Narrow Boat AKA Narrowboat

In the context of British Inland Waterways, "narrow boat" refers to the original working boats built in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries for carrying goods on the narrow canals (where locks and bridge holes would have a minimum width of 7 feet built in the English midlands during the industrial revolution.

The term is extended to modern "narrow boats" used as homes and for recreation, whose design is an interpretation of the old boats for modern purposes and modern materials.

Purists tend to use the term with a space (narrow boat) when referring to an original boat or a replica, and to omit the space when referring to a modern boat used for leisure or as a residence - but this is not a hard and fast rule. The single word 'narrow boat' has been adopted by authorities such as British Waterways and the magazine Waterways World to refer to all boats built in the style and tradition of the narrow canal locks.

Although some narrow boats were built to a design based on river barges, it is incorrect to refer to a narrow boat (or narrow boat) as a barge. In the context of the British inland waterways, a barge is usually a much wider, cargo-carrying boat or a modern boat modeled on one, certainly more than 7 feet wide.

It is also incorrect (or at least incongruous) to refer to a narrow boat as a longboat, although this name was sometimes used in the midlands in working-boat days. It is common to ridicule the use of the term longboat by commenting that the speaker has suggested that Vikings have re-invaded Britain via the Trent and Mersey Canal! However, the vessels used by the Vikings to invade England were called long ships, not longboats (which were a type of ship's rowing/sail boat used until the 19th century).

Usage has not quite settled down as regards boats based on narrow boat design, but too wide for narrow canals ; or boats the same width as narrow boats but based on other types of boat. To many ears, "Wide-beam narrow boat" and "Dutch-Barge-style narrow boat" are both terms which jar.

The key distinguishing feature of a narrow boat is its width: it must be no more than 7 feet wide to navigate the British narrow canals. Some old boats are very close to this limit, and can have trouble using locks that are not quite as wide as they should be because of subsidence. Modern boats are usually 6ft 10in wide to guarantee easy passage everywhere.

Because of their slenderness, some narrow boats seem very long. The maximum length is about 72 feet, the length of the locks on the narrow canals). However, modern narrow boats tend to be shorter than this, so that they can cruise anywhere on the connected network of British canals - including on the "wide" canals.

This makes the largest "go-anywhere-on-the-network" narrow boat slightly longer (about 60ft) than the straight length of the lock, because it can (with a certain amount of "shoehorning") lie diagonally. Some locks on isolated waterways are as short as 40ft. Hire fleets on British canals can contain narrow boats of many lengths from about 30 feet upwards, to allow parties of different sizes or different budgets to hire a boat.