had the volunteer team that could be expanded to provide guided commentary, an important feature of our trips as public education is the museum's charitable object. So the two organisations brought different capabilities to the partnership that complemented each other.

The boat that is now Long Tom was advertised for sale from its canalside mooring in rural Lancashire on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal,so early one morning the Chairs of the two London charities boarded a train for Liverpool on a mission to inspect it. It was used for cream tea cruises but changes in the owners' personal circumstances had led to closure of the business. No boat is ever perfect but this boat had many of the qualities we wanted. It was the right length for ease of navigation, had great viewing windows for passengers, and was in generally good condition. The access steps were a little awkward to use but other than that there were only minor things that we felt the need to fix.

Next step was a surveyor's survey, which meant moving the boat to a suitable boatyard. The results were satisfactory so we moved on to the final hurdle - the heal test. This is a stability test and answers the question as tto whether the boat would tip over if 12 passengers and 2 crew all stood on one side. The chances of this happening are remote, of course, but it is a test we needed to do. It was done by hiring weights on a very wet winter's day and assembling them on one side under supervision of a surveyor to simulate the situation.

These tests completed, negotiations were rapidly concluded and the deal was done. Transport was by road from Liverpool to Watford with some canal travel at each end, and at a boatyard in Watford various maintenance work was carried out and the name was changed to Long Tom.