The Life of Riley - by Frank Riley ©

BOOK ONE - SPIKE ISLAND

Chapter Nineteen: Don't Go Near the Water

Summertime, the time of seemingly endless school holidays, saw a constant stream of kids come to our island. Even Dad was unable to stem the flow as they gushed down from the town in search of aquatic adventure.

At the end of the canal, where the locks were, the kids used to congregate in great clusters, like seagulls on a pebbly shore. They mainly occupied the space on the middle finger, the part which separated the canal into two accesses to the locks, and cackled and cawed very much like the aforementioned seabirds.

Some of the bigger boys would test Dad's patience by playing on the lock gates, or even swimming in the locks if they were full, but he would soon give them a clip behind their ears for their troubles and warn them: "Stay on the middle, or bloody well go home!" Usually, after ten or twenty cautions and attendant cuffs, they would comply with his wishes.

Harry Arnold's 1960s view of Widnes Locks

One summer the lock-gates nearest to our house were due for some repairs and in readiness for this operation a giant raft had been constructed. Now that I think of it, it probably wasn't a raft as such, but a pile of great, thick timbers which would be used to block off the canal in order to be able to get at the lock-gates. No matter, whatever they were originally intended for they now served very nicely, thank you, as a huge floating platform.

It was on this monster raft that all the kids descended. They would dive from it, swim under it, lounge in wet comfort upon it, and generally have a whale of a time. However, as you well know with kids, too much of something is very often not enough. The raft was moored alongside the middle finger and destined by the adults never to sail.

This state of affairs could not be tolerated indefinitely and something would have to be done if we were ever to find true adventure on the high seas. I say "we" because, even though Mike and I were usually protective of all things on our island and would chase kids away, or get Dad to, if they over-stepped the mark, the prospect of missing out on this great sea trip was too much to resist.

Someone let go of the mooring-lines and the majestic raft began to drift away from the shore. Well now, this was more like it! Further and further we drifted up the canal. If Dad sees us, I thought, he'll kill us! Some of the bigger boys began to rock the raft and soon it was thrashing about in a violent and dangerous manner. Kids were falling overboard in droves and scrambling madly back on board again to doubtful safety.

Among the six thousand children aboard, there were many tiddlers, nippers of six and seven, who now began to scream in fright. The big boys, however, did not let up. Now the noise from the little ones was becoming alarming. Mike and I were terrified that Dad would be woken from his slumbers and come out and catch us red-handed. We dived over the side and swam to the canal bank in urgent disassociation from these fractious ruffians.

What to do? Should we tell Dad, or should we just absent ourselves from the scene? In the end we decided that the former was the better course of action. We took our angelic little selves to our house and woke the sleeping bear. "Dad, Dad, some naughty boys have taken the raft away!" we said, with all the innocence we could muster. Dad got up from his sleeping-chair grumbling and cursing and began to follow us out of the house.

In our absence from the scene a great commotion had taken place. One of the little girls was missing! The mother of the child was screaming hysterically on the bank not far from our house. Why she had allowed her daughter to play on the raft in the first place only Heaven knows, but now the child was missing and the mother was frantic. Most of the kids had jumped overboard and once on dry land had run away in a guilty panic.

Dad sized up the situation in a few seconds and organised the remaining boys to search for her. "Dive under and see if you can see her!" he shouted. Away they went, diving this way and that, fighting against time in their desperate quest. Each time a head bobbed up Dad would shout: "Did you see her? Did you see her?" The mother was still screaming and sobbing and tearing at her clothes. Other heads bobbed up. "Did you see her?" he shouted again, only to see negative shakes of heads.

"Try underneath the raft!" he shouted, and several boys dived down again. That was where they found her. They pulled her to the bank and Dad dragged her lifeless body out of the water and carried her inside the house. The mother tried to clutch at her baby, screaming hopelessly as she followed Dad inside. He put her down on the floor on a pile of towels and started to give her artificial respiration. He pumped and pumped her chest, but no sign of life was evident. Mike and I looked on in horror as the mother continued to wail and scream.

Still he pumped and still no reaction from her. But Dad was not going to lose. You could see it on his face. He pumped as hard as he dare as her sodden little body jerked with the pressure. All of a sudden she opened her eyes, gave out a loud croak, and vomited. When she regained her senses and saw all the commotion she began to cry. Everyone thought that that was a perfectly natural reaction considering what she had just been through, but we were all taken aback when she uttered these immortal words: "Me Dad'll kill me!" It seems all us kids felt that it was a fate worse than death to be killed by your Dad.

