The Punt Britain Afloat

The waterways of Britain are a wonderful world of their own.

From the earliest times, we've sailed, rowed,

paddled and steamed along them.

Whether travelling, trading,

hunting, racing or just having a good time,

we've made a boat that's perfect for the job.

I'm Mary-Ann Ochota.

I like nothing better than getting out on the water.

Boats fascinate me.

Their design, their engineering

and what they tell us about the people of Britain.

The punt is an ancient boat with an intriguing past.

This is the story of how it was transformed

from a working and hunting craft

to a leisure craze that swept across Edwardian Britain

and is still with us today.

The history of Britain's boats is our history.

This is Britain Afloat.

The punt is part of the classic visitor experience to Cambridge,

but these simple boats have been around a lot longer

than those ancient colleges.

And these vessels have enabled people to thrive

in some of the most waterlogged landscapes in our country.

We start our story on the River Waveney,

a river that forms a natural boundary

between Suffolk and Norfolk.

I'm taking part in a harvest

that only happens once every other year.

It's been carried out in this part of the world for generations.

And it's the punt, a boat with a flat bottom,

usually pushed with a pole, that makes it possible.

Anna Toulson is leading our expedition.

Anna, why is the punt so good in this terrain?

It's brilliant for these types of rivers.

It's long and slimline,

which means it can get through quite narrow channels.

Its shallow draught, the flat bottom,

means it can get over quite shallow water

and still remain buoyant.

And also, because of how it spreads its weight, it's incredibly stable,

so for people and for anything you want to load onto it.

It keeps everything very steady.

And I'm guessing boats like this have been used in places like this

for hundreds, if not thousands of years?

Yeah. It's a tradition that dates back centuries.

And the crop being harvested by Anna and her team? The bulrush.

-We use a short-handle sickle. Here's yours.

-Thank you.

And the aim is to cut the rush as close to the root as possible.

So as close to the riverbed.

So you generally take the rushes in your hand,

get down to the riverbed

and then do a quick, short-hand motion.

-A kind of...

-Are you pulling it towards you?

Just pulling it towards you, yeah.

-Can I have a go?

-Definitely.

How do you know which rush to go for? I mean, are these good ones?

Yeah, they're good ones. If you just grab a handful and then go...

-Take your sickle down to the riverbed...

-Yeah.

And bring a swift motion towards you.

You made that look so easy.

-There we go.

-OK.

We get a bit of weed, but that's all part of it.

We post it down and as we bundle, we clear the weed off the rushes.

Use the current to post the rushes to our team.

After being cut, the rushes are taken away on the punt.

We've got to drag them more than a mile downstream to be unloaded.

But the punt is perfectly designed to carry our precious cargo.

The bulrushes are then left to dry,

before a team of weavers, using age-old techniques,

turn them into carpets and baskets.

The workshop manager is Millie Baxter.

How ancient a tradition is this?

Well, we do know that Henry VIII

was standing on rush carpeting in his houses.

We had to do a piece for Hampton Court Palace.

They had a false floor, opened it up and found some rush matting.

So that meant, yes, it's gone back a lot of years.

So rush harvesting and weaving

have been around at least since Tudor times,

but the punt has been around a lot longer than that.

I'm just a couple of miles outside of Peterborough, in Cambridgeshire,

and it was close to this spot that archaeologists

discovered something extraordinary hidden in the fenland mud.

In 1999, the remains of a Bronze Age settlement

were found at a place called Must Farm.

It gave archaeologists an amazing insight

into how people lived on the marshy fenland thousands of years ago.

Ben Robinson is an archaeologist

with a particular interest in the history of the East Anglian fens.

We know that people have lived in this landscape

for thousands and thousands of years.

And we've found their tools, we've found their weaponry,

we've found their settlements

and now we've found their transport, as well.

-Boats?

-Exactly, boats.

If you're living in the fen and having to move around the fen,

the punt would be used for everything.

It was the classic utility vehicle.

So if you're foraging, fishing,

if you're trading with neighbouring groups, if you're bringing goods in.

And the oldest of these boats that we've found recently

is over 3,500 years old.

That's extraordinary, Ben.

It's an incredible insight into how these people moved around.

It gives another dimension to what we know about the past.

The boats are being kept in this specially-constructed building

and they're being conserved in this chamber here.

This is normally as close as you can get to see them,

but Ben has arranged for us to take special precautions

and go inside with them. Let's go, Ben.

