In March 1920, Oscar Parent, my husband's grandfather, sold
his barge Azy to Solvay for 26,000 francs. Solvay then
registered it as Solvay 207 (re-registered in February 1922 as NY2402F)
and, in the process, hired Oscar. That's how the Parent family came to work
at Solvay. You wouldn't believe how much I searched for a photo of that
boat! A young cousin had it in her archives. It is a wooden decked barge, built
in 1903 at the Lerouge Navet shipyard in Ramillies, in the Nord department,
along the Scheldt canal. Solvay sold it in July 1932 to Jean
Steenhuysen of Antwerp. We have no record of a new motto. As for Oscar Parent,
refusing to give up his horses and obtain his driver's licence, he did not
accept the switch to a self-propelled iron barge; he left Solvay and
bought back the barge Solvay 143, which he renamed Azy, in memory of his
previous boat.
The only photo of Solvay 207. This was when she was called Azy before Solvay bought her:
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