Canal Art
How is a narrowboat painted?
A narrowboat is painted in two distinct parts: the hull below the waterline, which is blacked with a protective bituminous coating, and the cabin sides above it, which carry the colour, the signwritten name and any decoration.
Blacking is maintenance rather than decoration — a bituminous coating applied to the steel hull below the waterline to slow corrosion, redone periodically whenever the boat comes out of the water for survey or repair. It's black because the coating is, not by aesthetic choice — and keeping up with it is a large part of what determines how long a narrowboat lasts. Above the waterline is where the character lives: the cabin sides are painted in enamel, in the traditional palette of bottle green, oxblood red, black and cream, then hand-lettered by a signwriter with the boat's name and registration number. Many boats also carry decorative panels in the roses-and-castles folk-art style, painted separately from the lettering. Repainting the cabin sides is a bigger, less frequent job than blacking, usually done when the existing paint has genuinely worn rather than on a fixed schedule. The same tradition carries onto narrowboat art prints for the wall, minus the maintenance.
Written by Craig Fearn, Narrowboat Gifts.