One size fits all.

SHE CHUCKLES Yeah. Or no size fits all!

The reason we're putting on all this special gear

is because the boats are being preserved

in a sort of chemical wax solution.

-What does it do, Ben?

-Ethylene glycol.

Yeah. I mean, the wood content has largely gone from these boats,

believe it or not, and it's been replaced by water when it's in the ground.

As that water dries out, something has to replace the water,

otherwise the boats just shrink away and crack up.

It's the same technique that they used on the Mary Rose?

Precisely. Yes. Yeah.

How long does the whole process take?

Months. Years.

You've got to make sure that every little cell,

every little bit of the structure has got this wax in it,

or it just ends up shrinking, cracking and disappearing.

The facemasks and suits will protect us from chemicals in the air.

Look at this! Log boat heaven!

Wow! This is amazing, Ben!

Watch your footing. It's a little bit slippery in here.

-Look at this.

-How old is this?

Oh, it's 3,000 years old.

I mean...just astounding.

And, look, every grain, every little tool mark.

It's just extraordinary.

And look at how well it's been made.

There's the slot for the transom board at the end there.

And these ribs, look.

And that just gives it structure and strength

across the base of this... very punt-like boat, isn't it?

It's very punt-like. Flat bottomed, quite wide at the bottom.

Just an incredible piece of workmanship.

And when you think about it, this is made out of one solid lump of tree.

You've got to select a tree that's capable of producing a boat.

You've got to shape it, work away at it maybe for weeks, months

to get it to this beautiful state,

a great, functioning, beautiful boat.

What an absolute privilege

to get so close to such an archaeological treasure!

Not only does it help us understand British pre-history,

it also helps me understand the incredible legacy of the punt.

The working fenland punt continued to be a common sight

until relatively recently.

This film from 70 years ago

shows how the punt was still an essential workhorse

for those living in such a waterlogged area.

-TV BROADCAST:

-Long, steady thrusts, a turn and twist of the wrist

and the little boat moves exactly as required

in the narrow and restricted water.

The punt was an ideal tool for laying special traps to catch eels,

for which the fens are famous.

Over time, the working punt was adapted for many different uses.

One of the most extraordinary was dreamed up around 200 years ago.

Now, the exact origins are lost in the mists of time,

but someone came up with the bright idea of combining an enormous gun

with a punt, creating a vessel that looked more at home on a battlefield

than it ever did on an English river.

This 1947 film shows a fenman

taking to the water in a strange-looking craft.

This is a gun punt.

The enormous gun was able to shoot many birds at a time.

The punt's flat bottom meant it could get close to the birds,

making them easier to hit.

GUNSHOT

Wildfowling was a professional occupation

until around the 1950s.

The birds would be sent to the meat markets in London.

There are still a few enthusiasts around today who use gun punts.

John Welham is one of them.

He owns several of these unusual boats.

-Hello, there.

-Hello.

Wow, look at this! It's extraordinary!

I mean, the first details that strike me

are, A - its strange colouring,

-it looks like a navy warship...

-Yeah.

-..and just the shape of it.

-That's right.

Well, most punts in this area are painted battleship-grey.

We wouldn't shoot on a day like this, we would shoot on a dull day

and this would take on the same colour as the water.

Oh! So the birds that you're trying to shoot...

They can't see. They won't see us, no.

-And the reason that's pointed at both ends...

-Yeah?

..is that it makes it very easy to row.

Most of the time, when you think about a punt,

you think about a flat-bottomed boat that's totally open,

but this is almost covered over. It's sort of like...

-Yeah, this is a different...

-..a canoe or a dinghy.

That's right. It's a totally different concept, say, to a Cambridge punt.

What does this deck give you?

What the deck does, that keeps the seawater out.

I've seen old photos, but to see it,

just the size of the gun compared to the size of the punt,

it's extraordinary!

-Yeah.

-It's massive!

-Yeah, it is.

This particular gun fires 14oz of shot.

A normal 12-bore would fire 1oz of shot, a proper game gun.

So that fires 14 times as much.

John goes out wildfowling with his friend, David Conway.

They've invited me along to see their fearsome-looking gun in action.

We're going to be firing blanks today,

rather than shooting at any birds.

LOW CHATTER

But I've been warned it's still going to be very loud.

You had one person on the gun and one person pushing or paddling.

And you just push up onto your birds.

