RELICS of a ghost boat said to be haunted by its skipper have resurfaced during work to restore the Montgomery Canal.
A digger working on the canal channel at Crickheath Tramway Wharf came across ironwork from a narrowboat deep in the earth. All the woodwork had long since rotted away but the iron skeleton remained bent but not broken.
According to the Shropshire Union Canal Society, the sunken vessel is, almost certainly, the Usk, which is said to be haunted by the boatman who skippered her and was killed in an accident nearly 150 years ago.
George Benbow was skipper of the Usk, with 13-year-old William Evanson as his crew. It appears that as the boat passed under the lock gate at Hadley Park Lock on the Trench Arm of the Shrewsbury and Newport canal, George did not duck and was hit and killed by the counterweight box.
According to legend, from that very day, the Usk was doomed: an unlucky, haunted boat that many boatmen would not work aboard, so she was sold and traded on the smaller canals on the Shropshire Union system.
But the luck did not improve so she was finally abandoned and sank on the Montgomery canal near Crickheath, probably in the early 1890s. And there she lies to this very day, a ghostly reminder of a tragedy long ago.
