WOMEN'S WRITES London liveaboard Tilly Bungard tells IWA why she felt compelled to launch a magazine championing female and nonbinary boat folk We hear you have boating in your blood... Yes, my dad set up the Bristol Ferry Boats company in the 1970s, and he met my mum when she was living on a narrowboat in the city. They brought a Dutch barge over from Amsterdam together and I was born on that. When I started crawling they worried about me potentially falling overboard, so we moved to a house in Gloucestershire. We emigrated to Spain when I was seven years old and stayed there until I was 15. In that time my parents were still part-shareholders in the ferry company, until it folded in 2016. At that point we moved back to Bristol and, with lots of friends of the Bristol Ferry Boats company, we managed to resurrect it as a community benefit project. My parents bought another barge from Amsterdam and I lived on that during sixth form and worked on the ferries in my holidays. It was quite an idyllic time. Everyone who works on those boats feels like family.
At the helm of her narrowboat en route to London.
When did you decide to buy your own boat? When I graduated from uni in London I met a few female boaters through Sisters Uncut, which campaigns against cuts to domestic violence services. After chatting to them, moving onto a boat felt like the natural thing to do. It was always something I’d wanted to do, but for some reason I thought I’d need a man to move in with. Talking to these women, most of whom lived aboard alone, and hearing how many opted to move around the city together in groups, gave me the confidence to buy my own boat at last. That happened 2½ years ago. I bought a 45ft narrowboat in Oxford and took it to Bristol on the back of a lorry to do some work on the hull. We repainted it at the same time – yellow and bright pink. In total I spent about £6,000 tarting it up, before cruising to London.
What gave you the idea for a magazine for female boaters?
Tilly’s mum was a single female liveaboard herself in the 1970s. Tilly’s dad set up Bristol Ferry Boats in the 1970s.
I was mainly inspired by all the creative people I’ve met on a Facebook group specifically for London boatwomen. I asked if anyone on there fancied making a magazine with me and the reaction was great. We had our first meeting in the Waterstones café in Piccadilly. About 15 people turned up, all with such a breadth of experience including editors of really glossy magazines, graphic designers etc. It was amazing. What then happened was that the subsequent meeting only attracted two people... I suppose it’s normal to get really excited about a new project without quite realising what a commitment it might be. I’m guilty of that too. In fact, this magazine feels like one of the first projects I’ve been able to see through to the end. I think that’s only because I’ve involved other people, and don’t want to let anyone down. The core group was myself, an interior designer called Asha Mehr (who has since moved off her boat and now lives in Folkestone), and Estelle Morris, who runs a printing studio in Hackney Wick called Duplikat Press. It turned out so much more manageable with just the three of us than the initial 15. And from start to finish it has been boatwomen-led, which feels right. We had a GoFundMe campaign in March 2019, which was really successful, and launched our first issue a year later.
Who came up with the title, Fear Naut? We stole it from a boat! Asha spotted it, although it was spelt ‘nought’. We changed it slightly because, aesthetically, the four letters just work better.
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Spring 2021 22/01/2021 14:02
