In the 1950s Britains waterways were still full of commercial traffic & lined with the mills factories & ports of a then-leading industrial nation. This is the era captured in the photographs of the Lytham Sea Cadets who in 1958 ventured from coast to coast via the canals of Lancashire & Yorkshire aboard Training Ship Queenborough. As they journeyed from the Ribble Estuary via the Leeds & Liverpool Canal & the Aire & Calder Navigation to the Humber Estuary the Sea Cadets witnessed regular merchant shipping on the Humber & the dying throes of commercial traffic on Britains tired neglected canals. They also glimpsed the occasional pleasure boat. Little did they know that such craft & their owners would be the salvation of Britains waterways. Combining photographs from the 1950s with stunning modern-day images Hemmings & Swidenbank show how canal life has changed over the last fifty years.