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The Weaver Navigation has in its chequered history been the home to some historically important and interesting craft but the ‘remains’ firmly moored above Dutton Locks would surely win any award for the best tale of mystery and intrigue on that waterway. Any of the local river watchers old enough to remember will have some sort of opinion about how the vessel Chica ‘a’ first came to the Cheshire waterway or ‘b’ how she came to be laid up at Dutton and lastly ‘c’ be able to offer a sort of potted history about her.
But like all good mysteries the more you investigate the more you begin to realise that there are perhaps more questions than answers! You also become aware that inevitably the mists of time have blurred the edges of reality. Indeed it could be that the only irrefutable fact is that a vessel called the Chica does lie half submerged and within a stones throw of Dutton Locks; on the Weaver Navigation. Further more she has (by most accounts) languished there since one dark night in March 1993 when she allegedly, without it appears any outside assistance, sank at her mooring. A location which looks set (under current British Waterways policy) to become her last resting place!
Local tourism folklore has well and truly embraced the old vessel and as a result she has become somewhat of an attraction. Differing stories of her past have evolved and with them the element of romance has, just like ‘Topsy’, grown and grown. Surviving the German occupation of Norway in WWII, gun running through the Mediterranean, smuggling duty free cigarettes and illicit booze across the straits of Gibraltar and then (an ordinary by comparison) existence fishing in Liverpool Bay, are all occupations which have been attributed to this now sorry, but never the less interesting little craft. In fact you could be excused for thinking that if all the tales of her history and past exploits are true she should be a celebrated exhibit in a maritime museum, not a rotting unloved hulk on a B W controlled navigation!
Let us start by examining what evidence exists from around the time of her first appearance on the river Weaver. At the beginning of the 1980s a vessel know as Chica arrived at Weston Point Docks (Runcorn) having reportedly sailed there from a mooring at Mostyn Dock on the Dee Estuary (north Wales). As the tale unfolds the reader may deduce that the aforementioned small Welsh port facility becomes a common denominator in the inconclusive Chica affair!
A gentleman by the name of Tom Barlow, and said to hail from Chester is credited with bringing the craft to Weston Docks and subsequently the river Weaver. The good Mr Barlow was thought to be attached to the legal profession, but almost certainly not it seems the maritime industry. There is no inference of deliberate hoodwinking on the part of Mr Barlow and the offered version of the vessels history and credentials. It is just that what few particulars survive raise several interesting questions, which are there for all to try and answer.
To put it in its best light you could say that the fascinating (supposed) history of the Chica became more widely known and took on a more interesting persona under the late Mr Barlow’s ownership. Almost all who met with him during his time as owner of the Chica remembered Tom as being a very jolly gentleman, every bit the hail fellow well met type and say all ‘a really nice guy’. One boatman who knew him well described him as, ‘a lovely round-faced jolly man who whilst not a natural or indeed time served river man was never the less a great guy to know’.
Retiring from commerce it seems that he threw himself wholeheartedly into the river cruise business. His first intention was to undertake pleasure cruises on the Manchester Ship Canal, the Mersey and the Weaver but in the event the wooden hulled Chica, which he apparently had licensed for 12 passengers failed to gain permission to ply the Mersey or MSC waters. Reportedly the vessel was deemed by examiners as being un-seaworthy. Undaunted and having sunk a deal of money into fitting out the craft with cabins in the main hold and a saloon on deck (which he called the wardroom) Mr Barlow decided to sail the Weaver, it was perchance the only commercial choice open to him.
The passenger cabins were by all accounts Spartan but adequate, however the ‘Pink Gins’ served regularly in the wardroom were very much the real thing. Tom Barlow advertised overseas for clients for his 3 day cruises from Runcorn Docks to Anderton Basin, and by all accounts he found enough customers to keep the operation going for 2 summer seasons. Captain Barlow, as he later liked to be called, strode the deck of the vessel in a full merchant marine masters uniform. One commentator put it, albeit good naturedly ‘and he who had never worked a single day at sea in his life’.
