Women and children first 

“Come on, pull! Put some muscle into it!” You are not sure whether that is meant as an encouragement or an attempt to rush you. But then you don’t really care, considering yourself fortunate to have work at all.  

Especially in waterways with many bridges and locks or when there was not enough wind to sail, skippers who could afford it hired horse drivers to tow their ships. Others, who were less well-off, had their wives and children do the heavy work. A barge of this size could hold at least some 90,000 turves. Not exactly nothing …  

Peat barges are real workboats and therefore without unnecessary luxury. Sometimes they had some decoration on the rudder head (2) and the frame around the cabin entrance (3). They were flat-bottomed, wooden sailing ships (4) and had light riggings to minimize the ship’s draught, which enabled them to manoeuvre on Drenthe’s often shallow canals.  

Around 1920 most wooden ships had been replaced by steel ones, and many skippers had hot-bulb engines installed. Sailing ships disappeared. Only the peat skippers held on to their sailing barges, which meant that there were still ships that needed to be towed – but for how long?