Viaduct across the Sankey Valley, from Bury's Liverpool and Manchester Railway, 1831 - artfinder 122455

A Mersey flat is a type of doubled-ended

barge Barge nowadays generally refers to a flat-bottomed inland waterway vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. The first modern barges were pulled by tugs, but nowadays most are pushed by pusher boats, or other vessels. ...

, they were commonly used on the

River Mersey The River Mersey () is in North West England. Its name derives from Old English and means "boundary river", possibly referring to its having been a border between the ancient kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. For centuries it has formed par ...

Construction

Traditionally, the hull was built of oak and the deck was

pitch pine ''Pinus rigida'', the pitch pine, is a small-to-medium-sized pine. It is native to eastern North America, primarily from central Maine south to Georgia and as far west as Kentucky. It is found in environments which other species would find unsuit ...

. Some had a single mast, with a

fore-and-aft rig A fore-and-aft rig is a sailing vessel rigged mainly with sails set along the line of the keel, rather than perpendicular to it as on a square rigged vessel. Description Fore-and-aft rigged sails include staysails, Bermuda rigged sails, ga ...

, while some had an additional

mizzen mast The mast of a sailing vessel is a tall spar, or arrangement of spars, erected more or less vertically on the centre-line of a ship or boat. Its purposes include carrying sails, spars, and derricks, and giving necessary height to a navigation ...

. Despite having a flat bottom and curved sides, they were quite stable.''The Shell Book of Inland Waterways'', (1981), Hugh McKnight, David and Charles They were common from the 1730s to 1890s. The length of a flat was from long, with a draught and a beam of 14 feet 9 inches to 17 feet (4.5 to 5.2 m). They could carry up to 80

ton Ton is the name of any one of several units of measure. It has a long history and has acquired several meanings and uses. Mainly it describes units of weight. Confusion can arise because ''ton'' can mean * the long ton, which is 2,240 pounds ...

s of cargo, and this size allowed them to work along the

Bridgewater Canal The Bridgewater Canal connects Runcorn, Manchester and Leigh, in North West England. It was commissioned by Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, to transport coal from his mines in Worsley to Manchester. It was opened in 1761 from Wo ...

, the

Sankey Canal The Sankey Canal in North West England, initially known as the Sankey Brook Navigation and later the St Helens Canal, is a former industrial canal, which when opened in 1757 was England's first of the Industrial revolution, and the first moder ...

and the northern parts of the

Shropshire Union Canal The Shropshire Union Canal, nicknamed the "Shroppie", is a navigable canal in England. The Llangollen and Montgomery canals are the modern names of branches of the Shropshire Union (SU) system and lie partially in Wales. The canal lies in ...

. The Weaver flat was a larger version of the Mersey flat, measuring . Its draught was and when fully loaded, could carry 250 tons.

Naming

As the name suggests, these flats originated on the

, but they were also used on the rivers Irwell and Weaver.

Usage

Most Mersey flats had been converted to dumb barges by the end of the 19th century, towed by horses or by steam tugs. The larger Weaver flats were fitted with steam engines, and later with diesel engines, although there were still around 20 working by sail in 1935. Both the Liverpool Maritime Museum and the Ellesmere Port Museum have a Mersey flat in their collections, neither of which actually worked under sail.

References

Barges Sailing {{ship-type-stub

Construction

Naming

Usage

See also

References