The river abounds with tales of Capt Tom and the Chica, but you will not find anyone who knew him wanting to utter a single bad word of him, but there are several amusing anecdotes. For instance he was known to call up the locks as he approached them on his VHF marine radio and ask for a weather report, when he was only in reality a mile or so away, and on a placid inland waterway! He is said to have continually advertised trying to attract business ‘carrying coal’ so that he would only be registered with BW as an inland waterways collier. The former being a much cheaper option than the Chica being listed as a commercial passenger craft, by all accounts he never ever carried any coal, or other type of cargo for that matter.
Several Americans were said to have taken paid passage with him and as rumour has it even an African Bishop swung his leg over a Chica hammock on one occasion. He did not advertise very much in the UK (although he had a glossy brochure published) after all he did sail out of a chemical complex (ICI Runcorn) to a basin at the foot of the then out of use boat lift (Anderton) itself opposite an unattractive industrial area.
The ‘ships steward’ was reportedly a very busy guy. The sun it seems was almost ‘always over the yard arm’ on the Chica voyages of discovery. Interestingly Capt Barlow did not sail on up to Northwich town quay, although his passengers were, if required, ferried there by local pleasure craft. Evidently neither he nor his helmsmen fancied turning the Chica in the slightly narrower channel at Barons Quay. The Chica flew the Red Ensign and a plethora of other flags, in addition she often flew a flag depicting ‘the set square and compass’s’ motif!
So here is the big question. Did Tom Barlow attach a new identity to a vessel he found lying in Mostyn Dock, just as easily as he slipped on the uniform of a merchant navy master mariner, or was the vessel named Chica really the one he would have us believe she was? Or was he duped by others into accepting a false history for the ship, have over time the facts simply become married to the fiction? In any account Captain Barlow must have had a high regard for his vessel as those who remember her on the Weaver all recall that whatever the structural condition of her may have been she was always turned out immaculately.
Consider this, as pollution began to seriously affect the fish stocks in Liverpool Bay the ports fishing fleet which historically operated out of Canning Dock began to shrink in size. In fact fishing declined rapidly during the 1930s and 1940s so that by the 1950s there were reportedly little or no fish to be caught in the estuary, and indeed in most of Liverpool Bay. What has this to do with the Chica? You may ask, well as fish stocks dwindled many of the Liverpool fishing vessels went to other ports in order to survive, and some went to Mostyn Dock. Why is Mostyn Dock our common denominator? According to Tom Barlow’s version of the boats history she sailed there from the Mediterranean before he brought her to Weston Docks, on the Weaver at Runcorn.
Here are a few more details of her possible history, it would be wrong without more evidence to call them all hard and fast facts. This is reportedly a resume of information given to others on the Weaver by the self styled riverboat captain. His ship the Chica was one of two such vessels built as wooden sailing general cargo vessels at Rolf Sjoasaether yard in Surendalen, Norway in 1894. Dimensions: 73.3 ft long, 20.6 ft beam, 8.8 ft draft. The sister ships were named Flora (Chica supposedly) and Fosna (supposedly still preserved in Norway) Pictures purporting to be of the sister ship show the stern design to be of ‘canoe’ style, whilst the Chica is now very definitely a square sterner. In 1937 a 61 BHP Engine was installed by a yard in Bergen Norway, and accordingly her sailing gear was removed.
In 1940 her name was changed to Lifa and she came under the control of the German navy during the occupation of Norway (WWII) and was allegedly used as supply ship sailing inshore waters at both Kristiansund and Trondheim. Little is known of her between 1940 and 1965 when she apparently was renamed the Lill Tove. Is that when she fished the waters of Liverpool Bay for a short while, after the war? Therefore was she actually built as a square sterner and thus not really sister to the Fosna? Is the Fosna connection a real red herring?
She appears again as the Lill Tove in 1977 and is then said to be owned by The Strait Shipping Company of Gibraltar. Around that time according to romantic rumour she plied between North Africa and ‘The Rock’ fancifully carrying guns, contraband and the like. In 1981 she is reported as lying at Mostyn Dock, having arrived from Gibraltar. By then converted to a passenger carrying vessel (12 persons) with a new cabin build amidships and sleeping quarters in the hold.
There is a vessel called Lill Tove still registered and reportedly in use in Norway, but she is a fibre glass hulled fishing vessel built in 1986. There are several vessels called Flora and one such is a wooden hulled fishing vessel working out of Alesund and built in 1982.
