Wotcha chaps :)
I live on a historic wooden narrowboat, and have done all my life, (indeed this year my family celebrate owning her for 40 years!), I also make a living working a coal carrying narrowboat (also historic) and painting any of them that stay still for more then 5 minutes :-P
I'd be happy to help with the more mundane side of inland waterways history stuff, the boats themselves, how they were worked and thing like that.
Though id point out now that the men and women who worked the boats of all kinds would have been dreadfully insulted to be called either "water gypsy" or "bargee".. The few remaining boatmen still alive get terribly upset if theyre called these names! They were, and are,"boatmen" or "boaters". Even those on barges were not "bargees", its just a term that came 'off the bank' (the waterway term for people in houses') through lack of understanding about the boats; they thought, and many still do, that the boats in the many forms are all "barges"..
Anyway, I'd be happy to help with a waterways board if I can! It'd be an honour to speak on behalf of the boaters who have gone before me, and help people understand our way of life :)
