Tag: Ministry of War Transport

• Boatwomen Training Scheme: Grand Union Documentation

  This should be read in conjunction with the Training Scheme correspondence and documentation on the Severn & Canal Carrying Co. page. The documents reproduced below from Molly’s scrapbook are undated but probably date from c. 1942-3. They describe conditions of service, pay rates agreed with the Transport & General Workers’ Union, leave entitlement, etc. I submitted these and they were added to the TUC’s “The Worker’s War: Home Front Recalled” website in the early 2000s.

  

  This is the letter that prospective applicants to the Training Scheme would have received from the Grand Union Canal Carrying Co.:

  

  

  From above “… you will be required to sign a simple form of agreement, a copy of which is attached hereto”:

  

  This would have been sent to the trainee shortly before commencing service:

  

  It is interesting to read above that “A certain amount of instruction will be given in the care and running of the engines, but it is emphasised that you are not required to be mechanics and repairs to engines are carried out by an experienced staff of fitters …”. Before joining Daphne March, Molly spent two and a half days at Braunston with Cope(?), the Petter agent, learning “all there is to know about a Petter engine”. See her letter home dated 8th February 1941. And in her letters she talks about doing repairs to engines herself on more than one occasion.

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  Website by Crispin Partridge – Grandson of Molly Traill.

  November 22, 2024

  Boatwomen Training Scheme, Frances Marion Traill, Grand Union Canal Carrying Co. Ltd, Idle Women, Ministry of War Transport, Molly Traill, Transport & General Workers’ Union

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• Boatwomen Training Scheme: Press & Correspondence

  Much of the correspondence about the Training Scheme can be found in the Grand Union Canal Carrying Co. Ltd. pages of this website, plus some on the Severn & canal Carrying Co. Ltd. page. Here we have press cuttings and other correspondence.

  

  

  The following letter from Cecily Ramsay to Molly gives an insider view of the various characters involved in the Training Scheme at the end of 1943. It is quite a revealing account of the inter-personal dynamics and rivalries, and gives a very different perspective to the glamorous image of the young women portrayed in the Daily Sketch article above.

  

  

  

  

  Two of the characters in the letter above, Betty Snelling and Mary Whitley, feature in the two following press photographs:

  

  

  

  

  

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  Cecily Ramsay, incidentally, gave several talks about her life during the war when she got back home to Dunedin, New Zealand. This short piece is from the [Dunedin] Evening Star, 3 October 1946:

  The story of her experiences on a boat on the English canals during the war, trading between London and Birmingham, was the subject of an address given by Miss Cecily Ramsay to the Travel Club, which met in the Tudor Hall, Savoy, yesterday morning.

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  Website by Crispin Partridge – Grandson of Molly Traill.

  November 17, 2024

  Ann Nicholson, Betty Snelling, Boatwomen Training Scheme, Cecily Ramsay, Daily Sketch, Dipper, Dodona, Elizabeth Coxhead, Frankie Campbell-Martin, Grand Union Canal Carrying Co. Ltd, Idle Women, Mary Ormsby, Mary Whitley, Ministry of War Transport, Rosheen Ormsby, The Lady, Three Girls On Two Boats, Vela

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• Boatwomen Training Scheme: Severn & Canal Carrying Co.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

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  Website by Crispin Partridge – Grandson of Molly Traill.

  November 9, 2024

  Birmingham, Boatwomen Training Scheme, Ellesmere Port, Fellows Morton & Clayton, Ministry of War Transport, Motor Boat Ash, Severn & Canal Carrying Co. Ltd., Severn Carrying Company Ltd., Sir Osborne Mance, Womens Training Scheme

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• Letters home: Canals

  Here are extracts from some of the letters Molly sent to her parents about her application for the job with Daphne March and the skills she had to learn, before boarding the Heather Bell in 1941. Then the letters move to 1942 and the start of the Boatwomen Training Scheme.

