On the previous page I included one of the letters that Sylviane wrote to me. Here is another with some fascinating information (translated from French):
Hello. The wooden barges in the Solvay fleet were not at all alike, because unlike the iron boats that Solvay had built, the wooden barges were second-hand, so to speak! Between 1918 and 1922, Solvay acquired 125 wooden barges from Belgian and French craftsmen, hiring their crews in the process. Their numbers ranged from 101 to 217 and 301 to 320. This is how the Parent family became involved with Solvay , because in 1920 my husband's grandfather, Oscar Parent, sold his barge "Azy" to Solvay, and it adopted the name Solvay 207. As fate would have it, the last barge to bring the Solvay fleet saga to a close in 1987 was number 107, captained by my husband Norbert Parent. Best wishes
A photo of the last four Solvay barges awaiting sale, including Solvay 107 on the right :
Solvay for dummies
The following is the equivalent of 'Solvay for dummies' written by Guillaume Kiffer, one of the last Solvay bargees and still
researching the Solvay fleet:
"Summarizing 70 years of inland waterway history in five minutes? OK, here we go... So, it all started with the Marne-Rhine canal opened in 1853, connecting the Marne River, starting in Vitry-le-François to the Rhine at Strasbourg. This canal passes through the city of Nancy. East of Nancy lies a region rich in salt, with saltworks that have been producing this "white gold" for a long time. This region also contains limestone. Conveniently, salt and limestone are essential for producing soda ash, so the major Belgian industrialist Solvay chose to establish a soda ash plant in Dombasle-sur-Meurthe, a small town on the banks of the Marne-Rhine Canal, in 1873, twenty years after the canal opened to navigation. This factory was, in fact, the company's first to be established outside Belgium. For the salt, Dombasle had everything it needed; all that was required was drilling down to the salt layer around the factory and in the surrounding countryside, injecting water, and pumping out the brine. As for the limestone, there were quarries around Nancy, but it still had to be transported to Dombasle. The quarries are not far from the canal, and the factory is right on the waterway, so we can imagine that, from the very beginning, the soda ash plant used river transport for its supplies: limestone and also coal.
We can assume that the Solvay factory in Dombasle already owned barges by the end of the 19th century, but the period I can tell you about is from 1920 onwards. At that time, Solvay Dombasle owned metal barges, perhaps around thirty, which were more robust than wooden barges, for transporting limestone. These boats made short trips of a few dozen kilometres between the factory and the quarries. By the early 1920s, Solvay already owned the metal-built boats Solvay 1 to 34 and was expanding its fleet. To achieve this, they bought wooden barges from local bargemen, and at the same time, since these boats needed captains, they hired these bargemen, who became Solvay employees. For about ten years, this fleet of wooden barges, some 120 or 130 boats, travelled throughout eastern and northern France, as well as Belgium, delivering soda ash to customers and bringing back coal to keep the factory running. Then, in the early 1930s, the fleet underwent a major modernization: the Solvay factory in Dombasle commissioned the construction of self-propelled metal barges in two large shipyards in the Paris region. These were among the best available at the time and these new boats were named Solvay 45 to 121. In the early 1960s, Solvays 122,123 and 124 were built, and that was all.
Solvay then sold off its wooden barges as the metal self-propelled barges arrived. All these boats loaded soda ash at Dombasle and departed to deliver it to glassworks in northern France and wherever Solvay had customers in France and Belgium. They returned to the factory with coal from Belgium or northern France. One of the major routes was to Antwerp; the boats left Dombasle loaded with soda ash, traveling via the Marne-Rhine Canal, the French Meuse river, the Belgian Meuse river to Liège, and the Albert Canal to reach Antwerp. On the return trip, they loaded coal from the mines in northern France and headed for the Dombasle factory. This trade ended after the Belgian strikes of 1973. Solvay then contracted with independent barge operators to deliver to Antwerp.
Solvay boats are well-known in the barge industry, particularly because of their distinctive colours: red and very light gruy (many say white, they were so light, but former Solvay barge operators always refer to them as gruy). Starting in the 1960s, Solvay Dombasle began to dispose of its oldest boats, those built from the late 19th century onwards; they were either scrapped or sold. The newer ones, from the early 1930s, were modernized: more powerful engines, more comfortable living quarters. But this is the beginning of the end: the fleet will dwindle over the years, the boats will be sold, the bargemen will go to work at the factory, until September 1987: Solvay 107 is the last boat in the Solvay fleet from the Dombasle factory. The time has come for its final voyage: it loads soda ash in Dombasle, bound for Arques, in northern France; once empty, it sailed to Novelles-Godault, also in northern France, where it loaded coke, and at the end of September, it unloaded at Dombasle, marking the end of the Solvay fleet.
The final countdown
The salaried bargemen who sailed the SOLVAY 107 until the end were Norbert and Sylviane Parent. Since she arrived to work at the factory, Sylviane has been the keeper of the Solvay fleet's memory. She collected photos of the boats, information, and anecdotes from all her former colleagues, and compiled several books. These four dates illustrate the decline of the fleet:
- July 1956: 110 units
- October 1965: 93 units
- January 1979: 33 units
- October 1986: 8 units.
Solvay tugs
These were mentioned as barges in the first letter Sylviane sent to me. These eight Solvay barges were self-propelled and double-hulled, designated "B1" through "B8". The first four barges were launched from the Scar shipyard in Strasbourg at the end of 1965, and the last four from the Franco-Belges shipyard in Chalon-sur-Saône at the end of 1966. They were equipped with a removable 60hp "Pilotinic" unit belonging to CGTVN: comprising a rudder, a retractable iron cabin, and a thruster, all controlled by a hydraulic system (except for B4, which was equipped with a Schottel unit).
These barges were built with the intention of transporting soda ash from
Dombasle to Thionville, where they would be assembled in push convoys via the
Moselle and Rhine rivers, bound for Antwerp. However, after inconclusive
trials, this project was quickly abandoned. These barges were therefore used to reinforce the Panama fleet on the limestone
transport route between Solvay Dombasle-sur-Meurthe (54)
and Solvay Sarralbe (57), returning loaded with Saar coal for the
Dombasle plant. The operation of these barges was entrusted to CGTVN from 1967
until the early 1970s. The Strasbourg-based company Bargest then took over
until 1975, the date of the Panama's discontinuation (not given to the barges
and other vessels that provided this service).
I have yet to collect pictures of these eight tugs/barges.
Register
Here is a register of the Solvays that I have compiled:
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