The winter the Brant froze

The winter of 1963 froze the Brant bank to bank for nine weeks. Barges sat in the ice. The coal came by dray. And the ropewalk, which had never once in its history stopped for weather, walked on.

The ledgers show what that meant. Three walks a day, six days a week, the whole nine weeks, with the yard doors shut against a cold that split the tar pot’s lid. The crew of the day worked in coats and fingerless gloves, and the walk-boys of the day, one of whom still comes in on Saturdays to turn the museum jack, says the walk was the warmest place in Brantside because eleven people moving fast make their own weather.

The rope of that winter is easy to spot in the museum: the mooring line laid for the ferry board in week three carries a slight thickening every forty metres where the tar froze in the pot and had to be thawed by lamp. The ferry master of the time called it the rope’s heartbeat and refused the offer of a replacement when spring came.