  

  

  By the time of the next letter she had learnt that it is a narrow boat, not a barge:

  

  

  

  

  A letter from the 17th February 1941 opens with:

  No further news as to our movements except that the girl has had flu, & the 17th is today & I have not been summoned for the trial run.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  Much detail in this letter about the trip with the Sibleys, undated:

  

  

  

  

  

  

  January 20th 1942 – Molly is itching to start training her first batch of women for the Boatwomen Training Scheme:

  I have got digs in Southall, c/o Mrs. Hunter,

  

  Undated, but probably 24th February 1942, six days before the first training trip:

  

  

  This next letter is dated Easter Monday, possibly 6th April 1942:

  

  Her second trip started on 15th April 1942. This letter, dated 1st May 1942, was probably from this second trip:

  

  

  

  

  

  This photograph, courtesy of the Eily Gayford Archive [thanks to Mike Constable] is fairly certainly from the trip described in the letter above. Brigit Macnamara is on the right, on the butty Saltley. Molly Traill is standing next to her, and Rosheen Ormsby [we think] is pictured sitting on motor boat Bainton. Eily Gayford took the photograph. It is, incidentally, the only known photograph of Molly from the war period; there are none in her photo albums.

  

  There follows a long gap in the correspondence to April 1st 1943 when, during a training trip, she is laid up with the measles:

  

  Another long gap to the final letter, 6th December 1943, around the time of her dismissal by Philip Noel Baker, Minister of War Transport. His letter was dated 29th November 1943, so perhaps a little more than a “terrific argument”:

  

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  Website by Crispin Partridge – Grandson of Molly Traill.

  November 2, 2024

  Albert Sibley, Bainton, Beecham family, Birmingham, Boatwomen Training Scheme, Braunston, Brigit Macnamara, Bulls Bridge, Butty Saltley, Cannock Chase, Daphne March, Eastwood Colliery Wharf, Eily Gayford, Frances Marion Traill, Grand Union Canal Carrying Co. Ltd, Heather Bell, Idle Women, Ivinghoe, Langley Mill, Leicester, Leighton Buzzard, M.B. Bainton, Ministry of War Transport, Molly Traill, Narrow Boat, Petter Engine, Philip Noel-Baker, River Trent, Rosheen Ormsby, Rugby, Saltley, Sissy Sibley, Tipton, Worcester

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• Grand Union: Correspondence

  Here are the letters Molly received from the GUCCC. There are no copies of the letters she sent to the company. First – Eily Gayford sets the scene:

  A meeting with Molly that afternoon; the next day down to the Grand Union depot at Southall, then over to the head office at Ruislip, and at last back home. Everything was now settled. Daphne was not coming with us, but staying where she was on the Heather Bell, and in the new year Molly and I were to do a trip with a pair of boats worked by regular boat people, to learn the route and the management of a pair.¹

  

  

  

  

  

  

  1942 started with real winter weather, ice and snow, and not the kind which soon disappears. At the end of January, we were still waiting to join the Grand Union. We had written reminding them how anxious we were to start as soon as possible, but they had replied that all transport was being seriously affected by the severe weather conditions, and owing to other difficulties they were unable to say definitely when we could come. So that was that and there was nothing we could do about it.²

  

  

  

  There is then a six month gap in the correspondence while Molly and Eily Gayford did their training trip with Ciss and Albert Sibley.

  

  

  The correspondence then moves on to March 1943:

  

  

  A telling off from the company:

  

  

  Her TGWU card:

  

  The question of publicity is raised again:

  

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  1. The Amateur Boatwomen, Eily Gayford. p.53 ↩︎
  2. Ibid p.54 ↩︎

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  Website by Crispin Partridge – Grandson of Molly Traill.

  October 26, 2024

  1942, Albert Sibley, Betty Snelling, Boatwomen Training Scheme, Ciss Sibley, Eily Gayford, Frances Marion Traill, Grand Union Canal Carrying Co. Ltd, GUCCC, Lily Gayford, Ministry of Information – American Division, Ministry of War Transport, Molly Traill, Newdigate Colliery, Ration Book, Transport & General Workers’ Union

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