The British Industrial Canal: Reading the Waterways from the Eighteenth Century to the Anthropocene by Jodie Matthews

Author:Jodie Matthews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Wales Press

4

WOMEN, WAR, AND THE WATERWAYS

I am Industrious and now, in 1944, I boast the dark red, white and blue livery of the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company. I lie low in the stinking water; bits of Dunlop tyre and the bloated corpse of a dog, its legs in the air, float by.1 Heavy with aluminium ingots baptised in colonial water and towing a similarly loaded butty, my rope tipcat bashes in to the wall of the canal. My propeller grinds into black mud; stemmed up. The tiller has been smoothed by the hands of women for decades, but this steerer seems jittery and unsure. We pass, for the umpteenth time, a coalmine. Coal is ubiquitous, dirtying the surface of the water; pollution leaks across liquid and land, covering the towpath flora like an apocalyptic ashy snow. The miners emerging from the hellish underground look like rocky monsters.2 The aluminium is unloaded at a wharf, taken to a factory, and made into great flying machines: machines that will blast apart human limbs, human hearts, human minds.

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