Widebeam

A widebeam is a canal boat built in the style of a British narrowboat but with a beam of or greater. The Canal and River Trust (CRT) gives no precise definition of a "widebeam", merely distinguishing it from other types of canal craft such as: narrowboats, Thames sailing barges, Dutch barges, other barge types, grp cabin cruisers, and wooden boats. Nevertheless, the salient features of a modern widebeam are: A widebeam is built in the style of a cruising narrowboat, that is to say, a steel-hulled barge used mainly by leisure boaters. Typically, this entails a bow well-deck with doors leading aft to the living accommodation. The long saloon typically has numerous side-windows, and while its coachroof may have fitments such as solar panels and skylights. The overall height (as with a narrowboat) must be low enough to negotiate canal bridges. Echoing narrowboats, a widebeam's stern may be a cruiser stern or a "semi-trad"; but these days it is rare to see a widebeam with a traditional stern. Unlike some traditional narrowboats, a modern widebeam will rarely have a walk-through engine room with an antique engine such as a Bolinder; its engine will normally be found beneath the stern deck. Whereas (except at the bow and stern) a narrowboat will normally have a rectangular cross-section below the gunwales, (although "Springer" narrowboats with V-shaped bilge sections are well-known), many widebeams may have a chined cross-section. A chined hull may steer more predictably than a flat-bottomed barge, because it holds a course more readily; and the chine allows the widebeam to approach closer to the canal bank where the canal is shallow or narrow. When English canals were first built to assist transport during the Industrial Revolution, locks were only wide. Most narrow locks are long, but some are only . It was soon realised that it would be more efficient to have wider canals with wider locks, and widebeam boats were introduced to take advantage of this change.