When you get within 70 yards, you give them the full treatment.

And you're not rowing because that's too noisy?

No, you don't row, you push with the pusher.

Show me.

Ah, what's this? So, it's like a modified punting pole?

Yeah. We've got all different sizes.

-So if you're in shallow water, you use that one.

-Yeah.

If you're in deep water, you use a longer one.

Whoever's pushing in the punt lies flat down.

I'm lying flat down.

Whoever's on the gun, you push up to your birds.

-Silent as you like?

-Silent as you possibly can.

-Say when.

-Yeah. When.

GUNSHOT

Blooming heck!

-Like that?

-That was loud.

Legend has it, the punt gun is capable of killing

more than 100 birds with a single shot.

There was a character called Lord Orford who travelled the Fens in 1774.

He wrote in his journal of a gun being fired at a flock of snipe,

with the shot killing 36-dozen birds.

Is it true that gun can take 100 birds out of the sky in one shot?

No. That's a real myth.

The biggest we ever do is 15, 20, John?

-15, I'd say.

-If I get 20, I've hit a good shot.

-Wow! OK.

-And that's after a lifetime of being on this water.

Yeah. Why do you do this?

Well, just to keep tradition alive.

There's no youngsters doing it any more.

They couldn't afford to, to be honest.

I don't know what a rig would cost now. Buy a new gun.

A lot of money, I should imagine.

We've just got to keep it going. We just like to go.

You can't let it die. It's been going on for years, generations.

Right, firing!

GUNSHOT

Whoa!

The gun punt made hunting more efficient,

but over in Norfolk, wildfowlers came up with another modification

to give themselves the competitive edge.

This time, rather quieter.

This is Barton Broad in North Norfolk,

and these are sailing punts.

One of the boats' owners is David Adler.

David, this looks vaguely like a gun punt.

It's pointy at both ends, but it's infinitely more complex.

How did this evolve?

It evolved because it was noticed

that if you put a sail onto the old gun punts,

they were quieter because when you rowed it with rowlocks,

you made quite a lot of noise.

When it had a sail, it made no noise whatsoever,

so you got closer to your duck,

you shot and you got far more duck.

Also, having collected your ducks,

you could take them to market quickly

because under sail, you go so much faster.

And then, from that, people began saying,

"These are rather fast sailing boats,

"let's race one against another".

The thing about a punt, though, it's got such shallow draught.

In principle, it can be flat because it's wide,

but as soon as you put a sail on it, how does it not tip over?

It doesn't tip over because you rely on the human body to keep it flat.

-Right.

-In other words, you're sailing it and you get in it.

-Yeah.

-And you take this trapeze, like this,

and you lean out like that

and the wind is blowing that way

and you are preventing it capsizing, hopefully.

-Not always.

-SHE LAUGHS

Well, that all sounds fairly straightforward,

so I thought I'd give it a go.

There are 30 sailing punts in this club and races are held most weeks.

I'm still dry-ish.

This is absolutely amazing!

You think punts are all genteel, bobbing about with a pole.

This is like punt on steroids.

This is punting for adrenaline junkies.

But it was another kind of punt

that the Edwardians were to transform into the leisure craze

that's still with us today.

BIRDSONG

The punt would become THE way for visitors to enjoy a trip

through some of our most beautiful cities.

This is Cambridge.

The beginning of the 20th century was a period of great social change.

Leisure pursuits were no longer the sole domain of the upper classes.

A growing middle class found itself with more time and money.

New roads and railways made it easier to travel around,

and historic places, like Cambridge and Oxford

became a magnet for the new tourists.

I'm joining punt historian Adrian Barlow for a trip along the river.

How did punting take off as a leisure pursuit?

Well, it derived from the old punts,

which were working punt,

and people used to use them for ferrying cattle even.

A wide punt like this could be used to take animals,

or indeed, to take people across rivers when there were no bridges.

And how do we go from those working boats

to the leisure pursuit of people lounging around, being punted

or punting each other off for a picnic or a pub lunch?

Well, I think it actually derived largely from the idea of fishing.

You can see lots of images of people fishing in punts on the Thames,

where they've simply taken chairs out of their kitchen

and put them in the middle of the punt.

And they sit there all afternoon, enjoying the river.

From that derives the idea of taking people on the river

for pleasure, for a picnic.

And you then get the new arrangement of what's called the saloon,

whereas here, you have cushions placed

so that people face each other

as they are being punted down the river.