However to confuse matters further the vessel known as Chica and now rotting away on the Weaver carried the identification number LL20 suggesting that she is a survivor of the long disbanded Liverpool fishing fleet. That does not mean to say that the Chica ‘history according to Tom Barlow’ is wholly incorrect, it just throws up even more questions. For example the Liverpool Bay area was all but fished out by the 1950s. So did she work out of Mostyn Dock?
Study the pictures and you will see that the vessel has as stated a very common fishing boat style square/transom stern. If she was rebuilt in that style when was it, before or after she went on her Mediterranean adventures etc? Perhaps the truth is that she was a much older Merseyside fishing vessel, dating from circa 1890. But if so what was she then doing sailing the fiords under the flag of the Third Reich?
Whilst owned by Capt Barlow she had (and has to this day) the word Liverpool on her stern, just where you would expect to see the name of a ships port of registry. People who remember her, and some who have examined her since, reported that she is fitted with what looks like a post war diesel engine. No signs remain of the original ‘Raw Oil Motor’ said to have been fitted in the vessel whose legend she has been suggested as owning.
After a couple of years on the Weaver Capt Barlow took her back to Weston Docks where she sat for at least two more years (early1990s) presumably because there was no more Weaver cruise work for her. Whilst there she is said to have been somewhat vandalised and fancifully it was claimed that she even became the temporary and unofficial workplace of some ladies who reputedly earned their daily bread by night!
For whatever reason, Tom Barlow brought her back up the Weaver to ‘above’ Dutton after that time. The Chica travelled under her own power and he moored her where she sits to this day, he reportedly told people that he was going to refit her. An engineer who had examined her previously volunteered the information that during her original conversion (and he used the words ‘from fishing vessel’ adding to a river cruise boat) holes for piping had been drilled in the once watertight bulkheads. Tragically they were never sealed. He also recalled that some of the more inaccessible areas of the hold still smelled a little like the interior of a fishing vessel.
Capt Barlow by all accounts had constructed a battery operated bilge pump and power supply for charging the batteries (by the way of a wind generator). Several recall that after one of his infrequent visits the ‘Heath Robinson’ pumping rig failed. The Chica then shipped water which flooded her whole length, because of the ruined integrity of the bulkheads. She then sunk.
However there were witnesses to that sorry event. Dave Holford-Smith and Margaret Carding had just popped out of their lock side cottage to take the evening air when they realised that all was not well with the Chica. Literally as they watched she started to list, at first slowly and then more rapidly. They both recall that within ½ hour the vessel had sunk and settled in the position it is still in to this day; some 14 years later.
The sinking happened on a March night in 1993, at about 9pm. Both witnesses recall that the preceding 10 or so days had been calm, unusually so for the time of year. Little or no wind of course meant that the generator had not been able to top up the batteries sufficiently; ergo the bilge pump stopped working. They both recalled remarking a few days earlier that the pump appeared (from audible evidence) to be struggling and so made a mental note to inform the good captain when he next visited his craft!
British Waterways were contacted and a day or so later a work party fixed a securing line fastened to the Chica. It appears that the illustrious Captain Barlow had contacts with a company, allegedly to be ‘of little or no worth’ in Malta, and they were the registered owners of the Chica. He thus reportedly walked away leaving British Waterways to claim against a penniless foreign company. But not it seems before removing from the vessel anything of worth, she is now only a shell albeit with an engine.
In time the vessel passed into BW ownership and they recently made the following comment.
"The MV Chica has sat at its current location for almost 15 years now and to some people has become a part of the Weaver's rich history. It does not hinder navigation in its current location and is safely secured to the bankside to prevent it slipping into the main channel. We check on the vessel periodically to note whether there has been any change in its circumstances. Current estimates suggest that we'd face a bill of up to £60,000 if we were to move and dispose of the MV Chica, and we feel that because it is safe where it is, and without risk of pollution to the River Weaver, such a sum is better spent elsewhere where it can benefit a greater range of waterway users and visitors”.
So there you have it. Ex Liverpool fishing vessel laid up at Mostyn Dock or historically important Norwegian sailing barge brought to Mostyn Dock from the Straits of Gibraltar, or even a little of both. You chose! Or is there someone out there who can conclusively solve the mystery of the MV Chica?