There were many such dramas on Spike Island, especially during the Summertime. I suppose it was inevitable considering the influx of children the warm weather brought. One of my school-mates drowned one year. I didn't see this happen, of course, but I heard he had been wheeling his bike along the bank and had come to a very narrow part in the footpath. Instead of going round the small shed which was blocking his way he decided, alas, to negotiate the foot-wide rim. It seems that somewhere in this exercise he lost his balance and fell into the canal, with the bike tumbling in on top of him. Apparently, he became hopelessly entangled and there he remained, at the bottom of the canal, until, several days later, he was found. It was a tragic, unnecessary loss, but it was also a terrible reminder that the canal, while being a fun place to visit, was always fraught with danger.

One Summer, Mike was involved in an incident which, I'm sure he'll never forget. It was a boiling-hot day and Dad had opened the sluice-gates in order to run off some excess water from the canal. Whenever the water-level rose too high because of the rains it was Dad's task to see that some of it was drained into the river.

The sluice-gates were situated at the bottom of the lock-gates, about fourteen feet down. They were connected to paddles which Dad would wind up or down, depending on whether he wanted to open them or close them. When fully open, the sluice-gates would create a hole in the lock-gates about three feet square and it was through these holes that the water would be drained. As you can imagine, when the sluice-gates were fully opened in this way the force of the out-rushing water was tremendous. The water would roar out in great columns with such awesome power that they would hit the other lock-gates at the far end of the lock 75 feet away. Mike and I were sitting on the edge of the canal bank busily engaged in doing nothing and Dad was occupied with his paddles. Quite a few people were about and it looked just like any other balmy Sunday afternoon. Dad had warned the parents who were there not to let their children go swimming while the sluice-gates were opened because of the obvious danger that was present. When the water was rushing out like this a fairly big whirlpool would be created and anything near it would be sucked down into the depths and spewed out into the lock with devastating force.

As is often the case when dramas are about to unfold, someone didn't heed the warning that was given. A little girl of about seven jumped into the water ten or so feet away from the whirlpool and immediately found herself in difficulty. Because of the water rushing out of the canal a current was created, like an ebbing tide, and it was in this current that the child was now caught.

It all seemed to happen so fast. Everyone was running about in a panic. The girl was being drawn inexorably to the whirlpool and the horror of what would happen next became horribly apparent.

The father of the child began shouting uselessly at her and jumping up and down on the spot. Dad made a grab for her from the bridge which ran along the top of the lock-gates but, because he was so fat, he couldn't get low enough and missed her.

The little girl had now reached the lip of the whirlpool and in a sudden change of pace she spun around and disappeared. Everyone screamed at once. Mike ran to the edge of the bank right beside the whirlpool and reached down to try to grab her. She was gone! Others looked over the other side into the lock to see if she had been thrust through the sluice-gate. Mike still continued his frantic gropings as the whirlpool made loathsome sucking noises. He thought he felt something! Yes, there it was again. Incredibly, the little girl was fighting with all her primeval instincts to reach the surface. She still couldn't be seen, but for Mike there was still hope. He reached down even further, putting himself now at risk of being sucked in, and, God in Heaven, he felt something solid! He made a grab and caught hold of her hair and pulled with all his might against the suck of the whirlpool. She came to the surface and Mike dragged her quickly out of the water. Everyone cheered and clapped and screamed their delight.

Dad took over and administered his famous artificial respiration and the child came to. The father of the girl was beside himself with gratitude for Mike's brave effort. Mike sheepishly accepted his thanks and walked away contented. Another life had been saved.

Footnote:

Frank states the following on the previous page: "One Summer ... It was a boiling-hot day and Dad had opened the sluice-gates in order to run off some excess water from the canal. Whenever the water-level rose too high because of the rains it was Dad's task to see that some of it was drained into the river."

This is puzzling. The water level at Spike Island nowadays is very hard to maintain, and in the past diesel pumps were employed to pump river water back into the canal to maintain the depth. Perhaps they were used when lock usage was high, and the flow down the canal was low because of drought etc. But Frank states that letting water out of the canal was a common occurrence, and also that this was a very hot summer. This would seem to imply that water supply was often over-generous. Given the present situation of constant poor water supply, there must be a reason for the change. Is it damage done to the bed of the canal by the Fiddlers Ferry Power Station lagoons, as we suspect?

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