The new leisure craze quickly swept across the country.

I've got some photos here from the turn of the century,

I'm guessing, from the look of the ladies' hats. Look at that.

Thousands of people punting. You can't move for punts.

No, and that's at Henley Regatta.

And if you'd taken a photograph of that same scene in 1890,

there would have been plenty of rowing boats, skiffs and canoes,

not a punt to be seen.

It just shows you how rapidly the craze for punting took off.

A Cambridge entrepreneur saw what was going on on the Thames

and spotted a business opportunity.

Jack Scudamore started hiring out the first punts on the River Cam

more than 100 years go.

And his company is still thriving.

I'm getting a tour of the boatshed with general manager, Rod Ingersent.

Jack Scudamore fought in the Boer War

at around the turn of the 20th century.

He was back in Cambridge by about 1903, looking for a job.

He'd been an apprentice boat-builder when he was younger,

so he decided to go into boat hire.

And originally, he started off with canoes and also motor launches.

And later on, he moved into punts as they started to become popular,

we guess at around 1905-1907.

Today, the company has the largest fleet on the river.

Each year, we have to bring them up to our workshop here

and do maintenance works on them,

which ranges from doing running repairs,

splits in the side, patching.

And then, what you see here, which is re-varnishing.

Stripping them back to bare wood, re-varnishing and re-painting them.

Keep them looking beautiful.

Because the boats take quite a lot of bashing during the year.

There's lots of boats in the water and buildings,

and people who haven't punted very much find it hard to go in a straight line,

so they tend to zigzag around a bit.

I can totally understand that. SHE LAUGHS

-They feel like historic craft.

-Absolutely.

To most people, the design has changed,

or the appearance has changed very little in over 100 years.

So what you see today, Mr Scudamore would certainly recognise as being a punt.

In the early years, there was a strict dress code on the river.

Some of the university colleges had their own punts

and required students to punt well and dress well.

Mostly, punting was a rather civilised affair,

but on occasion, things did get a little out of hand.

This is from a local newspaper written in 1908.

And the excerpt says,

"Considerable annoyance has been caused to the dons of Trinity

"and St John's by gramophone concerts

"given by undergraduate punting parties.

"As the Cam is technically a highway,

"the police were asked to put a stop to the nuisance

"and a constable patrolled the river in a tub."

More than 100 years later, and punting's still not always

the most quiet and refined mode of transportation.

SCREECHING

SHE LAUGHS She just punted herself into a tree!

LAUGHTER

So I actually went to university at Cambridge,

so I have punted a couple of times before,

but to be honest, I was never very good, even then.

Now, at Cambridge, you stand here, on this back platform,

which is called the till, and you punt from here.

In the Thames, you actually tend to stand in the middle

because you get a lot more stability.

And at Oxford...they punt from this end, going that way.

But either way, the bottom line is, you're pushing a flat-bottomed boat

along with a 16-foot pole.

Well, I suppose it's time to have a punt myself.

SHE LAUGHS Sorry. Terribly sorry.

-Oh...

-BLEEP! BLEEP!

SHE LAUGHS Sorry!

Nice!

I reckon I'd be all right at, like, um...punting dodgems.

I'm really sorry! That was entirely my fault!

Oh, no dramas! SHE LAUGHS

SHE LAUGHS So bad!

Clearly, I'm a little rusty.

There's a lot more to this punting lark than meets the eye.

But after a while, I get the hang of things.

With more than 200 punts keeping visitors happy,

they're an important part of the economy of Cambridgeshire.

I wonder how many people here today realise

they're riding in boats which owe their origins to our Bronze Age

ancestors' quest for survival?

It's hard to imagine Cambridge without punts,

and so it's fitting that these lovely boats

play such an important part

in one of the highlights of the social season,

the glamorous May balls, that round off every university year.

If you can't get a ticket to the ball,

the next best thing is watching from a punt.

The River Cam is still a public highway,

so anyone can spectate from the water.

It's the busiest day of the year for the punt companies.

The event is so popular, the river gets completely blocked

with punts from one side to the other.

It's a spectacular setting for a remarkable little boat.

FIREWORKS CRACKLE AND FIZZ

There are few boats that can boast such a varied and long history.

From fishing, shooting and sailing

to giving us the perfect excuse to slow down

and enjoy the simple pleasure of being on the river.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE